Mary is a witch, or at least the granddaughter of a witch, and, orphaned, more or less, she ships out to the New World with a bunch of Pilgrim Fathers. In a slightly meandering narrative she describes the establishment of a settlement in the forest, encounters with native Americans, and the battle with the stereotypically hypocritical protestant patriarchy.
It is presented as a journal entries that have been discovered in a quilt, with the punctuation, spelling and paragraphing modernised, but it reads like a modern novel. In particular, the attitudes of the narrator and the sympathetic characters are very late twentieth century. This presentation is not really used: there is no frame narrative or editroial footnotes. It appears to be only an attempt to add verisimilitude.
Well researched (I was impressed with "crying over milk shed" instead of "spilt milk" and I find that version can be dated to 1659) and well written but all the characters are a bit predictable. This is fiction to comfort and reassure.
Some great moments:
- "Lies are not rooted in the mind in the way truth is." (entry 7)
- "Too much wind is as bad as too little." (entry 20)
- "The children of Israel were forty years in the wilderness, which is a long time to be wandering and homeless. God took His time before getting them out." (entry 35)
October 2020; 235 pages
No comments:
Post a Comment