Book-It '10! Book #15
The Fifty Books Challenge, year two! This was a library request.
Title: Bell, Book, and Murder: The Bast Mysteries by Rosemary Edghill
Details: Copyright 1998, Forge Books
Synopsis (By Way of Back Cover): "Like Susan Isaacs, Rosemary Edghill cast a keenly observant, friendly, yet faintly amused eye on an intriguing American micro-culture. Like The Witches of Eastwick, the Bast novels offer a very new view of the practitioners of a very old faith. Like Alice Hoffman, Edghill allows that there's still magic in the air.
Shakespeare's witches and their blasted heath couldn't be farther from the world of Rosemary Edghill's contemporary Wiccans. Today's witches hold coven meetings in New York City apartments and buy their books and supplies in cheerful neighborhood shops.
They even hold regular jobs-- well, sort of regular. Bast, a.k.a. Karen Hightower, is a freelance graphic artist-- the flexible hours leave her plenty of time for covenmeets, gossip sessions, and, just lately, a little detective work.
Even good-hearted, nature-loving Wiccans aren't immune to political infighting, greed, and jealousy. In a community where everybody knows everybody else's business, where cliques turn into covens, and where sexual relationships can have more than ordinary power, passion can quickly turn to murder.
Armed with a quick brain and a clever tongue, Bast pokes in the dark corners of the Wiccan world and finds Truth of more than one kind.
Bell, Book, and Murder contains the complete text of all three Bast novels, including the first softcover edition of The Bowl of Night which was excerpted in USA Today."
Why I Wanted to Read It: Yet another find in the search for Pagan fiction that wasn't The Mists of Avalon or a clone thereof.
How I Liked It: This book, as mentioned, is actually three different novels. But together, they make up a fairly altogether novel in this format, particularly given Edghill's style. Still, it would be more fair to look at them piece by piece as the publication dates (Speak Daggers to Her, 1994, Book of Moons, 1995, and The Bowl of Night, 1996) differ.
In the first book, Edghill spends so much time "setting the stage" by telling us about life and customs of New York City (arguably the most familiar American city culturally) in equal amounts as the then-fairly unknown (thus subculture) of Paganism that she seems to forget to establish the characters (given that it's the first novel, this is especially vital) and the plot, which is kind of shaky.
The second book is probably the best plotted of the three. These mysteries don't have much of a twist and the plots of the novels seem almost accidental.
The last seems to give us the most insight into the characters (and has the best characterization in general), but we're still left wanting.
That's probably the most frustrating fact about Edghill's style in these novels: it feels we're only getting some of the story. You know there's a greater backstory with the protagonist, but it's only hinted at (when a greater description is necessary).
However, these books mark an important, almost crucial point in time for Paganism which makes them valuable where the mysteries are disposable. Edghill, if not a Wiccan herself, has clearly done some heavy-duty research into the community. What makes these books of historical value (in fiction) is the fact they're dated. Edghill's character discusses being a Witch in the 1990s by discussion of the progression of the American Pagans before her: the public opinion, the varying amounts of information, the changing community.
So why is this of historical importance rather than just dated fiction?
Although the term "e-mail" is used in the second book (quite something for 1995), the internet, it goes without saying, was not yet the force it would become.
I, like so many Pagans of my generation, was lucky enough to have access to the internet, revealing once and for all the bumper sticker "There's More of Us Than You Think!" was (and is) true. The exploding book market also took hold and where one once had to rely on trying to find a teacher and and a coven for any training, information was abundant enough for anyone to become a solitary (provided, of course, that person was willing to put forth the discipline, but that would be necessary with a teacher and coven as well, albeit to a lesser degree).
The world Edghill describes of a Pagan community being almost small (several characters are recognizable as notable figures in the Pagan community; Bast's high priestess Belle bears a strong resemblance to Marion Weinstein) and truly a subculture long gone. But the idea of reliving what is apparently an accurate depiction (Margot Adler positively blurbs the back of the book "A saucy female detective whose language sparkles with wit and irony. The book works both as a mystery and as a novel of magic, and contains an accurate, if good-humored, look at today's Witchcraft scene.") of a part of Pagan history, the almost-small-town feeling of knowing nearly everyone, nearly every tradition, and well-worn "circle etiquette" is irresistible ( Out of the Shadows: Myths and Truths of Modern Wicca hinted at this culture but so distracted is the reader by the obnoxious style it gets lost).
In short, a flawed but crucial memory of a critical time in our history.
Notable: After a very spontaneous sexual outing with a longtime crush, Bast muses
"I didn't realize until I framed the thought that the emotional disquiet that had been vaguely dogging me all day came from the fact that my little tryst with Julian hadn't left me feeling good, answer to my girlish fantasies though it had been. Oh, not that it had been any species of rape, even by the PC rubber yardstick in use these days, but it had left me feeling unsettled, uncertain of my ground." (pg 356)
The more you think about that last sentence, the worse it gets. Seriously. Somewhere, date-rape apologists, should they ever discover this book/series would be surprised to find such an ally in that curious little sentence.
