A. K. BlakemoreBesprekingen

DNF at page 27 or 10%.

The writing style was clunky and I found myself zoning out.

[3.75] Historical fiction is most satisfying for me when an author constructs a vivid reimagining around a truly unique person. One can’t get more unique – or more fascinatingly grotesque – than the Glutton of Lyon.
I never recall hearing of the Great Tarare, a French peasant who lived at the end of the 18th century and became a sideshow performer, stunning audiences with his insatiable appetite for virtually anything in sight. Suffice it say that this distasteful tale won’t inspire many readers to hit their hometown smorgasbord joint in between chapters. Blakemore’s status as an acclaimed poet is evident as she guides readers through a cacophony of colliding emotions in the very same vignettes. Disgust. Sympathy. Sadness. Even occasional moments of levity. Yet there were huge chunks of Blakemore’s second historical novel that seemed to drag, becoming bogged down by the author’s word wizardry (As Gloria Estefan once crooned, “Words Get it In Way.”) Still, “The Glutton” is a unique book that creativity explores how an individual who is denied love can develop unsavory appetites.

This was beautifully written, but featured some horrendous scenes. It's not for weak stomachs. I should have looked more closely at the book's description as I am in fact one of those weak-stomached types.

I was also pleased to pick up more than a dozen new words! I love to learn new things, so that was a treat.

So good

A haunting book that wallows in the contrast of the beautiful and the disgusting. But I think it's the sense of loneliness and sadness that will stay with me. Blakemore depicts a world of ingrained pain and cruelty; the expectation of those things has become their own response. In place of sympathy or love, there is only disdain and frustration. There is no mechanism for comfort in Tarare's world; hunger is the synecdoche for his pain, and it is a pain that his world will not salve.

In Manningtree in 1640s, like in many other villages up and down the country, it's easy for people to see devil's works in ordinary everyday life, and women you don't get along with or don't like or don't approve of are in the riskiest position. Rebecca gets caught in a witch hunt after her mother is involved in a row with another woman's young son, like a group of other village women, and there's nothing any of them can do except to try to survive.

How do you take a real live nutbag from English history - Matthew Hopkins, 'Witchfinder General' - and write a story about the equally non-fictional women he killed for being 'evil' while somehow sucking all the emotion and empathy out of the characters? A K Blakemore would suggest that you throw ye olde thesaurus at the project, using ten flowery words where one will suffice, alternate between pseudo-period dialogue - 'Sirrah!' is a good word, even if you're not sure when to use the term - and modern phrases ('shits and giggles'?), and then strip your main character and narrator of any agency. Three hundred pages and my will to live later, I survived the experiment.

I really do want to learn more about Matthew Hopkins and the 'Witch Craze' of the Civil War era - I've also downloaded Ronald Bassett's classic novel - but this version didn't help in any way. When I could actually keep awake, I just didn't care about Rebecca or any of the other characters - apart from maybe the poor cat (stop using animal abuse for dramatic shorthand!) What does Rebecca do, when she is accused of being a witch, along with her mother and all the other impoverished women of Manningtree? Nothing. A chance to sleep with the tutor she fancies? Great! Sell her mother down river and move in with Hopkins? Why not! She comes across as sly and smug rather than intelligent and independent and I wanted her to hang with the rest of them by the end of the novel.

Far too sluggish and erratic to hold my attention, but the subject has definitely piqued my interest - onto better books (hopefully)!

