BOOK NOOK; The Witching Tide by Margaret Meyer

 "This women's life of ours. Why must we suffer so? Cursed for being women. Prized for our cunts and maybe our looks, but not much else. They use us, Martha. They trade us, they shag us, they trap us. No sooner raise us up than they beat us down."

The summer rain hasn't let up all day. It's been far too dull and grey to go anywhere, but it has been the perfect weather to relax indoors with a witchy novel. This one was sent to me a couple of months ago by Orion and I have been engrossed in it all day.

The Witching Tide is a novel about the witch hunts. It follows a protagonist called Martha, a midwife who is nonverbal and who has no power of speech, though she can hear perfectly well and has learned to communicate with her own brand of sign language.   The novel begins when a fellow housemaid of Martha's is carted away on a charge of witchcraft. From then on it reads like a countdown to the inevitable, as one woman after another is taken up on similarly fabricated charges. 

I find it interesting that Martha is nonverbal, because her very silence serves to give a voice to the historical women who were also tried, and hanged or burnt, as witches. Martha has no words to defend her friends, or herself. This is a clever way of ensuring that the reader can empathize with the women of the past who were shouted down and disbelieved when they attempted to reason with their accusers.  Those historical women, condemned as witches, were also silenced, just as Martha is silent. 

This is a very visceral novel. The author doesn't shy away from describing the conditions in which the prisoners were kept and the things they were forced to do to try and survive. No female is safe from the witch hunters, not even innocent children. There is plenty of room on the scaffold for any woman who dares to stand up for herself or her neighbours. 

Whilst this does make for rather harrowing reading at times, it also illustrates the dilemma that such women found themselves in when the witch-finder came to town. Often, the safest place for a woman was right by his side, becoming an aid in his investigations and helping to examine the accused witches. Such women were known as witch-prickers, needling their neighbours in order to try and keep themselves above suspicion.  As Martha's friend says;

"We got no witches in Cleftwater. Leastways, we had none, until the witch man came. He's poisoned us all."

This needling of other women is something that still goes on today. Some women do band together and turn on one another, motivated by jealousy and spite. We might not refer to it as witch-finding or witch-pricking anymore, but such ordeals do still take place within modern society. Finding yourself on the receiving end of this kind of female spite can be very unpleasant. When one woman gathers her friends and family together, so that they can put another woman through an ordeal of this kind, the needling leaves its mark. 

That said, a clever woman will be able to defeat her enemies quite swiftly, by turning the tables on them and living well herself.  A modern witch will always survive and thrive, proving to her enemies that they cannot keep her down, no matter how hard they might try, or how envious they might be.  She will always rise above them, for all to see. Also, life has a way of ensuring that we hear of the fall of our enemies - which after being subjected to such an ordeal, is always welcome news! Survive and thrive - that's just what we witches do. They may have hanged us in the past, but these days we tend to be the last ones standing!

Martha is certainly a character with a strong survival instinct. She plays the hand that she has been dealt to the best of her ability, carefully walking a very thin line between safety and sorcery.  All it takes is one wrong move and the noose awaits. 

Overall I enjoyed The Witching Tide very much. It swings along at a good pace, though I did find the momentum waned towards the end of the book. I wouldn't say that the final pages were an anti-climax as such, but it wasn't the conclusion that I was expecting. It is, however, an interesting novel, steeped in the chilling atmosphere of the witch hunts, so if you like that kind of thing, you will probably enjoy it. I found it to be a great way to spend a rainy, summers day. Happy Reading! 

BB Marie x

AD; This book was sent to me by the publisher for the purposes of review. It was released on the 6th July and is out now in all formats.