And it really reminds me of the early suburbs of Auckland where all the houses are together, and you can see into your neighbour’s yard and everybody checks over the fence and that kind of thing. It is important that we continue to promote these adverts as our local businesses need as much support as possible during these challenging times. Italicised text has been substituted for dialogue, so the reader is always aware of what Martha struggles to communicate. We’re a platform for in-depth discussions of contemporary literature, society and culture, featuring established and emerging reviewers from the South Pacific.

The Witching Tide by Margaret Meyer: Haunting, harrowing and

She went upstairs and along the narrow passageway that passed the main chamber, then up another flight of stairs to her room in the attic. Her body felt cold and partly vacant, as if her own solid self had been nudged aside to make room for something other—a force, a spirit. 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? Meyer’s atmospheric debut novel transports readers to a community gripped by fear, paranoia and accusation, vividly conveying a hysteria that threatens to engulf all reason. Pieces of fabric: thin pennants of silk and an oblong of green velvet, cut from some lady’s gown and still bearing the traces of rotted embroidery, which held some tiny yellow teeth and a coil of brown hair.The novel poses big questions: In extreme circumstances would you take a stand against a perceived injustice if it meant risking losing your own life? Everything from the slop bucket to the particular herbs used for different ailments are mentioned, repeatedly. It’s not necessary to have read Dickens’ famous novel to appreciate Kingsolver’s absorbing tale, but those who have will savor the tough-minded changes she rings on his Victorian sentimentality while affirming his stinging critique of a heartless society. Also, and this is going to sound nitpicky, but I started getting annoyed with some of the words the author chose to use. I may have just read too many novels this year that are based on similar topics, but "The Witching Tide" didn't stand out particularly for me.

The Witching Tide by Margaret Meyer | Hachette UK

In The Witching Tide, herbalists, midwives, spinsters and elderly, impoverished women are easy targets for the witch-finder.

I looked at pictures of them too and you’re right, they’ve often connected with witches: they’re mentioned in records and in other [historic fiction] books as well. 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.

The Witching Tide: A Novel: Meyer, Margaret: 9781668011362 The Witching Tide: A Novel: Meyer, Margaret: 9781668011362

I always find books based on the witch hunts of the 1600s so fascinating and heartbreaking and this book was no exception. Certainly, in the world today, we’re seeing polarities of views, and we can draw other similarities with the witch hunts, Margaret says. The kettles hissed over the fire and their noise mingled with the ripe waft of the slops bucket, setting off a queasy current that ran from the base of her throat to her guts. When a witch-finder comes to their village, Martha is forced to take on a role that will betray other women she cares about.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. Martha Hallybread, a midwife, healer, and servant, has lived peacefully for more than four decades in her beloved coastal village of Cleftwater.

The Witching Tide by Margaret Meyer | Goodreads The Witching Tide by Margaret Meyer | Goodreads

She was definitely intriguing and I wish I’d gotten to know more of her past rather than glimpses of it. I got a job here at the Museum of London, a social history museum, and eventually met a colleague who eventually became my husband. Though Margaret had heard of the ‘witchfinder general’ Matthew Hopkins, she hadn’t realised that women in East Anglia in the 17th century were recruited to seek out witches among themselves, in their own community. Initially because of the fact that the women victims weren’t named, but everybody else was: the jailer, the judge, the juryman, the woman who ran the pub opposite Moot Hall, the guy who made the nooses.

And again, that was quite a technical impediment in writing the book until the point where I realised it was emblematic, and I could use it as an instrument for exploring the way women have been silenced and talked over and deliberately misunderstood. These pages are flooded with slow, creeping sadness; an ever-hovering sense of inevitability telling us readers things will only get worse. There’s always been such a curiosity around how murder on such a mass scale, on the grounds of witchcraft, happened. Kate Stephenson, the newly-appointed senior publisher at Hachette Aotearoa NZ, will publish simultaneously in New Zealand. Pins, needles, three wood bobbins, an awl, two shallow dishes of beaten brass, and a copper cross that had once been set with chips of blue glass, all but one of them gone.