A Mirror for Witches Book

A Mirror for Witches (1928) - Esther Forbes
Dark, powerful and wonderfully wrought! You're probably familiar with the author for her book Johnny Tremain, but i did not know of this book written 15 years earlier for older readers. Highly recommended. There is much here to discuss when read in a book group.

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What follows aren't spoilers, but if you want to read this
book knowing nothing before you start, then go do that.
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This book uses a sort of unreliable narrator (sometimes a dislikable narrator) to great affect. If a story's context is the distorted beliefs and prejudice of a collective group, placing the narrator with the group and having the gap lie between the reader and narrator adds extra stress and drama to the story. This dissonance forces the reader to do the work to make moral sense of the story and increases the reader's bond with a main character isolated on the outside. The risk is having the reader swayed inordinately by the narrator and joining the distorted world of the group. This story never fails in this risk although at moments i found myself dramatically flickering along the edge. Adding to the sense of drama, is this book's realistic "period voice", which again adds work and reward to the reader.

[I'd love to hear a comment if you can think of a story that takes this sort of risk and fails.:]

About the illustrations in the book: The wood cuts by Robert Gibbings are a pleasing blend of influence from the novel's time and a sort of style contemporary to their creation in the 1920s.

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Very minor spoilers ahead.
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I really love that the reader's bond with the isolated includes the main character and the [non-human:] animals.

Quite a zing in that final sentence don't you think? Interesting that it seems to break the time setting through to today.

Quote from book:
... in that world of witchery which none today will ever see. For in those days there were sights and wonders that will not come again. In those days God was nearer to man than He is to-day, and where God is there also must be His Evil Opponent -- the Prince of Lies, for show me Paradise, and there around a corner, I will show you Hell.