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A review by hannahstohelit
The Witches: Salem, 1692 by Stacy Schiff
3.5
I wanted to like this much better than I did, but with the book's structure I just spent so much time confused. There were so many people with similar names and very little attempt to structure the book to follow particular people's stories over time to help keep them straight. I assume that Schiff's idea was to do everything in purely chronological order based on the availability of source material, but all that I got from that was a meandering and baffling narrative where people kept popping in and out, details kept seeming repetitive, it wasn't clear why one person got more attention than another....
In general, because of this lack of clear organization, I didn't end up feeling like I had a real understanding of the event or the conclusions historians have now come to about it. There were some randomly scattered contextual chapters but they weren't well integrated into the narrative and very few of the events felt like they were ever really thematically analyzed in such a way as to enlighten the reader rather than just infodump. I'll also add that the prose and language use in the text alternate between Schiff clearly using the language/assumptions of people in the era, a more skeptical take, and Schiff's own sarcasm, and while context clues allow us to tell which is which it's still a jarring approach.
In all, I learned interesting information but didn't get too much real understanding of the period in history at the end- just lots of different names and places and events and allegations that are now all jumbled in my head.
In general, because of this lack of clear organization, I didn't end up feeling like I had a real understanding of the event or the conclusions historians have now come to about it. There were some randomly scattered contextual chapters but they weren't well integrated into the narrative and very few of the events felt like they were ever really thematically analyzed in such a way as to enlighten the reader rather than just infodump. I'll also add that the prose and language use in the text alternate between Schiff clearly using the language/assumptions of people in the era, a more skeptical take, and Schiff's own sarcasm, and while context clues allow us to tell which is which it's still a jarring approach.
In all, I learned interesting information but didn't get too much real understanding of the period in history at the end- just lots of different names and places and events and allegations that are now all jumbled in my head.