The Stagtress

5/5 ( ratings)

The Stagtress is a holy book, a syncretic novel of scientific, pagan, xtian, gnostic, and folkloric imagery. Its revelations tell of a little girl who starts to grow stag antlers.

The book goes like this: Once upon a spacetime, in a medieval forest still shuddering from the Black Death, little Florentine busily grows her own set of stag antlers as she comes of age, then falls in love, and then — Once upon a spacetime, on grimy North London streets, blackened helicopters buzzing overhead, amnesiac Jack undergoes toughlove psychotherapy and kokology to recall his old life, and then — Once upon a spacetime, across a bombed-out future desert, Martin hikes naked with only his walking-stick for company, and then —

The subparticles of the past, the present and the future elide and crash together, reincarnating into a surreal folklore.

Absurdist — subversive — this fairy-tale mashup Jungian fever dream makes perfect sense, but only if you follow the 0th Law of Submersibility, Flanagan’s Third Theorem of Carnivorous Wormholes and the Twelfth Arboreal Principle of Gnostic Eternalism to the letter.

“Like a psychedelic Angela Carter for the 21st century, Bryson takes us into the darkest reaches of the forest, only to pull us out again to catapult us into the future. Creation myths collide with apocalypse culture to dazzle the reader into an altered state. In this powerful, liberation paean to nature, the reader can wriggle free from the mendacious venom of the machine-code world and run wild with the horned goddess, where the tree is the first of all gods and suns are older than clocks. On Florentine’s eighth birthday, she goes to the lake—the dangerous lake by her family’s woodland home—and sees her reflection in the silvered surface of the water. Two bumps are forming on the top of her head—vestigial horns...Like all the best fairy tales, Florentine’s world is not benign or cosy. Snows bring death, baying predators howl during the Wild Hunt, and too often there’s only chargrilled owl for supper. But if you are brave and curious, it is also a numinous realm where questing beasts share knowledge and UNcommon sense, and forest-dwellers remember the true meaning of sacrifice.” - Kerri Sharp, author of Prada Sucks and Other Demented Descants

“This book envelops us in the disrupted forest edge of Hackney North London in the years following the Black Death - when the feudal system came apart and the surviving peasants, discovering their own value, began revolting. In a secluded valley live the Stagtress, a girl with uncontrollable and formidable powers of metamorphosis, along with her goat brothers. She and her pious and impious siblings wander around a fragmented world where the old religion coexists with an upstart christian patriarchy and heretic strains of alchemy. Unaccountably, strangers, who may come from the same place but a different time, knock on the door. Animistic and apocalyptic, we get visions of abandoned cityscapes and nuclear deserts. The main
characters, always travelling, are trying to get back somewhere or forward somewhere, surprisingly encountering each other despite inhabiting different centuries. The book is long, possibly too long, but how much time have you got? Sink into the lush, entrancing, mesmeric word tapestry. Possibly this is a manual for steering our way in the post-covid world.”
– Dr. Camilla Power

Praise for Bryson’s previous work:

“Sassy, clever, bright, dark, true, and, most importantly, alive” — Ali Smith

“A cross between Tom Robbins and Francesca Lia Block… viscerally resonating, unnerving” — The Oregonian

“Stunningly good” — Mslexia