A great shout of life and individuality ... an act of defiance that gladdens the soul Guardian Lolly Willowes so gentle and accommodating has depths no one suspects. When she suddenly announces that she is leaving London and moving alone to the depths of the countryside her overbearing relatives are horrified. But Lolly has a greater far darker calling than family witchcraft. The book Ill be pressing into peoples hands forever . . . It tells the story of a woman who rejects the life that society has fixed for her in favour of freedom ... tips suddenly into extraordinary lucid wildness Helen MacdonaldWitty eerie tender ... her prose in its simple abrupt evocations has something preternatural about it John Updike