The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane - Katherine Howe
Title: The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane
Author: Katherine Howe
Year of Publication: 2009
Number of pages: 366
Why I chose it: My mom picked it out at our regular second hand bookshop, and since the witches in Salem is something I'm interesting in, I thought I'd enjoy reading this book.
Do I recommend it? Well, it's not a bad book, but I definitely read better that fall into a similar genre, so... up to you? That's not much of a recommendation, I know, haha.
Since I find the subject of witches in Salem fascinating, I've had big expectations from this book. Alas, I fear it has failed to fulfill these expectations. Whereas this novel had every bit of potential to be an interesting one, I felt the author was trying too hard to fit it into the familiar pattern other historical thrillers such as The Shakespeare Curse or the more famous Da Vinci Code had also followed.
From very early on, one gets a clear sense of how the novel is going to end in terms of the heroine's destiny, her love interest, and the villain in the story. Therefore, by the time you reach the story's climax, there's no big surprise there. The story is consisted of two narratives - one which takes places in 1692 during the witches' trials in Salem, and the other one in Massachusetts in 1991. The past and present narratives are inevitably linked, but the novel doesn’t really give the feeling the two narratives interlace in the way the novel is structured. Nearly nothing in the past narrative provides one clues that tie it with the later narrative, so in the process of telling both stories, despite the time difference of 300 years or so between them, the narratives seem parallel rather than intertwined. When the connection between past and present is eventually revealed (not a spoiler since, again, such a connection is inevitable), it isn't overwhelming in any way, but has an opposite effect entirely.
The novel's power lies in the reality of the events - it's partly based on a true story - all the more reason to present the events in a more engaging way. What this novel is missing are twists and surprises. A more effective way of handling the plot could have been taking all those predictable elements and rearranging them in a certain way that would still shock the reader when they present themselves to him/her.