📖 Book Review ~ The Virago Book of Witches by Shahrukh Husain

 

Virago
8 September 2022

My thanks to the publisher for my copy of this book

Beware the women who are called witches, or those who claim the name for themselves…

Banshees – a howling night-witch and harbinger of death; She-devils – Lilith and her daughters; or Bitches – Hecate, whose chariot is drawn by dogs.

Alluring women, enchantresses, seekers of revenge, wise old women and badly-behaved girls. As Shahrukh Husain says, witches are ‘womanhood in all its complexity’.

Over fifty stories of crones and nixies, shape shifters and beauties are here, including the loving fox witch of Japan; Italy’s Witch-Bea-Witch; Scotland’s Goodwife of Laggan; Biddy Earl and the terrifying Kali and Baba Yaga who comes in many forms to haunt, entice, possess, transform and challenge.

From every corner of the globe, with tom-foolery, fun, strife and victory, these folklore and legends celebrate women who step out of line.

📖 My Review..

The fifty, or so, stories which form the basis of this anthology take the reader on a fascinating journey into the myths, legends and folklore which has so long been associated with witches and witchcraft. With a comprehensive preface and introduction the author gives a lengthy explanation of how women have, over many centuries, been persecuted for witchcraft often with no evidence of wrongdoing.

This is definitely a book to savour, not to read quickly, but rather to become immersed in the variety of stories on offer, so with that in mind, I dipped into and out of the book at whim, picking stories here and there which piqued my interest. The stories, from all around the globe, are immersive and quickly take you into a forgotten world of superstition, intrigue, magic and mayhem. Some were more compelling than others but all of them took me on an intricate journey in the best tradition of keeping the story telling art alive in the imagination.

Recently re-issued with a stunning new cover The Virago Book of Witchcraft is one of those wonderful anthologies which is happy to sit on your book shelf content to be taken down regularly and each time to find something new to read and enjoy, especially if you have an interest in global folklore and legend.

🍷Best read with…a comforting cup of warm chocolate

About the Author

Shahrukh Husain was brought up in Pakistan and has studied myth and folklore from around the world. She is the editor of The Virago Book of Witches, author of Women Who Wear the Breeches, Temptresses :The Virago Book of Evil Women, a novel, several children's books and a play for children. She also writes screenplays and created the TV drama Beecham House. A practicing psychotherapist, she is married with two children and lives in London.

Twitter @shahusain  #TheViragoBookofWitches

@ViragoBooks @LittleBrownUK

Blog Tour ~ In the Full Light of the Sun by Clare Clark

Jaffareadstoo is delighted to host today's stop on the In the Full Light of the Sun Blog Tour

Virago Press
28 February 2019

My thanks to the publishers for my copy of this book and the invitation to be part of this blog tour

Based on a true story, this gorgeous new novel follows the fortunes of three Berliners caught up in an art scandal—involving newly discovered van Goghs—that rocks Germany amidst the Nazis’ rise to power.

Hedonistic and politically turbulent, Berlin in the 1920s is a city of seedy night clubs and sumptuous art galleries. It is home to millionaires and mobs storming bakeries for rationed bread. These disparate Berlins collide when Emmeline, a young art student; Julius, an art expert; and a mysterious dealer named Rachmann all find themselves caught up in the astonishing discovery of thirty-two previously unknown paintings by Vincent van Gogh.

In the Full Light of the Sun explores the trio’s complex relationships and motivations, their hopes, their vanities, and their self-delusions—for the paintings are fakes and they are in their own ways complicit. Theirs is a cautionary tale about of the aspirations of the new Germany and a generation determined to put the humiliations of the past behind them.

My thoughts..

In the Full Light of the Sun is trio of interconnected stories which have as their focus the mysteries of the art world, and in particular, the artist, Van Gogh. The story is set in Berlin in the early 1920s during the economic decline, when the downturn in the standard of living had such a catastrophic effect on daily life. We then move forward chronologically into the later years of the 1920s, finally culminating in 1933, when the whole of the story comes to its conclusion.

Our narrators for most of the story are Julius Köhler-Schultz, a rich art collector living in Berlin and recently separated, rather acrimoniously, from his wife. Köhler-Schultz comes into contact with the mysterious, Matthias Rachmann, a young and ambitious art dealer whose interest in finding works of art, which have laid undiscovered, connects these two men and takes the story in a fascinating direction. Emmeline Eberhardt is just seventeen and a talented artist when she first comes into contact with  Köhler-Schultz and Rachmann, an association which will have lasting repercussions for all of three of them.