Title: Bell, Book, and Murder: The Bast Mysteries by Rosemary Edghill
Details: Copyright 1998, Forge Books
Synopsis (By Way of Back Cover): "Like Susan Isaacs, Rosemary Edghill cast a keenly observant, friendly, yet faintly amused eye on an intriguing American micro-culture. Like The Witches of Eastwick, the Bast novels offer a very new view of the practitioners of a very old faith. Like Alice Hoffman, Edghill allows that there's still magic in the air.
Shakespeare's witches and their blasted heath couldn't be farther from the world of Rosemary Edghill's contemporary Wiccans. Today's witches hold coven meetings in New York City apartments and buy their books and supplies in cheerful neighborhood shops.
They even hold regular jobs-- well, sort of regular. Bast, a.k.a. Karen Hightower, is a freelance graphic artist-- the flexible hours leave her plenty of time for covenmeets, gossip sessions, and, just lately, a little detective work.
Even good-hearted, nature-loving Wiccans aren't immune to political infighting, greed, and jealousy. In a community where everybody knows everybody else's business, where cliques turn into covens, and where sexual relationships can have more than ordinary power, passion can quickly turn to murder.
Armed with a quick brain and a clever tongue, Bast pokes in the dark corners of the Wiccan world and finds Truth of more than one kind.
Bell, Book, and Murder contains the complete text of all three Bast novels, including the first softcover edition of The Bowl of Night which was excerpted in USA Today."
Why I Wanted to Read It: Yet another find in the search for Pagan fiction that wasn't The Mists of Avalon or a clone thereof.
How I Liked It: This book, as mentioned, is actually three different novels. But together, they make up a fairly altogether novel in this format, particularly given Edghill's style. Still, it would be more fair to look at them piece by piece as the publication dates (Speak Daggers to Her, 1994, Book of Moons, 1995, and The Bowl of Night, 1996) differ.
In the first book, Edghill spends so much time "setting the stage" by telling us about life and customs of New York City (arguably the most familiar American city culturally) in equal amounts as the then-fairly unknown (thus subculture) of Paganism that she seems to forget to establish the characters (given that it's the first novel, this is especially vital) and the plot, which is kind of shaky.
The second book is probably the best plotted of the three. These mysteries don't have much of a twist and the plots of the novels seem almost accidental.
The last seems to give us the most insight into the characters (and has the best characterization in general), but we're still left wanting.
That's probably the most frustrating fact about Edghill's style in these novels: it feels we're only getting some of the story. You know there's a greater backstory with the protagonist, but it's only hinted at (when a greater description is necessary).
However, these books mark an important, almost crucial point in time for Paganism which makes them valuable where the mysteries are disposable. Edghill, if not a Wiccan herself, has clearly done some heavy-duty research into the community. What makes these books of historical value (in fiction) is the fact they're dated. Edghill's character discusses being a Witch in the 1990s by discussion of the progression of the American Pagans before her: the public opinion, the varying amounts of information, the changing community.
So why is this of historical importance rather than just dated fiction?
Although the term "e-mail" is used in the second book (quite something for 1995), the internet, it goes without saying, was not yet the force it would become.
I, like so many Pagans of my generation, was lucky enough to have access to the internet, revealing once and for all the bumper sticker "There's More of Us Than You Think!" was (and is) true. The exploding book market also took hold and where one once had to rely on trying to find a teacher and and a coven for any training, information was abundant enough for anyone to become a solitary (provided, of course, that person was willing to put forth the discipline, but that would be necessary with a teacher and coven as well, albeit to a lesser degree).
The world Edghill describes of a Pagan community being almost small (several characters are recognizable as notable figures in the Pagan community; Bast's high priestess Belle bears a strong resemblance to Marion Weinstein) and truly a subculture long gone. But the idea of reliving what is apparently an accurate depiction (Margot Adler positively blurbs the back of the book "A saucy female detective whose language sparkles with wit and irony. The book works both as a mystery and as a novel of magic, and contains an accurate, if good-humored, look at today's Witchcraft scene.") of a part of Pagan history, the almost-small-town feeling of knowing nearly everyone, nearly every tradition, and well-worn "circle etiquette" is irresistible ( Out of the Shadows: Myths and Truths of Modern Wicca hinted at this culture but so distracted is the reader by the obnoxious style it gets lost).
In short, a flawed but crucial memory of a critical time in our history.
Notable: After a very spontaneous sexual outing with a longtime crush, Bast muses
"I didn't realize until I framed the thought that the emotional disquiet that had been vaguely dogging me all day came from the fact that my little tryst with Julian hadn't left me feeling good, answer to my girlish fantasies though it had been. Oh, not that it had been any species of rape, even by the PC rubber yardstick in use these days, but it had left me feeling unsettled, uncertain of my ground." (pg 356)
The more you think about that last sentence, the worse it gets. Seriously. Somewhere, date-rape apologists, should they ever discover this book/series would be surprised to find such an ally in that curious little sentence.