Freakslaw by Jane Flett (Doubleday, £16.99)

As the spring of 1997 inches its way into summer, a funfair pitches its tents outside the bleak Highland town of Pitlaw, the startled residents entirely unprepared for what the next two months will bring. The new arrivals, the Freakslaw, are all in some way outsiders. There are conjoined twins, a wolfman, a girl covered entirely in piercings, a fortune teller with a profound connection to the earth. And there’s teenage contortionist Nancy, a practitioner of chaos magic with no sense of responsibility or fear of consequences: the kind of person who will poke a wasp’s nest just to see what happens.

After they have set up camp and performed an earth ritual (because “magic needs a base to cling to”), their seer, Gloria, senses Pitlaw’s dark past. Centuries ago, women were persecuted and burned as witches here, and the Freakslaw see it as their responsibility, out of a sense of kinship between outcasts, to put their souls to rest by exacting revenge on the town on their behalf.

First-time author Jane Flett, a Scot now living in Berlin, wrote Freakslaw “to honour the ways in which our marginalities are so often a source of power, community and triumph”, and these marginalised, exotic newcomers are just the sort who would excite fear and loathing in Pitlaw, a town of “drab-faced people” which “has long had a simmering anger in its soil”.

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As expected, the funfair lures in the younger and more open-minded folks of the town. Ruth MacNamara is waiting to be accepted by the University of Stirling, willing to trudge through an accountancy degree if it means escaping Pitlaw. As she tries to figure out how to balance “the weirdo she really is and the overachiever she needs to be”, the fair arrives, giving her glimpses of new, undreamt-of possibilities.

Derek Geddes is seduced by its glamour too. Secretly gay, and living under the heel of a violent, intolerant father who thinks the Freakslaw are disgusting perverts, he is drawn inexorably towards it, especially when a handsome young Waltzer operator takes a fancy to him. 

But Pitlaw won’t be a pushover. However alluring the Freakslaw’s flamboyant hedonism may be to the more curious, receptive people in Pitlaw, it’s still a town where the pub is the men’s impenetrable bastion, women are expected to know their place and children are drained of all their fun and imagination.

The Freakslaw leader, Mr Partlett, warns Gloria that there are generations of angry men here, with their own type of dark magic. That a titanic battle of wills awaits them is certain. But there are also warning signs that the Freakslaw’s plan to avenge the souls of the accused witches may blow back in their faces, not least as a result of Nancy’s compulsion to inject further chaos into an already volatile situation. 

Jane Flett

Putting the carnal into carnival, Freakslaw flirts with both horror and magical realism, its sorcery always rooted in physicality, bodily fluids and dirt. It’s visceral, sexual, bloody and occasionally violent, but so compellingly written that it’s impossible to turn away. One can see antecedents in Katherine Dunn’s Geek Love, Tod Browning’s Freaks and the legend of the Pied Piper, as well as parallels with the culture wars of today.

It’s also gorgeously written. For all the book’s lush excess and hallucinatory episodes, Flett’s prose is clear, sharp and stylish, and she copes easily with its large cast. As frightening as it is seductive, this tale of a tightly knit band of outsiders pitting themselves against “that pulsing Calvinist heart” makes for a dark but thrillingly vibrant read.

ALASTAIR MABBOTT