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

Reviews

helen_t_reads

She has served the town as midwife, and she has healed many of the townspeople with her herbal remedies. Her actions don’t always lead to the best outcomes and this seems to be one of the themes of this novel: the choices made, the attempts to do the right thing (even though it is so very hard to know what that might be), as the characters navigate their way through the maze-like moral ambiguity of the events which are unfolding. Meyer’s impressive debut is a powerful, emotional and immersive read, with real depth. Women who were found guilty of being witches were hanged and often their names and graves were not recorded, thus removing them from history, but, in The Witching Tide, Margarat Meyer attempts to redress this, highlighting how many innocent women were wrongly and shamefully persecuted, tortured and murdered.

cathryn melani

But the poppet's true powers are unknowable, the tide is turning, and time is running out . It informs the story and brings history to life, but never feels heavy handed, investing the novel with a great sense of power.

I couldnt put it down. The characterisation is well done, and in Martha, Meyer has created a ‘flawed’ main character as she struggles to know what to do for the best.

’ Martha is mute and does not speak.

It is the kind of novel that will live on in your head long after you have finished it. The novel is based on real events and is dedicated by the author to the women of East Anglia who were victims of the1645-47 witch-hunts, to remember them within the pages of her novel. Through the events of the novel we see how the witch hunts appear to be born out of misogyny, and the preservation of male dominance and power, and are fuelled within communities by superstition, ignorance, fear, and mass hysteria, as well as providing an opportunity to settle old scores and grievances, or petty jealousies.

This book made me terribly angry, sad and despair at the horror that befall women during the trials. However, Martha is also keeping a secret that threatens her own freedom, and as the witch hunt gathers momentum, in desperation, Martha revives a poppet, a wax witching doll, that she inherited from her mother, in the hope that it will bring protection. Martha Hallybread is a servant to the household of the wealthy Kit Crozier, for whom she was nurse as he grew up.