The Full Light of the Sun is a fascinating look into the largely shadowy world of art dealing, and set, as it is, against the backdrop of a country which was experiencing great social and political upheaval, makes the story all the more complex. The author writes well and has clearly used a large amount of research in order to bring the story alive, and does so with an interesting observational style. The hedonistic atmosphere of Berlin, caught as it was, between two world wars, is well described, as is the complex world of artworks and their, often complicated, provenance.

Beautifully descriptive of a long forgotten world, and inspired by true events, In the Full Light of the Sun, is a considered imagining of a world which stood on the brink of turmoil. What happens in the story reflects the complicated and rather shadowy world of art dealing, and set, as it is, against the backdrop of a country experiencing great social and political upheaval, makes this such an interesting piece of historical fiction.

About the Author

Clare Clark is the author of five acclaimed historical novels, The Great Stink - now in pre production for a feature film,- is one of two novels longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction. She reviews regularly for the Guardian, New York Times and Washington Post and is on the Advisory Board of the Cheltenham Literary Festival. She lives in London.

Twitter @claresclark #FullLightoftheSun

@ViragoBooks

Amazon UK

Blog Tour ~ Love and Fame by Susie Boyt

✨Jaffareadstoo is pleased to be involved in the Love and Fame Blog Tour✨

Virago
7 June 2018

My thanks to the author, publisher and Random Things Tours for my copy of this book
and the invitation to be part of the blog tour

Susie Boyt's sixth novel is the story of the first year of a marriage. Eve a nervous young actress from a powerful theatrical dynasty has found herself married to an international expert on anxiety called Jim. Could it work? Should it work? Must the show always go on? This is a highly-strung comedy about love, fame, grief, show business and the depths of the gutter press. Its witty and sincere tone - familiar to fans of Susie's newspaper column - will delight and unnerve in equal measure.

My thoughts about it..

Beatrice, a bereavement counsellor, her sister Rebecca, a journalist, don't seem, on the surface to have anything in common with Eve Swift and yet, this nervous young actress, who comes from a well-known theatrical family are soon to meet, and when they do their worlds collide in fascinating way. 

From the start it is obvious that Eve is riddled with insecurities, never quite matching up to the ideology of her talented, and very famous, actor father, and even being newly married to Jim, who is an expert on anxiety issues, is for Eve both a blessing and a curse. Beatrice and Rebecca have their own deep rooted problems, closely bonded since the death of their mother when they were children, Beatrice has always protected and looked after Rebecca, they still have a strong relationship which has continued long into adulthood.

Mostly Love and Fame is about grief and loss and how we cope in so many different ways, not just with the loss of people who are dear to us but also in the shared grief of past traumas and missed opportunities. And yet, it's not a sad book, far from it, parts of it made me laugh and smile at the absurdity of people's behaviour and reactions, whilst other beautifully written sentences struck a deep chord of acknowledgment. Love and Fame is an altogether different view of living with loss, and, for Eve especially, of coping with that loss in the full glare of unwanted public scrutiny. 

Within the novel there’s skilful writing and some lovely observations, which, on occasion, I had to go back and re-read and like a comfort blanket, this sentence stayed with me "Loss lapped at her feet, it bit at her heels. She had made friends with it, bathed in it, wore it like an overall" Loss distinguished her.” I think we’ve all shared that emotion at one time, or another.

About the Author

The daughter of Suzy Boyt and artist Lucian Freud, and great-granddaughter of Sigmund Freud. Susie Boyt was educated at Channing and at Camden School for Girls and read English at St Catherine's College, Oxford, graduating in 1992. Working variously at a PR agency, and a literary agency, she completed her first novel, The Normal Man, which was published in 1995 by Weidenfeld & Nicolson. She returned to university to do a Masters in Anglo American Literary Relations at University College London studying the works of Henry James and the poet John Berryman.

To date she has published six novels. In 2008, she published My Judy Garland Life, a layering of biography, hero-worship and self-help. Her journalism includes an ongoing column in the weekend Life & Arts section of the Financial Times. She is married to Tom Astor, a film producer. They live with their two daughters in London.

Twitter @SusieBoyt #LoveAndFame

@ViragoBooks

#RandomThingsTours