Sadly, I could not get into this novel about witchfiinder Matthew Hopkins and his investigation of witches in Manningtree during the English Civil War. It was doubtless quite beautifully written, but most of that beauty was expended on place and visuals, rather than on trying to understand the characters. It felt emotionally detached and a little boring. Unfortunately I think I have recently responded this way to several novels by contemporary poets. It is probably a "me problem" not a "them problem," but I have found that several poets approach novel writing in ways that just don't gel with me as a reader.½

I’ve been trying to write this review for a couple of days now and having a hard time with it. I’m not really sure how I feel about the book. While I did eventually enjoy reading it, it took awhile to get into. It has a slow beginning while the author introduces and begins to develop the characters and scene. This slow pace works for the novel in the long run as the characters she presents are complex and multidimensional. The author doesn’t just tell us about them she shows us who they are and what their relationships are like and why.
It is the time of the English Civil war, between the parliamentary forces and the royalists. The men are off fighting. Hunger reigns in the villages as the crops rot in the fields and no new planting is being done. Women are left alone to fend for themselves. As the deprivations increase many turn to their Puritan religion to explain common hardships eg: deaths of animals, butter that will not churn and the loss of children from common childhood diseases and malnourishment. These are now seen through superstitious eyes as evil occurrences with the devil’s influence at their root. Enter Mathew Hopkins’ a real historical figure who self styles himself The Witch hunter. In real life Hopkins is believed to be responsible for the deaths of over 100 women in a short 2 to 3 year period. Most of these women were alone with no husbands or male relatives to protect them. They were often poor but independent and outspoken. Two qualities not held in high regard in females by the Puritans of 17th century England.
The novel centers around Rebecca West, a 16 year old girl, her mother Anne West, known to all as the Bel Dame and an assortment of their friends. They are poor and the BelDame is known to be slovenly, cantankerous and goes unescorted to the local pub. When Hopkins settles into Manningtree he sets his sights on them, turning the townsfolk against them. When a young boy sickens then dies they along with their friends, which includes Mother Clarke an old decrepit and disabled woman, are accused. Mother Clarke and Ann West are both real historical persons. It is the accusations leveled against them, their subsequent arrest and trial along with some supernatural occurrences that form the basis of the multifaceted storyline.
One issue I have with the book is the frequent use of complex words by Rebecca West. Are we to believe that a semiliterate young woman in the 1600’s would use words like denuded and extemporize. Would she really make statements like “she is in one of her philosophical moods”. It was totally unnecessary and annoying in an otherwise historically accurate novel.
This was a nice read in all and I can recommend it for anyone who likes to read novels that reflect the actual historical record but with a little paranormal activity on the side.

I received an ARC of this book from the publisher, Dreamscape Media and Netgalley. This fact in no way influenced my review.

Set in the 1640, during England's Civil War, A.K. Blakemore's The Manningtree Witches is, without a doubt, the most perceptive, most beautifully written novel exploring witch trials that I've read. While not a huge genre, there definitely is a core body of witch trial novels and Blakemore's novel rises above all of them.

Why?

• It's historically informed, drawing on trial transcripts, legal documents, and other writing from that period. The characters based on historical figures appear to be true to their lives as documented in the historical record.

• The language it's written in is historically appropriate and downright beautiful, without heavy-handed pretensions.

• While modern readers can identify with Rebecca, the central character, she hasn't been turned into a present-day everywoman. Blakemore creates her as a woman of her time.

• It isn't a clear cut, good guys/bad guys novel. Some characters are more sympathetic than others, but none of them are the sort of self-assured caricatures that often populate with trial fiction. Even the characters we hate because of their certainty have occasional doubts.

• The novel allows readers to reflect on their own time, but never lets them forget that their time and the time of the novel are substantially different.

I received a free electronic review copy of this title from the publisher; the opinions are my own.

As the country is riven by Civil War, the people of Mannintree get on with their lives. Many women are widowed and those who are married are fearful of them, to the extent that witchcraft is a common accusation. Into this comes Matthew Hopkins, an austere Puritan, who becomes a self-styled Witchfinder and takes up several women in the village. Rebecca West is one of them, attractive and intelligent but the daughter of an outspoken widow who does not help her cause.
I loved this book! It is a more feminist slant on the witchcraft purge in East Anglia in the mid-1640s with a feisty protagonist and a focus on the unbelievable (to our modern eyes) accusations. The sexual tension is realistic and the horrors of incarceration and hanging are described with both detail and also a light touch.