The Manningtree Witches by A.K.Blakemore - #BookReview

 

A hill wet with brume of morning, one hawberry bush squalid with browning flowers. I have woken and put on my work dress, which is near enough my only dress, and yet she remains asleep. Jade. Pot-companion. Mother. I stand at the end of the cot and consider her face. A beam of morning sun from the window slices over the left cheek. Dark hair spread about the pillow, matted and greasy and greying in places.

There is a smell to my mother, when she is sleeping. It is a complicated, I think mannish smell. I smelled a like smell when I was sent, as a little girl, to fetch my father away from the Red Lion and to supper. The inn would be clattery with men's voices and small-beer sour, and my father would be very jolly indeed, sweeping me up and kissing me on the forehead, his coat crisp from the rain in the big fields.

***

Fear and destruction take root in a community of women when the Witchfinder General comes to town, in this dark and thrilling debut.

England, 1643. Parliament is battling the King; the war between the Roundheads and the Cavaliers rages. Puritanical fervour has gripped the nation, and the hot terror of damnation burns black in every shadow.

In Manningtree, depleted of men since the wars began, the women are left to their own devices. At the margins of this diminished community are those who are barely tolerated by the affluent villagers – the old, the poor, the unmarried, the sharp-tongued. Rebecca West, daughter of the formidable Beldam West, fatherless and husbandless, chafes against the drudgery of her days, livened only by her infatuation with the clerk John Edes. But then newcomer Matthew Hopkins takes over the Thorn Inn and begins to ask questions about the women of the margins. When a child falls ill with a fever and starts to rave about covens and pacts, the questions take on a bladed edge.

The Manningtree Witches plunges its readers into the fever and menace of the English witch trials, where suspicion, mistrust and betrayal ran amok as the power of men went unchecked and the integrity of women went undefended. It is a visceral, thrilling book that announces a bold new talent.

***

I was given this book by my son as a birthday gift. He said when he saw it in the bookshop he thought, 'this looks like the sort of thing mum would read and enjoy.' He was spot on because I enjoyed reading it very much.

The writing in this book is beautiful. It flows lyrically along and is a joy to read. The language is appropriate for the period in which the book is set and the author has chosen and placed every word with precision.

Whilst it is not an action packed page turner, the writing alone is sufficient to carry the reader along through the steady pace of this story. However, a lot happens in this book and it is a powerful example of the way men abused and exerted their power over women. 

It is no surprise that it won the Desmond Elliott Prize in 2021 as it exudes passion and depth. The author has taken a dark and disturbing period of history and created a novel which portrays a time which is  disturbing and mesmerising in equal measure.

As a debut novel it is an amazing accomplishment and, in my opinion, confirms Ms. Blakemore as  one to watch.

ISBN: 978 1783786442

Publisher: Granta Books

Formats: e-book, audio, hardback and paperback

No. of Pages: 304 (paperback)

About the Author:

A. K. Blakemore is the author of two full-length collections of poetry: Humbert Summer (Eyewear, 2015) and Fondue (Offord Road Books, 2018), which was awarded the 2019 Ledbury Forte Prize for Best Second Collection. She has also translated the work of Sichuanese poet Yu Yoyo (My Tenantless Body, Poetry Translation Centre, 2019). Her poetry and prose writing has been widely published and anthologised, appearing in the The London Review of Books, Poetry, Poetry Review and The White Review, among others.

(author photo courtesy of Amazon and bio info courtesy of the publisher)