|Witches| - Diana Wynne Jones' "Aunt Maria" - Book Review
Let’s.
Talk. Witches.
Oh,
do I love witches. But what did I just read?
What
an interesting composition does this book have! Rather than being told the
story on a positive level through the witches’ perspective, I am reading the
story of a pretty much evil witch on her interest on the lives of this mundane,
innocent woman and her two children. As an advocate for the new trope of
witches (the ones that are younger and badass and independent but are in no
mean evil because they keep to themselves) having read this was a nice change
of perspective for me. Even if what Aunt Maria is doing is not entirely out of
malice, her excessive use of magic to get things done her way is well-done on a
comedic level. Seeing the sweet Aunt Maria getting angry for the oddest things
was scary. There’s nothing scarier than an old woman, let alone an old witch.
Mig
(An interesting nickname for “Margaret”) was a nice character whose development
I saw blooming throughout the story, going from your typical young girl
protagonist to a brave young woman who has to go through the weirdest of trials
to help her mother and her brother from being taken in the magical hands of her
powerful great-aunt. While reading I was hoping for things to get solved faster
(it takes so looooong to get interesting. Or maybe am I just too impatient?)
and to figure out how this entire mess with the zombies, the cat, the ghost and
Chris-turned-into-a-werewolf was going to end up.
It
was a good little twist right there. But I don’t know if it merited so long for
me to get invested again. It felt like I read too many pages of
well-descriptive scenarios but then the climax and the resolution came too fast
for me to appreciate. Like a roller coaster going up and the fall is ten
seconds long.
Witches
are one of the few representations of female powers, and even though the story
wasn’t what I planned it to be, I did enjoy how mischievous Aunt Maria could
end up being with her power. In kind of a “I love to hate her” kind of
relationship. Women always seem to play the role of damsel in distress,
vulnerable and easy to kill. Powerless. To see Aunt Maria be a powerful,
independent witch was a recognizable change for an annoyingly-used archetype.
It
deals with the topics of maintaining good stability when it comes to relationships
and power.
Whether
witches belong in the fantasy or the horror genre it really depends on the
story and the decision of the author. For this particular story, I’m not so
sure! I feel like it falls more on the fantasy category, but there’s definitely
some aspects of horror in this!
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