The raw harshness of The Mercies is pretty unrelenting. Based on a real-life seventeenth century witch trial, Hargrave’s novel is either “an atmospheric tale of self-sufficient womanhood and sexual suspicion in a tight-knit island community” as the publisher would claim, or an extraordinarily bleak portrait of how awful life was for women and minorities in this period.

The first thread of the narrative is told by a young woman living in a small fishing community in Northern Norway, close to the Arctic Circle. It opens with a fierce storm (on Christmas Eve, just to rub it in) in which forty fishermen are drowned, watched from the cliff-tops by their womenfolk. The community – Vardo – is an island, largely isolated from the outside world. An already difficult, subsistence way of life suddenly becomes much harder. Word of the tragedy eventually reaches the outside world, but such is the state of public life in Norway in this period, the state’s reaction is to send them a priest, to make sure the women don’t get up to any inappropriate behaviour – such as going fishing to feed themselves. Women doing men’s work is seen by the Puritanism gripping the country to be ungodly, as is wearing trousers, not going to church, and just about any deviation from orthodoxy.

We are introduced to one of the complexities of social life at this time. The indigenous people – the Sami – live alongside the Christian incomers in this part of the world. There is some tension between the two communities but they have largely come to terms with one another. However, the new puritanism that has gained hold in Norway from across the sea in Scotland, where King James preaches against witchcraft, is being used to persecute the Sami and seize their property. It is clear that it is only a matter of time before any traditions relating to the Samis and their way of life become taboo.

The novel’s second narrative begins in Bergen, where a young woman, Ursa, is sold into marriage by her father. Because this is apparently common practice she accepts this servitude without protest. Her new husband immediately takes her with him on his journey to become the Commissioner of Vardo. He is on a mission to cleanse the community of heresy – in other words he is a witchfinder. Ursa’s husband rapes her nightly and of course there is no affection or connection of any kind between husband and wife. The impact of the Commissioner’s eventual arrival in Vardo is explosive and dangerous.

One of the many challenges writers must struggle with when constructing the plots of their novels is how to ensure that the ending doesn’t come as a complete out-of-the-blue surprise to the reader, but at the same time isn’t blindingly obvious. Give too many clues and the element of suspense is gone; give too few and the conclusion will feel like a deus ex machina. Sadly here the author flags the ending very early on. Without giving anything away, which is an approach the author does not adopt, the nature of the relationship between the two central characters is hinted almost immediately. The fact that the witchfinder quickly finds some witches will equally come as no surprise to any reader. One character sees the inevitable coming and flees the village – others are too stubborn to save themselves. Any element of suspense was stripped from the novel by this heavy-handed foreshadowing – it was a question of when things happened rather than whether.

There are other points of interest in the novel beyond the plot-lines and the stories of the two central characters. The evocation of a sense of place is powerful and I learnt more about seventeenth-century Norwegian fishing communities than I knew there was to be learnt. The characterisation was well done. The horrors of the treatment of women suspected of witchcraft was vividly hard to read. It all comes together into a strongly contemporary story of how women are persecuted when men feel threatened by their power. Sadly that message couldn’t be more relevant today. On that level The Mercies succeeds as a powerful reminder of the fundamental injustices women face in society. There’s no question its heart is in the right place. But I can’t say I really enjoyed reading The Mercies – I am not even sure I was supposed to.