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The Witching Tide: The powerful and gripping debut novel for readers of Margaret Atwood and Hilary Mantel

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Certainly, in the world today, we’re seeing polarities of views, and we can draw other similarities with the witch hunts, Margaret says. 'The interest in witch trials and the paradigm of the witch has been gathering momentum over the past few years,' she says. Indeed, her book has been placed in the genre of ‘witch lit’. But this category is much more than sinister figures dancing around a cauldron, she says. 'There’s a desire to understand what went on in those witch trials, why women were singled out in the way they were. With characters refreshingly of their time, rather than straw men parroting the mores of ours, this novel is an immersive tale of the East Anglian witch trials as seen through the eyes of an absorbing protagonist. It showcases the horrors inflicted by social hysteria, and offers a three-dimensional view of individual participants whose roles and motivations are differently shaped by religious faith, interpersonal connections, and intellectual acuity. This is an accomplished debut work by an author to watch.” — Booklist It’s easy to empathize with Martha, especially since we get a front seat view to her innermost thoughts. She finds joy in caring for Kit, her employer, who she has raised since she was a baby, and kind of views as her own family. Working as a midwife and healer, she interacts with basically everyone in the village. There’s a sense of foreshadowing throughout the story, probably because I already know how witch trials went. But Martha and her friend deliver a baby with a cleft palate, which was a fatal deformity at that time, and she humanely kills the baby to stop it from suffering. But shortly after this, the witch finder arrives looking for trouble, and won’t stop looking until he finds it. I really have never read anything like this before and I had such mixed emotions reading it. First, the good. The author does a beautiful job describing the scenes, emotions and abject terror these women feel being rounded up. Her prose is beautiful and I genuinely felt sad in some parts, so that shows I connected with the characters. Well done there.

The Witching Tide: The powerful and gripping debut novel for

We are repugnant to Nature, contumely to God; We are monstrous, legion; We are too many, We are never enough." Martha was a fascinating protagonist - mute and both empowered and entrapped by her silence - she was a character equal parts odd and comforting. Martha Hallybread is a healer, specializing in midwifery. She is also mute and values her role as servant for the man she raised and his new wife. She is often called upon to assist in births but the folks in her village are a superstitious lot and it doesn’t take much to turn their minds. When a witch-finder comes to their village, Martha is forced to take on a role that will betray other women she cares about. Loyalty, friendship, love – it’s all here and how it plays out is a harrowing, heart-wrenching story. Have you ever read a book and been blown away by how incredibly it was written, and then realized afterwards that it is a debut and been even more impressed? That is exactly what happened to me with this book. Autumn is the perfect time to start reading darker themed books, and especially those pertaining to witches, so this was the right time for this one. It’s impossible to picture the world without the figure of the witch. She enters our imaginations early, through children’s books, TV and film. Slippery to define but commanding in her presence, the witch has long been a fascination for storytellers. And perhaps more so now than ever. In the past few years there’s been a flourishing of witch-related conversation. Across publishing there are history books covering the witch trials across Britain, Europe and America; there is a constant slough of fiction for children and above; there’s a new BBC podcast called WITCH which explores the history of the devastatingly violent witch trials before asking what it means to be a witch today.From the table the doll looked out. Already it was cooling, firming its purpose. She relit the trivet candle and held the doll’s nether end over the heat until the wax softened again. Then inserted her cuttings knife, slicing longways up until the blade came to a nub of wax. Let that be its groin. She teased the segments apart. Let these be its legs.

The Witching Tide by Margaret Meyer | Waterstones The Witching Tide by Margaret Meyer | Waterstones

