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The Manningtree Witches by A.K. Blakemore
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
⭐ My Rating: ★★★★★
🌱 A Little About the Book
A fanatical witch hunter wreaks havoc on the women of a small English village devoid of men during the 17th century English Civil War.
"Now, I am circumspect enough to have wondered, before, if my attachment to Master Edes—my overwhelming faith in his personal beauty—is genuine, or the result of a severely curtailed set of expectations: my idle fancy stretching her aery hand for the lowest hanging fruit, and buffing it up to shine."
📖 My Thoughts
The story centers around young, naive Rebecca West and her dealings with the notorious Witchfinder General, Matthew Hopkins, during his reign of terror on the provincial East Anglian villages of civil war-torn 17th century England. The year is 1643 and Matthew has come to ferret out the devil of the good people of Manningtree. And there is no better place to start, as history has repeatedly shown, than with the town's female outliers. The events of this book are a vivid fictional interpretation of the very real events Hopkins' inflicted on the innocent women of this village, and later hundreds more. A.K. Blakemore's debut brilliantly articulates the infuriating misogynistic male exploitation of female vulnerability in Puritanical (and modern) society, delivering with subtle but pointed accuracy all the hallmarks of paranoia and sociopolitical unrest that spurn female oppression and witch hunting. Blakemore's methodical pacing creates a chilling foreboding of the already-foreseen outcome the reader knows to expect from the historical witch genre but is nevertheless still unnerving, maddening, and tragic. Weaving prose with poetry in sometimes dreamy strings of consciousness, Blakemore writes in a style that is beautiful, captivating, and lyrical. Switching from first to third person points-of-view can be tricky, but she nails it.
✨ What I Loved
I loved the Beldam West, and I wanted way more of her story! I also really enjoyed the time and attention Blakemore spent on the women's imprisonment in the dungeon. The inhumanity of it all was not shied away from, and I haven't gotten such a vivid portrayal of captivity and suffering in a witch novel ever, fiction or nonfiction.
🌙 What Didn’t Work for Me
There isn't that much character dialogue. But the historically accurate complex language the author uses more than makes up for that. I'm always expecting a witch book to have heavy magic in it. This one has touches of it, and even though I was left wanting more, I think a more magical theme would have made it an entirely different novel and negate the whole purpose of the book.
🌸 Final Thoughts
Highly recommend! This is a great read. It is not a fast read; the language will make you slow down and savor it. But it will linger with you after the last page. If you enjoy reading anything witchy, especially on witch persecution history, you will definitely get something out of this one.
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