Everyone Knows Your Mother is a Witch
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
‘Riveting’ Margaret Atwood
‘I loved this book intensely’ Lauren Groff Guardian
The plague is spreading. The hundred year war is beginning. Katharina Kepler is believed to be a witch.
Known for her herbal remedies and successful children – among them Johannes, Imperial Mathematician and author of the laws of planetary motion – Katharina’s life is changed by an accusation of witchcraft. Facing financial ruin, torture and even execution, she tells her side of the story.
Witty, engaging and vividly imagined, Everyone Knows Your Mother Is a Witch draws on historical documents to illuminate a society undone by collective aggression and hysterical fear – a narrative with true resonance for today.
‘Darkly funny … Her prose, which recalls Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall, is light, pared back and subtly archaic’ Financial Times
‘Superbly voiced … funny’ Telegraph
‘A magical brew of absurdity and brutality’ Washington Post
‘Galchen expertly weaves together a story told from multiple perspectives, showing how easy it is for a mob mentality to take hold in a climate of fear and ignorance when a woman simply exists outside of the norm’ New York Times
Reviews
Praise for Everyone Knows Your Mother is a Witch:
‘Funny in parts, absurd in others … This riveting novel takes us into the labyrinthine hearts of accused and accusers alike’ Margaret Atwood
‘Superbly voiced … funny … the absurdity, rompiness and obsession with food (usually sausages) are spot on for the era, but so too is an inescapable sense of loss’ Telegraph
‘A wise meditation on the kind of hysterical scapegoating we see so often in the age of the internet … I loved this book intensely when I read it this summer and have thought of it nearly every day through this strange autumn’ Lauren Groff, Guardian
‘Her prose, which recalls Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall, is light, pared back and subtly archaic. Moments where she nods at the contemporary obsession with witchcraft are funny rather than sincere … It’s this dry humour that makes the novel sparkle’ Financial Times
‘It is remarkable that Rivka Galchen’s “Everyone Knows Your Mother Is a Witch” manages to pull off … a witch story that is as serious as Miller’s play and as playful as Updike’s novel but does not fall prey to the pitfalls of either … a persuasive and very beautiful work of fiction … this writer can animate even the most familiar material, and make it beautifully, and memorably, new’ Wyatt Mason, Wall Street Journal
‘Delightfully funny … Galchen has written another smart book that investigates the power of narrative, both good and bad, foregrounding a woman who’d only been a footnote to a famous man’s story, all while being funny and deceptively easy to read. It’s quite a magic trick’ Los Angeles Times
‘The comedy that runs through [Everyone Knows Your Mother Is a Witch] is a magical brew of absurdity and brutality. Galchen has a Kafkaesque sense of the way the exercise of authority inflates egos and twists logic . . . There’s real sorcery here’ Washington Post
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Galchen's captivating latest (after the children's adventure Rat Rule 79) follows an illiterate widow as she confronts accusations of being a witch in 1618 Germany. As soldiers and plague spread across the Holy Roman Empire at the start of the Thirty Years' War, 74-year-old Katharina Kepler's own troubles play out on a grand scale after her neighbor (whom Katharina calls "the Werewolf") accuses Katharina of poisoning her and manages to convince others that they, too, have been afflicted or targeted by Katharina's witchcraft. Katharina must fight to clear her name with the help of her three children—her youngest son, a bullheaded pewter guildsman; her daughter, a kindly pastor's wife; and her eldest son, an expert in horoscopes who works as the Imperial Mathematician—and her kindly, quiet neighbor Simon, who documents Katharina's case for posterity and risks his own reputation by serving as Katharina's guardian in court. Mesmerizing details abound, such as the torture inflicted on those accused of witchcraft, and the herbal remedies Katharina relies upon. Galchen portrays her characters as complicated and full of wit as they face down the cruelties dealt to them (a man called "the Cabbage," demanding Katharina release a curse on his sister, threatens her with a "vain sword... something a nobleman might commission and then reject at the last moment, leaving the sword maker in a bind"). This is a resounding delight.
Customer Reviews
Bewitching
The author is a Canadian-born American physician and writer, who completed an MFA while at Medial School and is now adjunct professor in writing at Columbia University's School of Art. This is only her second novel. Her first, Atmospheric Disturbances (2008) won the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing in 2010 (The prize is awarded biennially). The winner of the 2008 Saroyan was The History of Love (2005) by Nicole Krauss. I mention this because The History of Love is the best novel I have read in the last 30 years.
In brief
It’s 1618 in the German duchy of Wurttemberg. The Holy Roman Empire is plagued with fear and suspicion. Why? Well, plague for starters. Then there’s Thirty Years War. Other stuff too. (To be fair, fear and suspicion were pretty much par for the course in the Holy Roman Empire, and most other places in Europe at the time.) Katharina is an ageing illiterate widow known locally for her herbal remedies and for how much she bangs on about her kids. In her defence, her eldest Johannes Kepler, is kind of big name in astronomy and mathematics. After a deranged local claims our gal gave her a bitter drink that turned her into a newt (no, sorry, that was Monty Python and The Holy Grail), sundry other locals start coming forward, or getting dragged forward, to tell their stories about her until, you guessed it, the powers that be conclude she must be a witch. Katharina tries to pooh-pooh it, but they took their witches seriously in 17th century Germany. Johannes has to set aside his important mathematical work to defend his Mom.
Writing
First person narrative by Katharina interposed with increasingly outlandish “official” witness statements that while slyly comedic now, would have been anything but back in the day.
Bottom line
Artful description of the evolution of suspicion and innuendo into hysterical fear and aggression involving family, community, and whole states, which have occurred with disturbing regularity throughout history, including our supposedly enlightened times. (#FakeNews)