I thought that the writing in this story was stunning. It also felt descriptively true to the time period of 1600s, the setting was cultivated with care and attention on the authors part. This isn't really a book to dip in and out of - it's one that you need a good half hour at least to totally lose yourself in. And then, you'll rush your way to the end to see what happens (all the while praying for a happy ending you have about 2% faith will happen). Her small fishing community is rife with rumours and speculation, no woman exempt from suspicion. Misogyny, mistrust and malice smoulder. Tale-tellers and grudge-keepers queue for an audience with the witch-hunter to dob in neighbours, dividing the community. Meyer is a superb writer. The world she conjures here is elegant and haunting, utterly beguiling and convincing of time and place. I was gripped by Martha’s plight, captivated by the gleaming details of the prose and horrified at the wider picture they revealed. As with all great historical fiction, The Witching Tide gives voice to the unspoken and brings light to dark places, drawing to the surface those stories that need to be told and need us to listen.”— Emma Stonex, author of The Lamplighters From the PublisherA hammer of thoughts in her head; the doll in her fingers, which now she dropped, as if it had stung her. What was it really, this deformity she had woken? What had she woken in herself? She squashed her hands together, as in prayer. Forgive me, forgive my trespass, O Lord. Wax flaked from her fingers. The doll was for using, that was its truth, the essence of its nature. As much as she feared it, she needed it. One autumn morning, Martha becomes a silent witness to a witch hunt, led by sinister new arrival Silas Makepeace. As a trusted member of the community, she is enlisted to search the bodies of the accused women for evidence. But whilst she wants to help her friends, she also harbours a dark secret that must never be revealed. The Witching Tide is one of now many books depicting witch hunts and trials, and yet I always find something that individualizes the story and makes it different to the rest. As usual with this type of historical novel, fact and fiction are blended, and for every witch hunt novel I read, I discover new methods of torture and new prejudices against women. Thank you to the author Margaret Meyer, publishers Scribner, and as always NetGalley, for an advance audio copy of THE WITCHING TIDE. The last few chapters were from after Martha and Jennet survived being hanged, but we never know why they were saved—the roads were supposed to be flooded with the judge out of town, so him showing up last minute is odd already, but what evidence did he have to convince him neither were witches? We never find out.

The witch won’t die’: Margaret Meyer on writing The Witching ‘The witch won’t die’: Margaret Meyer on writing The Witching

CM: I am thoroughly unsurprised at the interest in The Witching Tide. There’s always been such a curiosity around how murder on such a mass scale, on the grounds of witchcraft, happened. But I wondered if in the writing of the book and your experiences since, if you’ve come to an understanding of why we’re so curious about witches?In desperation, Martha revives a poppet, a wax witching doll that she inherited from her mother, in the hope that it will bring protection. But the poppet's true powers are unknowable, the tide is turning, and time is running out . . . This book is a great example of what I love so much about historical fiction: the ability to connect the reader emotionally to events long past that otherwise remain so removed from us. The women urge her on. As they go, they one after another speak; she hears them in her pith, she hears them with her soul, their voices chiming like tones in a sound box. We are bitch. We are chit. We are slut. We are wench, harlot, bawd, madam, jezebel, whore, daemon, sorceress, doxy, cunt, slattern, jade, hag . . . We are monstrous, legion; we are too many, we are never enough. Overall, I was not fond of the writing style. There are several choppy sentences, as well as a lot of repetitiveness. While I do find these things to be effective in poetry, I rarely find they hold the same weight in fictional prose. I do feel the writing quality had some commendable points, but it failed to reach the heights of its literary ambition. Utterly haunting and entirely riveting; The Witching Tide is an unflinching account of the horrors of witch trials, told in a mesmerizing voice from an extraordinarily talented author. It sent shivers down my spine and brought me to tears.” —Jennifer Saint, author of Ariadne

The Witching Tide: A Novel by Margaret Meyer, Hardcover The Witching Tide: A Novel by Margaret Meyer, Hardcover

Silas Makepiece, inspired by real-life fanatical seventeenth century witch-finder Matthew Hopkins, has arrived in the fictional East Anglian coastal village of Cleftwater to pursue his God-given mission of executing by hanging any woman who shows the slightest evidence of having made a pact with the devil – witches, or the devil’s brides.Initially, Martha is pressed into service as an inspector, forced to search the accused women for identifying “witch’s marks.” However, when the friend who helped her deliver the baby that died is charged with witchcraft and Martha isn’t, she struggles with an inner turmoil over her own role in the incident and why she wasn’t implicated. Despite her desire to confess her own guilt, she is unable to express herself adequately and is forced to help condemn people she knows are innocent.

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