DNF at page 27 or 10%.

The writing style was clunky and I found myself zoning out.

So good ( )

In Manningtree in 1640s, like in many other villages up and down the country, it's easy for people to see devil's works in ordinary everyday life, and women you don't get along with or don't like or don't approve of are in the riskiest position. Rebecca gets caught in a witch hunt after her mother is involved in a row with another woman's young son, like a group of other village women, and there's nothing any of them can do except to try to survive. ( )

How do you take a real live nutbag from English history - Matthew Hopkins, 'Witchfinder General' - and write a story about the equally non-fictional women he killed for being 'evil' while somehow sucking all the emotion and empathy out of the characters? A K Blakemore would suggest that you throw ye olde thesaurus at the project, using ten flowery words where one will suffice, alternate between pseudo-period dialogue - 'Sirrah!' is a good word, even if you're not sure when to use the term - and modern phrases ('shits and giggles'?), and then strip your main character and narrator of any agency. Three hundred pages and my will to live later, I survived the experiment.

I really do want to learn more about Matthew Hopkins and the 'Witch Craze' of the Civil War era - I've also downloaded Ronald Bassett's classic novel - but this version didn't help in any way. When I could actually keep awake, I just didn't care about Rebecca or any of the other characters - apart from maybe the poor cat (stop using animal abuse for dramatic shorthand!) What does Rebecca do, when she is accused of being a witch, along with her mother and all the other impoverished women of Manningtree? Nothing. A chance to sleep with the tutor she fancies? Great! Sell her mother down river and move in with Hopkins? Why not! She comes across as sly and smug rather than intelligent and independent and I wanted her to hang with the rest of them by the end of the novel.

Far too sluggish and erratic to hold my attention, but the subject has definitely piqued my interest - onto better books (hopefully)! ( )

Sadly, I could not get into this novel about witchfiinder Matthew Hopkins and his investigation of witches in Manningtree during the English Civil War. It was doubtless quite beautifully written, but most of that beauty was expended on place and visuals, rather than on trying to understand the characters. It felt emotionally detached and a little boring. Unfortunately I think I have recently responded this way to several novels by contemporary poets. It is probably a "me problem" not a "them problem," but I have found that several poets approach novel writing in ways that just don't gel with me as a reader. ( )