I thought I’d jump in to the controversy about this book. I read it, not because I like books about witches, but because it got so badly trashed on Nine-to Noon (as reported here) in “the meanest book review of all times,” by Sonja de Friez. Wow. Elsewhere, Sue Reidy says: “The Witching Tide combines meticulous research with a dramatic and memorable story. A dazzling debut.”
So, who is right?
I’m not sure what all the fuss is about. There are some nice bits of writing at the start. This combination of sound and smell I liked: The kettles hissed over the fire and their noise mingled with the ripe waft of the slops bucket, setting off a queasy current that ran from the base of her throat to her guts. But it’s the topic alone that gives the book its edge, rather than the phrasing or the storytelling.
Witch hunting can be an easy topic for a writer (like serial killing and war stories) because you don’t need to work too hard to get the emotional charge. It’s there in the title. ‘This is going to be horrible’ is the subtext behind any title that smells of those crazy historical inquisitions, incited through religious power to control the vulnerable – usually women and children. Any telling of these times will have a certain fascination: did they (we) really used to burn women who had poppets? Were men really so diabolically cruel? Were people so stupidly gullible, back in the day? Yep, yep, yep.
So, in my view, any reporting on a horrible topic has to have a really good accompanying story that takes you into the minds of the characters and shows you, not only how horrible this was, but how it could have happened. Show us how we might think about this history now and what we’ve learned over the years that our ancestors didn’t know then. We need to feel the power of God breathing down our necks to understand why a young farmer might find a poppet so frightening. Otherwise, we’re just prurient rubber-neckers. To be honest, I found Meyer’s story unrewarding. There are the usual details of damning punishments for innocent women, but the background to these felt sketchy, an insubstantial scaffold for the main event. There was a poppet who kept popping up (haha) but it was physically poorly drawn – a wax that could be melted on a flame and was soft and pliable but a generation old and kept stuffed in a pocket, yet still kept her shape. And I couldn’t work out what the thing represented: she was the power of woman, yet when woken ‘to do good’, was poked and skewered by her owner like a voodoo doll.
Our narrator, Martha, is mute through a physical ailment. She signs, and almost everyone, miraculously, picks up the detail with nary a misunderstanding. She flaps her hands at a jailer who is taking a baby away in a crowded cell and he understands her immediately. Wait, I beg you. Please. Please. Let her mother bid her farewell. Martha rocked her arms to show an empty cradle. ‘Go on then,’ the constable said. And she is understood by a woman under stress when she signs: Tell them it was Jennet Savory. Say Jennet cursed you. Her muteness no doubt symbolises the powerlessness of women, but an author can’t make a character mute and then give her a voice when the story requires it. That breaks some writer/reader agreement.
The Witching Tide throws us straight in to the inquisition and leaves us soon after. It’s a deeply unpleasant history and no doubt the main incidents here are based on well researched fact. Another storyteller might have found a way to bring us up for air occasionally, or show some redemption for the characters, let them grow and be fundamentally changed by what has passed. Alas, this is just depressing.
The fast drop at the end of a noose, or a slower and more miserable one: Agnes’s life draining redly away, the babe falling silent and then terminally asleep. As they all would, one after another, in a series of erasures, their deaths inconsequential as their lives had been.
But the book certainly doesn’t deserve a slamming. People love these stories of man’s inhumanity to man (women/children/the other), and of course they sell well. I prefer more subtlety in my reading, but I bought the book, read it, and was entertained by the brutality for a few hours. I’d recommend it to people who want a fast emotional hit. If your book club is a coven of witches (and there’s no shame in that), I recommend The Witching Tide. Hide your poppets.
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