Lilibet Bombshell's Reviews > The Witching Tide

“...And women like hunting witches, too/
Doing your dirtiest work for you…”

From the first page until the last, this book is a deep well of sorrow and mourning. It’s an elegy turned into a novel, a lament for all women lost to witch hunts (especially the specific one this novel is centered around). These pages are flooded with slow, creeping sadness; an ever-hovering sense of inevitability telling us readers things will only get worse. Things will only get uglier. Things will only get sicker.

We know how the witch hunts went. We know why they happened. We know how they spread. As much as we’d like to wholly point our fingers at the men in these stories, books like these remind us that we also need to check ourselves and remember we pointed our fingers at one another as well, ready to sacrifice even our sisters if it meant saving our own skins.

I applaud Margaret Meyer for choosing to write a main protagonist whose disability serves as both a physical and metaphorical plot device. Martha’s mutism (caused by a childhood illness) takes away her physical ability to speak up for herself or for any other woman and leaves her vulnerable to both ignorant and willful misinterpretation to those who would only see what they wish to see. In tandem, her mutism also metaphorically symbolizes the ways in which all women were not listened to, how their pleas for mercy fell on deaf ears, how no matter what they said their words were turned against them, and how in the end they fell silent on the noose. This aspect of the novel was both the saddest and most touching part, because no matter what Martha did, she knew there was precious little she could do to help when she had no voice. And that only made her feel guiltier.

Meyer composed a deeply moving novel that may be set against witch trials, but the themes of misogyny, internalized misogyny, male privilege, religious zealotry, bigotry, ableism, and more are all interwoven in an even, seamless pattern that starts off as simply ominous until all common sense, human compassion, or even a sense of human decency has been bled out of Martha’s village of Cleftwater. Then, and only then, when the village has hit its lowest low, can the tide begin to change. By this time, Cleftwater is left with a collective trauma.

Even though this book is full of despair and shows the deep, dark ugliness that can lie inside the human heart, it’s so impeccably crafted and beautifully written that I couldn’t stop reading it. I was glued to the page because I needed to see how these women would survive. I needed to know who would make it and how. I needed to see if any of them would make it, frankly. I needed to see if there would be vengeance. I needed to see what would be left at the end of the madness. I was engaged, I was invested, and I felt like I needed to witness this.

I was provided a copy of this title by NetGalley and the author. All thoughts, opinions, views, and ideas expressed herein are mine and mine alone. Thank you.

File Under: 5 Star Review/Folk Horror/Historical Fiction/Literary Fiction/Women’s Fiction