The Daylight Gate by Jeanette Winterson is my first spooky book of the season. It
was surprising in some ways, definitely chilling, and made me curious to find
out what else Winterson has written.
It's a short book, 224 pages in 4"x5" size page--more of a novella, really--and I read it in a day when I had lots of other stuff to do besides read.
The Daylight Gate is a fictional imagining of the circumstances behind the Lancashire witch trials of 1612. In the Introduction, Winterson explains that the Trial of the Lancashire Witches is not only the most famous of the English witch trials but also the first to be documented. A lawyer, Thomas Potts, wrote what he claimed was an eye-witness account, and Winterson uses this document as a spring-board for her story.
The surprising thing for me about the novel was that the witches in it really seemed to possess some powers. Most witch trial literature I've been exposed to--for example, The Crucible--focuses on mob hysteria, the power of suggestion and imagination, and the marginal status of most of the accused persons, who are usually women. The witches in The Daylight Gate are powerful enough to inflict harm on their enemies, consort with familiars, seem able to shift shape, and can interact with the deceased via the Daylight Gate, which is essentially twilight, when the portal between the worlds of the living and that of the dead is open.
I really liked Winterson's style in the book. The prose is clean, sparse, and blunt but the details are vivid and the pacing is almost mesmerizing. Perfect for a dark, witchy book. And it is dark. Virtually every character is deplorable--the witches, and they're mostly from a single family, and their accusers. There's some rough stuff in there that is hard to read at times--makes me quite glad that I wasn't alive during the early 1600's in Lancashire!
Winterson also tells her story without making it too black and white. Despite my assertion that the witches seem to have some magical powers, she is fairly ambiguous as to how much of what is purported as magical is hallucination and how much is real. I like that--in a book like this, the reader should be thrown off balance and forced to try to piece together where one world blends into another.
From a historical fiction standpoint, I found fascinating the link that the characters, particularly that lawyer Potts, made between witchcraft and Catholicism, that bogeyman of the 17th century. Winterson did a masterful job of bringing in William Shakespeare as a believable character at this point in the novel.
The Daylight Gate was an interesting, well-written book--bite-sized but satisfying, giving me a lot to think over after I finished reading it, and a few jaw-dropping scenes that curled my toes.
It's a short book, 224 pages in 4"x5" size page--more of a novella, really--and I read it in a day when I had lots of other stuff to do besides read.
The Daylight Gate is a fictional imagining of the circumstances behind the Lancashire witch trials of 1612. In the Introduction, Winterson explains that the Trial of the Lancashire Witches is not only the most famous of the English witch trials but also the first to be documented. A lawyer, Thomas Potts, wrote what he claimed was an eye-witness account, and Winterson uses this document as a spring-board for her story.
The surprising thing for me about the novel was that the witches in it really seemed to possess some powers. Most witch trial literature I've been exposed to--for example, The Crucible--focuses on mob hysteria, the power of suggestion and imagination, and the marginal status of most of the accused persons, who are usually women. The witches in The Daylight Gate are powerful enough to inflict harm on their enemies, consort with familiars, seem able to shift shape, and can interact with the deceased via the Daylight Gate, which is essentially twilight, when the portal between the worlds of the living and that of the dead is open.
I really liked Winterson's style in the book. The prose is clean, sparse, and blunt but the details are vivid and the pacing is almost mesmerizing. Perfect for a dark, witchy book. And it is dark. Virtually every character is deplorable--the witches, and they're mostly from a single family, and their accusers. There's some rough stuff in there that is hard to read at times--makes me quite glad that I wasn't alive during the early 1600's in Lancashire!
Winterson also tells her story without making it too black and white. Despite my assertion that the witches seem to have some magical powers, she is fairly ambiguous as to how much of what is purported as magical is hallucination and how much is real. I like that--in a book like this, the reader should be thrown off balance and forced to try to piece together where one world blends into another.
From a historical fiction standpoint, I found fascinating the link that the characters, particularly that lawyer Potts, made between witchcraft and Catholicism, that bogeyman of the 17th century. Winterson did a masterful job of bringing in William Shakespeare as a believable character at this point in the novel.
The Daylight Gate was an interesting, well-written book--bite-sized but satisfying, giving me a lot to think over after I finished reading it, and a few jaw-dropping scenes that curled my toes.
This is the first book in my R.I.P. reading challenge. You can read review of other scary books at the R.I.P. review site.
Winterson has been on my mental list of TBR authors for a long time, but I've only read reviews (so far) sampling her distinctive prose: "clean, sparse, and blunt" seems a perfect way of describing it. This is her most recent book, I think, and it's interesting that it takes a different slant on witches and those who would condemn them--it seems like a perfect arena for studying the witches' own self-perceptions and others' (mis)perceptions of them--themes she has dealt with in other books when the subject was sexual identity.
ReplyDeleteThis does sound atmospheric and the plot sounds interesting.
ReplyDeleteI might have a problem with a book like this portraying people with even subtle powers of witchcraft. I understand that the witches are portrayed sympathetically and the basic themes of the book are humanistic. Yet such accusations against people just have too much of a history and connections with horrible barbarity. I think this would bother me. This may say more about my shortcomings as reader ,as I am letting my own biases get in the way, as opposed to any flaw in the book.
Actually, the witches are not portrayed sympathetically. Most are poverty-stricken, true, but they have sold their souls. In this case, the theme is not humanism. I was expecting this, and the absence of this approach also surprised me. No, the witches are barbaric as are their persecutors.
DeleteHow interesting! I've read Winterson's famous book "Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit," which definitely has elements of the fantastic in it, but I didn't realize she'd written anything spooky.
ReplyDeleteI've never read Winterson, but I'm tempted by this title. Perfect R.I.P. read!
ReplyDeleteOh I like the sound of this. It's been a long time since I read any Winterson, but I remember enjoying her. I'm always fascinated by is-it-real-what's-real-anyway? books, which this sounds like - and I remember hiking up Pendle Hill as an undergrad years and years and years ago, between Halloween and Bonfire night, on a crisp cold night where the frost and the stars sparkled. It's one of my strongest memories of England...
ReplyDeleteOh, wow, hiking up Pendle Hill near Halloween would definitely be a memorable event.
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