Family Saga and Witches
I finished two very different books last week.
The Cazalet Chronicles by Elizabeth Jane Howard were recommended to me by someone after I mentioned I was in a family saga sort of mode at the moment with my reading. So I bought a box set of all five books - and finished the first, The Light Years, last week. And, if this one is about 'light years', I really don't want to know what it's like when it gets heavier... This first book is set in 1937 and 1938 (the whole series ends in 1958), so there's obviously the looming threat of the war to come, which I know will be covered in the next couple of books. It follows the various branches of the Cazalet family (elderly couple at the top and their three adult sons, all of whom have wives and several children, and their unmarried adult daughter). I liked the setting and a lot of the family dynamics were engaging and interesting - but it was so relentlessly depressing! There are upwards of twenty viewpoint characters - and pretty much every single one of them is desperately, agonisingly unhappy in some way. And the book is mostly taken up by them each thinking about their abject misery at length and in great depth. Now, I understand that characters need an arc, and that perhaps some of them might get to happy endings by the end of the fifth book - but there does need to be some lightness along the way, some ups as well as downs, especially in the course of such a wide-ranging story... It did brighten just a smidge towards the very end of this book, with a couple of quite funny sections that really jarred after all the angst and pain. And I was invested in most of the characters and would be very interested to see where they end up over the next twenty years of the story. I'm just not sure I can take it!
Rewitched by Lucy Jane Wood follows the story of Bell Blackthorn, who comes from a family of witches. On her 30th birthday, fifteen years after coming into her witchy powers, she finds out there's a trial to face, where her coven will judge whether or not she's used her powers in the right way. If not, they will be stripped from her forever. She's also facing difficulties with her job at a bookshop, with the owner's son taking over management and trying to make it more corporate and profit-making. I liked Bell a lot as a character, as well as her friend and roommate, Ariadne. But a lot of the characters (and not just the witchy ones) came across as refugees from the world of Harry Potter - and not in a good way. It did pick up once it got to the emotional heart of the story (Bell realising she didn't want to lose her magic) and I also liked the revelation of there being some actual threat (and who the bad guys eventually turned out to be). I wasn't sure the romance aspect worked particularly well - but I was glad I persevered as I enjoyed it the book overall in the end.