HEXES OF THE DEADWOOD FOREST

An ecofeminist saga.

Anna Frenza is the unhappily married chief executive of a Polish oil company. The problem: Her husband has a secret porn addiction that keeps him too distracted to have sex with her. Medicated to deal with her malaise, she sleepwalks. Her destination is usually a gas station where she steals sweets, until one fateful night when she finds herself inexplicably drawn to a felled tree, which she straddles and makes love to. Caught in the act by a journalist who was tipped off by her neighbor, she’s swiftly abandoned by the government establishment that liked her when she was making money for Poland but embraced by the EcoDivas who applaud her for “the best environmental protest-performance” they’ve ever seen. That’s just the beginning of this sprawling, bawdy comic novel that goes all the way back to 1569 to create a genealogy of women trying to escape the tyranny of men’s rodkins (you can guess which anatomical part this refers to) and discover gentler ways to pleasure themselves and live in harmony with the earth. Over successive centuries, the narrative features lascivious men of the cloth, the discovery of elixirs to make a man’s rodkin wither, witch hunts sponsored by the Catholic church, ointments to protect women from penetration and rape, scenes of intense violence against women, and moments in which women come together to “cleft-spark,” fulfilling themselves and replenishing the earth. Though there’s never a dull moment, the novel does become a bit repetitive in the middle—perhaps for good reason, since the domination of rebellious women has been a constant across centuries. Still, Szpila spins a rich, imaginative alternative to the usual phallocentric history, urging women in the final chapter, a manifesto, to “suspend [their] powers of reason,” trust their “wild, atavistic Cleft,” and celebrate their connection to the natural world.

In this feisty novel, women’s strength comes from reasserting their role as earth mothers.