A tale of one editor's witchy obsession
Dear Reader,
I think my friends are getting a little sick of me. Every time we meet I bug them to read The Last Witchfinder. Of course, all annoyance disappears once they finally do: James Morrow has created a work so hilarious, humane and playfully subversive you’d have to make an effort not to love it.
His heroine is the inimitable Jennet Stearne, who embarks on a lifelong quest to disprove witchcraft after witnessing her scientist aunt burned at the stake by her father, a licensed Witchfinder. Inspired by an offhand phrase in Newton’s letter to her aunt (“I fell upon a pretty Proof that Wicked Spirits enjoy no essential Existence”), Jennet struggles to master Newton’s complex new Calculus, convinced rationality can conquer superstition. In the meantime, she witnesses the Salem witch trials, gets captured and marries into the Nimacook tribe, is “rescued” and thrust back into white society, enjoys a long and pleasurable romance with a young, subversive printer named Ben, gets shipwrecked on an island ruled by ex-slaves, and finally puts herself on trial as a witch, enlisting none other than Montesquieu as her lawyer. It's a grand opera of the enlightenment, perfectly believable and not a little touching.
In fact, I'm getting giddy just typing this. Don’t tell Gary, but I think I'm going to read it again.
Alaya Johnson
Editorial Assistant, QPB
I think my friends are getting a little sick of me. Every time we meet I bug them to read The Last Witchfinder. Of course, all annoyance disappears once they finally do: James Morrow has created a work so hilarious, humane and playfully subversive you’d have to make an effort not to love it.
His heroine is the inimitable Jennet Stearne, who embarks on a lifelong quest to disprove witchcraft after witnessing her scientist aunt burned at the stake by her father, a licensed Witchfinder. Inspired by an offhand phrase in Newton’s letter to her aunt (“I fell upon a pretty Proof that Wicked Spirits enjoy no essential Existence”), Jennet struggles to master Newton’s complex new Calculus, convinced rationality can conquer superstition. In the meantime, she witnesses the Salem witch trials, gets captured and marries into the Nimacook tribe, is “rescued” and thrust back into white society, enjoys a long and pleasurable romance with a young, subversive printer named Ben, gets shipwrecked on an island ruled by ex-slaves, and finally puts herself on trial as a witch, enlisting none other than Montesquieu as her lawyer. It's a grand opera of the enlightenment, perfectly believable and not a little touching.
In fact, I'm getting giddy just typing this. Don’t tell Gary, but I think I'm going to read it again.
Alaya Johnson
Editorial Assistant, QPB