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translator_monkey 's review for:
Hour of the Witch
by Chris Bohjalian
What could be more fun than reading 360 pages of utter cruelty to a woman, barely more than property in the 1660s version of America? Pepper it with more than its share of absolute despair, and you've got a hit on your hands.
That's a tough and unfair description, frankly, but what I thought I was in for when I first started reading. I was mostly wrong.
Mary Deerfield, in her early 20s, is married to Thomas, twice her age, and a well-to-do mill owner, devout, admired, and well-respected throughout the community. Mary herself comes from good stock, coming from England as a young child with her parents, who have established an excellent trading company, doing admirable business with Europe and the Orient. Everything seems like a picture of perfection, but we learn early on that Thomas likes his drink, and when he's had perhaps a drip or two too much, he tends to turn into a hell of a brute with his wife. He's never so drunk as to not strategically land his blows so they are not easily seen by the general churchgoing public on Sundays, but perhaps goes a bit too far when Mary is falsely accused of practicing witchcraft, producing a terrible wound that all can see. Like the rarely spotted bruise, there are always stories to answer for this wound - careless Mary, falling on a tea kettle.
Mary's eventually had enough - the accusation of witchcraft goes no further than gossip at first - and so she enlists the assistance of a scrivener to request a divorce from her husband on the charges of cruelty. While she fancies her chances, few others do, because they see that Mary underestimates two things: her husband's public image, and the notion that people will accept a smart woman who is ready to take charge of her life once again. Not in 1662 Boston, they won't.
Once Mary decides that she has no choice but to impose justice on her loutish husband, we find her on the inevitable slippery slope towards the magistrate's court, facing criminal charges of witchcraft, with fewer and fewer of her peers believing her stories. Will the residents of Boston see her swing from a rope? Will her scumbag husband get off scot-free?
This is the right time for a book such as this - women's rights are human rights, empowering women, equality in all things for males and females, etc. My "etc." isn't meant as a denigration of the causes - I'm a firm believer - but it is meant to suggest that Bohjalian tried to crowbar as many of these principles into his book as he could. And he does a good job with it, but we might be left with a little too perfect an ending.
Three and a half pentagrams out of five.
That's a tough and unfair description, frankly, but what I thought I was in for when I first started reading. I was mostly wrong.
Mary Deerfield, in her early 20s, is married to Thomas, twice her age, and a well-to-do mill owner, devout, admired, and well-respected throughout the community. Mary herself comes from good stock, coming from England as a young child with her parents, who have established an excellent trading company, doing admirable business with Europe and the Orient. Everything seems like a picture of perfection, but we learn early on that Thomas likes his drink, and when he's had perhaps a drip or two too much, he tends to turn into a hell of a brute with his wife. He's never so drunk as to not strategically land his blows so they are not easily seen by the general churchgoing public on Sundays, but perhaps goes a bit too far when Mary is falsely accused of practicing witchcraft, producing a terrible wound that all can see. Like the rarely spotted bruise, there are always stories to answer for this wound - careless Mary, falling on a tea kettle.
Mary's eventually had enough - the accusation of witchcraft goes no further than gossip at first - and so she enlists the assistance of a scrivener to request a divorce from her husband on the charges of cruelty. While she fancies her chances, few others do, because they see that Mary underestimates two things: her husband's public image, and the notion that people will accept a smart woman who is ready to take charge of her life once again. Not in 1662 Boston, they won't.
Once Mary decides that she has no choice but to impose justice on her loutish husband, we find her on the inevitable slippery slope towards the magistrate's court, facing criminal charges of witchcraft, with fewer and fewer of her peers believing her stories. Will the residents of Boston see her swing from a rope? Will her scumbag husband get off scot-free?
This is the right time for a book such as this - women's rights are human rights, empowering women, equality in all things for males and females, etc. My "etc." isn't meant as a denigration of the causes - I'm a firm believer - but it is meant to suggest that Bohjalian tried to crowbar as many of these principles into his book as he could. And he does a good job with it, but we might be left with a little too perfect an ending.
Three and a half pentagrams out of five.