Book-It '10! Book #39
The Fifty Books Challenge, year two! This was a library request.
Title: Sorceress by Celia Rees
Details: Copyright 2003, Candlewick Press
Synopsis (By Way of Front Flap): "I am Kahniakehaka, Mohawk, part of the Haudenosaunee, the Iroquois Six Nations Confederacy. Much of our history is told in story form and one of these stories tells of a white woman who joined the people.
Agnes Herne, known back at home as Karnonhisake, or Searching Sky, is living in Boston and beginning college when she reads a book that changes her life. Although Agnes cannot be sure, she suspects a connection between the girl described in the story-- Mary Newbury, a seventeenth-century self-professed witch-- and one of her own ancestors, a medicine woman whom Agnes's aunt still honors in storytelling and whose personal artifacts are treasured by the family.
Agnes begins to contact the web address listed at the back of the book, but before she can do that, someone contacts her. Agnes undergoes a powerful and frightening experience. It is as if she is living events from the long-ago past, but is it a vision or a dream? As impossible as it seems... could it be a message from Mary?"
Why I Wanted to Read It: I greatly enjoyed Witch Child, a well-written, gripping novel that goes beyond the "young adult" label. I was delighted to see that a sequel had come out.
How I Liked It: While the book does deliver as promised, "what happened to Mary", the cast of the modern day get fairly shortchanged. Alison Ellman, the overeager researcher, isn't so much a character as an empty pair of casual khakis (to match her eager go-getter yuppie personality), barely a framing device. Agnes Herne, the young woman through whom Mary speaks (generally by knocking her out cold) is almost solely a mouthpiece for Mary.
Let's set aside the modern "plot" and focus on the flashbacks, which make up the meat of the book. It's extremely difficult to tell what is essentially Mary's whole life in the course of a young adult novel at just over three hundred forty pages. While obviously some aspects have to be skipped, there's a jumping around quality (kind of reminded me of The Amateur Marriage in that respect) that shortchanges the reader on several important milestones. We care all the more due to Rees's gifts with characterization. Her ability to endear the reader to her cast and to also impress upon him the personality of a character through a few sentences was one of the reasons Witch Child was such a success with readers.
While we are given many things in this novel (a continuation of not just Mary's story, but the story of the other characters rounding out the cast of Witch Child including Mary's mother, a fairly well-thought out faux history of the quilt that held Mary's journal for centuries), we seem to be shortchanged just as many. Why exactly does Mary choose to contact Agnes? A decent and believable plot could have joined both Agnes's search for her own identity (the book notes the racism of certain schools and classmates) and Mary's need to tell her story as a researcher (Allison Ellman) is slowly uncovering it. But we get an extremely watered down version that's little more than a framing device for the sequel and Mary's spirit is not so much an ancestor yearning to depart a sense of history and identity as an irresponsible ghost that conks Agnes unconscious when she sees fit to tell her story.
Still, the sequel stands since the original was so very good. And the fact Celia Rees notes she had written it as one and realized she had to split it into two novels makes the fact Witch Child garners a very stand-alone feel all the more remarkable.
Notable: Unlike Witch Child, fewer suggestions are made of the similarities of the spirituality of the various Native American tribes and Paganism in this novel. A respect for pantheism is inherent, as well as a mention of many Gods, but a larger emphasis (perhaps out of the Christianization taking place and taking root for many of the tribes) is placed on a monotheistic, definitely male father God, a "Great Spirit" that several find interchangeable with the Christian Yahweh (an annoyance of the nitpicking over what they call what they find to be a similiar deity is expressed by several who are dealing with the efforts of converts from the English settlers). While shape-shifting, glamours, totem animals, divination, and a sort of unnamed skill that's pretty much powerful magical ability (or the ability to create powerful and effective magic) do get mentioned, those things are limited to Paganism as anyone who's studied them will tell you.
A rare bit of poignancy is injected into the modern story, as Agnes's aunt relays the message of many indigenous peoples, the idea that what they consider sacred sacred and sacrosanct remains are considered historical artifacts to be dug up, picked at, and disrespected by a large amount of the population. A delicate (and again, rare) turn of the plot has Aunt Miriam realizes a balance can be struck in order to tell the story of the ancestors, a quiet note of a lesson for both the seasoned historian Ellman and for the youth who generally acquiesces to her aunt's wishes, but doesn't really understand the fuss over what to her are just old things.
