|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!