Earlier this year I read Ami McKay’s The Witches of New York. It was entirely different from what I expected, and yet I was pleasantly surprised.
The layered telling of this tale of magical realism addresses three women - Adelaide Thom, Eleanor St. Clair, and Beatrice Dunn - who delve into the supernatural while living and working in New York.
The novel examines the life of each woman individually as well as in combination of the others. Throughout, there are articles and snippets of advertisements included. My personal favourite includes the following:
“Crafty in her dealings, she takes on many forms - the healer, the fortune teller, the academic, the suffragist, the spiritualist - all in an effort to lead others astray. TRUE women of GOD do not trouble themselves with such matters [...] TIMOTHY 2:11 But I suffer not a woman to teach nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.”
I was drawn to this book because of the beautiful cover. I became engrossed in it because of the inclusion of these articles and artifacts. But the characters and world and subject matter is what made it most memorable.
Throughout the book, these women not only deal with the supernatural, but also the very real problems and terrors facing women - particularly those seen as witches - during this time. And is it a time truly that different from our own?
At one point, the deaths of the “scrubber girls” in the hotel is discussed. Bars were placed on their windows in an effort to preserve their modesty, supposedly, but when fire broke out, the bars trapped them inside. It is then noted: “Isn’t that always the way [...] man’s fears causing him to do things that lead to far greater sins.”
Is this any less true today than it was then? Is it any more true?
Questions of relationships, sexuality, contraception, faith, intelligence, family, and women’s roles and rights and place within society, are addressed, without ever coming to a fulfilling solution. As it should be. The solution is not the important part in this novel, as no solution has, as of yet, been found. But the questions. The questions are the important things. Raising those questions, through the characters of these women, who are flawed yet strong, hurt yet giving, intelligent yet kind, is this point of this book.
When disaster strikes, and the youngest, Beatrice, goes missing, all of the differences and strengths between the other two women, and the strengths of the men and women, mortal and living or not, who are around them, come together in an effort to find and save her.
I loved this book. I loved the history, the subtle sweeping of description, the comfort and strength between these women. I really, really want to visit their tea shop and have my leaves read. Maybe my palm. Maybe then I can leave with one of their special teas...
From the introductory page, I thrilled to the description and dealing with of women in this book. This introductory page boasts the following quotations:
A rebel! How glorious the name sounds when applied to a woman.
Oh, rebellious woman, to you the world looks in hope.
Upon you has fallen the glorious task of bringing liberty to the earth and all the inhabitants thereof. —Matilda Joslyn Gage
Resist much, obey little.
—Walt Whitman
This is the second magical realism book that I have read and loved this year (the first being The Night Circus, of which you can read my review, here.) Perhaps I am becoming a bit of a fan of this genre?
What is your favourite magical realism book? I have always been interested in the history of Salem and witchcraft and women in society; have you ever read a book of that type to recommend?
Now, if you excuse me, I am off to have a cup of tea.
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