Brunonia Barry, “The Lace Reader”

After 40 years of not reading a book about the Salem witch trials (could the last one have been Elizabeth George Speare’s The Witch of Blackbird Pond?), I just read two, back to back. What’s up with that? What is it in the zeitgeist that made two gifted and competent authors think about Salem and say to themselves, “Hey! That’s a great idea?”

The problem with the situation is that invidious comparisons ensue. If you’d told me I would prefer The Lace Reader, the book with narration by the suicidal victim of incest, I wouldn’t have believed you. But you have to give it to the crazies, they get a grip on you. And weirdly, all that careful historical stuff from The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane – which was the best part for sure — has faded next to the charm of loony Towner Whitney. As she calls herself. But she lies, she tells you that right away.

So you spend the novel trotting along, panting slightly, trying to discern What Really Happened. There are uneven spots. In places the narrative shifts into a more temperate omniscience — in part to fill you in on actual facts, and to get you into the head of the appealing town cop, Rafferty — but it can’t compete with Towner’s superheated storytelling. And what happens when you tell a story with a fractured chronology like this is that sometimes the exposition happens awkwardly, or too late. Brunonia Barry has invented a wonderful Bad Man who among other sins runs a fundamentalist church in contemporary Salem, full of self-aggrandizement and narrow-mindedness and dubious exorcisms. But it isn’t quite clear who they all are until a little late in the game, well after they’ve interrupted a funeral by tangling with some of Salem’s witches. Also contemporary.

Roughly, the plot has Towner returning to Salem for her beloved aunt’s funeral (see above) and having to face down the ghosts of her teenage years. Ghosts include the death of her beloved twin sister, her mother’s chilly and authoritarian childrearing practices, her aunt’s spooky way of reading secrets in lace, a jilted boyfriend, etc. etc. Only remember that she lies. Brilliantly.

Katherine Howe, “The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane”

It’s always fascinating to try to parse what makes a book popular. Katherine Howe’s The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane is a good read, but so many excellent books get published and sell poorly that a first-novel success like this attracts my attention. The publisher, Hyperion, is supporting her with an elaborate website and she’s traveling for the book, but it must have been sold hard to bookstores, too.

Part of the appeal must be the magic. Howe takes on the Salem witch trials and, as a PhD. candidate in American studies, her research is thorough. Better, though, she’s got a grasp on what it is people really want to know in an historical novel, i.e. what it was like to be there. She’s excellent with the sounds, smells, the cold, the scractchy fabrics and the circumscribed world of 1692 Salem.

And then the magic extends to the present day — our heroine Connie Goodwin is a Harvard PhD. student in history, specializing in Colonial America, and her research leads her to Deliverance Dane, who was hung as a witch. Howe has invented a book of receipts that once belonged to Dane, which becomes the McGuffin in the story. The near-contemporary (1991) stuff is weaker material, as believably tense academics start behaving oddly and ultimately casting spells. Shades of Harry Potter, I’m sorry to say. And though the love-interest is appealing — he makes his first entrance sliding down a rope, ta da! — he is also quite bland. There’s something of a disconnect between the more ambitious 17th-century segments, which explore the meaning of witchcraft to its practitioners as well as to the community, and the 20th century story which is pretty plot-driven.

I did toy with casting the movie. No, I don’t know that there’s going to be one, but if you had Anne Hathaway as Connie… James Franco as Sam… Austin Pendleton as Connie’s academic advisor… and surely there’s a raft of actresses appropriate for the witch parts… problem with this is it’s sort of The Crucible crossed with, oh, gosh, A.S. Byatt’s Possession. Probably better just to leave it as an entertaining summer novel.