Book Review: We Hexed the Moon

This was such a thrilling read! A modern novella by Mollyhall Seeley that bravely confronts the destruction of human behaviour on our planet, challenging gender politics and what it is to be a woman in a modern age. All observed from the unique perspective of the Moon herself. A triumph.

We Hexed the Moon is a fantastically quirky novel that sheds (moon)light on what it is like to be a woman in the 21^st Century. Set in 2023, four friends ‘hex the moon’ from the sky and have to work through the Earth-shattering consequences of a moon embodied; a fed up, ‘divine feminine’ shadow, looking for someone to replace her. The girls must sacrifice someone on her behalf, learning life-altering lessons about self-identity and the value of their friendship. Through a unique portrayal of society through the eyes of the Moon, our only witness, Seeley threads deeper meaning into her words, placing us in the centre of a world affected by climate change, American Presidency and gender politics. Intertwined are the deep intricacies of female friendships, a raw portrayal of four girls who ‘loved each other so much it went cosmic’, to create a novella that is a punchy and powerful achievement for this young author.

Through an intense friendship between four characters, Seeley portrays the honest truth about being a girl, blending envy and pride when your friends blossom before you:  ‘I want to be you. I want to eat you. Sometimes I want to shove you off a cliff. I love you.’ The bond between them is painfully realistic, the lines between friendship, love and hate all blurred into one: ‘There was no you, there was no them, there was only GoldieMaycieHardingJen, one person, one entity, breathing.’ This is a brave confession on what it is to be a woman and maintain close friendships, admitting ‘that’s what being a girl and having best friends felt like, cannibalism […] all of you taking parts of each other without even realizing it, becoming each other as you became yourself.’  After the Moon presents them with the choice of who to sacrifice to take her place, they acknowledge that the romanticised girlhood they share is one that they’ll never get back, ‘because it never existed as something that was yours,’ exploring girlhood as ‘a shared experiment, a creature that you raised only to slaughter with your own two hands.’ The author cleverly uses the Moon as a metaphor for the sacrifices that must be made to enter adult womanhood all whilst they are ‘still young, still hungry, still flayed alive on the altar of being a girl.’ Their bond is seemingly unbreakable until the Moon arrives, causing the intensity of their friendship to erupt like a supernova, injecting the pain that comes with knowing someone more deeply than you know yourself.

The Moon expresses the heartache of watching the world spin by in perpetual anguish, absorbing all the leftover grief that humans throw her way: ‘To be human is to be lonely. The moon says […] That’s why you used to pray to me. Only the strong can swallow it and survive. All the grief, all the rage, over and over, every day.’ Seeley diminishes the romanticism of the planet by making her an innocent witness to our destruction. The Moon is fed-up of our antics, forced to see what we do wrong and holding no power to fix it, ‘kind of metaphorical if you think about it,’ Jen confronts; ‘Theia crashes into the Earth, is absorbed, wrenches part of herself free, is stuck staring down at the thing who ate her body.’ This notion of a body being ‘eaten’ is another graphic example of the striking comparisons to womanhood, that it devours you completely as you stand by, helpless. The Moon is a physical representation of an internal moral compass, pushing the girls to absolute extremes to test their faith in humanity.

Seeley also addresses the complexity of gender politics within the friendships that blur into romantic relationships, testing faith and sexuality, causing characters like Harding to wish to ‘flee’ her own body, ‘not wanting anymore to live inside it.’ The state of womanhood is challenged on several occasions, for instance when Jen states that the Moon is ‘kind of a bitch, but isn’t that just what men call women with opinions?’ These comments are fleeting, feminist, but totally agreeable; it does not feel like a pushy feminist rant, rather a blunt observation of society’s tropes. When Jen’s brother is considered as a justifiable replacement Moon, the girls suggest ‘if we put you into a dude and you walk around all divine feminine this, divine feminine that, it’ll be a bloodbath. That’s just the reality of it […] you’re gonna get hate crimed.’ To contrast this, the Moon simply suggests ‘there is divine feminine in all things […] Men, women, plants, water. I am a planet […] Gender doesn’t operate for me the way it does for you,’ making life away from Earth seem all the more appealing than the gender-imbalanced world we live in now.

Seeley cleverly confronts our sentimentality as humans, as well as our search for purpose. We pray to a Moon we don’t believe can do anything, we test our inner conflicts through faith and hate our best and closest friends. This is a somewhat spiritual book, a completely bonkers piece of fiction, but is so grounded in the tomfoolery of what it is to be human. It almost mocks our tendency for ‘inserting story where there is none. Inserting meaning there too,’ placing its characters in the heart of a world where they cannot be blamed for wanting to become something other than a human woman. We think ourselves noble, sacrificial, but through faith, sexual desires, running away to university or trying to become the Moon, it is all a means of escapism. To become the Moon instead of a woman, in what is ultimately a ‘s**t ass time to decide to become tied to the fate of humanity,’ is still less painful than loving your friends on Earth. Seeley has created a perfect, conceptual and modern piece of fiction that I would urge anyone to read, if what they want is to laugh in the face of humanity, and feel inspired to leave it in the small, safe hands of four powerful women.