Title: Sorceress by Celia Rees
Details: Copyright 2003, Candlewick Press
Synopsis (By Way of Front Flap): "I am Kahniakehaka, Mohawk, part of the Haudenosaunee, the Iroquois Six Nations Confederacy. Much of our history is told in story form and one of these stories tells of a white woman who joined the people.
Agnes Herne, known back at home as Karnonhisake, or Searching Sky, is living in Boston and beginning college when she reads a book that changes her life. Although Agnes cannot be sure, she suspects a connection between the girl described in the story-- Mary Newbury, a seventeenth-century self-professed witch-- and one of her own ancestors, a medicine woman whom Agnes's aunt still honors in storytelling and whose personal artifacts are treasured by the family.
Agnes begins to contact the web address listed at the back of the book, but before she can do that, someone contacts her. Agnes undergoes a powerful and frightening experience. It is as if she is living events from the long-ago past, but is it a vision or a dream? As impossible as it seems... could it be a message from Mary?"
Why I Wanted to Read It: I greatly enjoyed Witch Child, a well-written, gripping novel that goes beyond the "young adult" label. I was delighted to see that a sequel had come out.
How I Liked It: While the book does deliver as promised, "what happened to Mary", the cast of the modern day get fairly shortchanged. Alison Ellman, the overeager researcher, isn't so much a character as an empty pair of casual khakis (to match her eager go-getter yuppie personality), barely a framing device. Agnes Herne, the young woman through whom Mary speaks (generally by knocking her out cold) is almost solely a mouthpiece for Mary.
Let's set aside the modern "plot" and focus on the flashbacks, which make up the meat of the book. It's extremely difficult to tell what is essentially Mary's whole life in the course of a young adult novel at just over three hundred forty pages. While obviously some aspects have to be skipped, there's a jumping around quality (kind of reminded me of The Amateur Marriage in that respect) that shortchanges the reader on several important milestones. We care all the more due to Rees's gifts with characterization. Her ability to endear the reader to her cast and to also impress upon him the personality of a character through a few sentences was one of the reasons Witch Child was such a success with readers.
While we are given many things in this novel (a continuation of not just Mary's story, but the story of the other characters rounding out the cast of Witch Child including Mary's mother, a fairly well-thought out faux history of the quilt that held Mary's journal for centuries), we seem to be shortchanged just as many. Why exactly does Mary choose to contact Agnes? A decent and believable plot could have joined both Agnes's search for her own identity (the book notes the racism of certain schools and classmates) and Mary's need to tell her story as a researcher (Allison Ellman) is slowly uncovering it. But we get an extremely watered down version that's little more than a framing device for the sequel and Mary's spirit is not so much an ancestor yearning to depart a sense of history and identity as an irresponsible ghost that conks Agnes unconscious when she sees fit to tell her story.
Still, the sequel stands since the original was so very good. And the fact Celia Rees notes she had written it as one and realized she had to split it into two novels makes the fact Witch Child garners a very stand-alone feel all the more remarkable.
Notable: Unlike Witch Child, fewer suggestions are made of the similarities of the spirituality of the various Native American tribes and Paganism in this novel. A respect for pantheism is inherent, as well as a mention of many Gods, but a larger emphasis (perhaps out of the Christianization taking place and taking root for many of the tribes) is placed on a monotheistic, definitely male father God, a "Great Spirit" that several find interchangeable with the Christian Yahweh (an annoyance of the nitpicking over what they call what they find to be a similiar deity is expressed by several who are dealing with the efforts of converts from the English settlers). While shape-shifting, glamours, totem animals, divination, and a sort of unnamed skill that's pretty much powerful magical ability (or the ability to create powerful and effective magic) do get mentioned, those things are limited to Paganism as anyone who's studied them will tell you.
A rare bit of poignancy is injected into the modern story, as Agnes's aunt relays the message of many indigenous peoples, the idea that what they consider sacred sacred and sacrosanct remains are considered historical artifacts to be dug up, picked at, and disrespected by a large amount of the population. A delicate (and again, rare) turn of the plot has Aunt Miriam realizes a balance can be struck in order to tell the story of the ancestors, a quiet note of a lesson for both the seasoned historian Ellman and for the youth who generally acquiesces to her aunt's wishes, but doesn't really understand the fuss over what to her are just old things.