I had a big issue with this book

追加: 2026-05-12

[00:00:00][music] >> Hello. I'm in my garden again today because I wanted to take advantage of this lovely backdrop where the wisteria has just fully flowered, so I can have a ladies in lavender moment while I talk about this weird book that I just read, and I thought it had quite an intriguing premise to it and some interesting elements, but I had quite a big issue with this story. It is The Witch by Marie NDiaye, and it is translated from the French by Jordan Stump. It was first published in France way back in 1996, so quite a long time ago, but it was only just recently published here in the UK, and there have been some very varied responses from readers about this book, where some absolutely hated it, and some others quite enjoyed it, but a lot of readers that enjoyed it, I've seen them struggle to kind of articulate what they think the meaning of this book is, because it's quite ambiguous, and of course it can be interpreted a number of different ways, and I do have some ideas about what I think it means, but yeah, I was so looking forward to this because the the author is a big fan of Joyce Carol Oates' novel Blonde, and of course I'm a massive Joyce Carol Oates fan, and yeah, I really liked the sound of the premise, a kind of contemporary set witch story in a kind of domestic setting, and it it does feel like a fable, a kind of modern fable, and it's a suburban satire, and a domestic nightmare, because we follow the narrator of this novel, Lucy, who is a witch, and she comes from a lineage of of witcheries, but she only has quite limited powers, and we at the very beginning she wants to train her daughters in the art of witchcraft, but they're not all that interested in it, even though they show a lot of aptitude and ability for it. So, we see her struggling, and I think she is quite sympathetic at first, but became much less so for me over the course of the novel, because she is not only very witchy, but she is very She is extremely judgmental about other people she meets, especially about their size.

[00:02:41]She often judges people for their fatness, and there are so many examples in this story when she is criticizing people for their weight, and I kind of struggled to to understand why she was doing this, although I and I think one of the meanings of this story is potentially how we see the main character at this point in her life where she feels like she should be at the height of her powers, and she should be feeling completely fulfilled because she has a home and a quite successful husband, and she has two daughters, but things are spiraling out of control for her, and she is really struggling.

[00:03:32]So, I think part of the the answer of maybe why she is kind of judging people so harshly is she is lashing out because she feels extremely insecure about her position, even though she feels like, you know, she should have it all, but gradually over the course of the story she kind of loses everything, and so, yeah, I think that's one possible reason for her doing this, but honestly, I don't understand why she does it so much throughout the novel, and why people are judged so much for their size. Just the the amount of times, and I'll just give you a couple of examples of this. So, there's one quote where it says, "Might I have been a touch envious of Lily, but what was there to envy about that fat young sister-in-law determined to make something of herself?" And then there is another quote where she says, "She seemed miraculously to have become just what she must have been in the eyes of strangers passing by, a round brutish woman, narrow-eyed, dull-witted, and underhanded."

[00:04:46]And I I think that's part of my issue with this story is it's not just that she has this prejudice about people and their weights, but it is also assumed that everyone else shares this opinion as well, that her her daughters kind of reflect this and say like, "Oh, yeah, we wouldn't want to know her. She's too fat." And that there's this sense that that other people, you know, share this opinion as well, that they immediately judge somebody based on their weight, and that just seemed such a bizarre element of the the story to me, and didn't really add anything to it at all.

[00:05:26]It just felt like it was making these snide comments about all of the characters, and almost all of the characters are quite nasty, horrible people. They they act out really badly.

[00:05:37]Most of the men in this story, they want to escape from their their wives and their children, and and or they they act they handle their finances very very badly, but also, yeah, there there are lots of characters in this story that are very judgmental, and so, one of Lucy's, well, kind of her only friend or friend of me, someone that she describes as barely more than a name neighbor, is Isabel, who is quite large, and she makes comment about this constantly, but she also comments on the the men's weight in this story as well, and so there's one point in the novel that her husband starts to gain some weight, and she makes a lot of comments about this, and yeah, I so it's just such a persistent feature of the story that just felt so unnecessary to me, and it's not that I have a problem of reading about a character that, you know, has prejudices and has bad opinions like this, and is a really, you know, problematic character, but it's that this wasn't critiqued in any way.

[00:06:59]That there are ways of portraying, you know, characters like this, of of maybe, you know, she is like staring at someone's stomach, but then they might react and, you know, pull their their shirt down or stretch their shirt out because they're suddenly self-conscious that they're being watched and judged in this way, and and so it felt like there was no critique of her behavior. Also, it felt like maybe it was like trying to be funny, and I've heard a number of readers comment that this is quite a a humorous novel, and I can get that it can be very dark humor as well. There was a New York Times review of this book where it it describes how humor is such a strong part of the book, and part of that humor comes out of >> [snorts] >> they claim that of all of the characters um being so judgmental and horrible to each other that kind of your only response can be to just laugh about it.

[00:07:58]I mean, there's a boy in this story who is who's treated horribly. I mean, he's just like constantly horrible comments are being made about him, and he's just this innocent little boy that that people are are judging all of the time.

[00:08:13]So, I mean, I feel like all of the characters are judged in this way, but there's just such an emphasis on people's weight throughout the entire novel that I I found it really uncomfortable to read, and I I didn't find it funny. I I it just felt like, "Oh, these people are just being horrible for no reason." And like I said, maybe it is like defensive measure on her part, and there's an interesting later part of the the story as well, when she becomes a teacher, and it's described how the other work women working alongside her are also quite thin, and but and feel quite insecure in their lives, like they've come to this teaching position, which they know is complete BS, but that they have to do out of necessity. And so, it feels like they form this kind of coven of women in teaching at this academy, which is complete nonsense and and doesn't make any sense. And so, another I think interpretation or or possible meaning of this book is of how, you know, traditionally, hundreds of years ago when women were persecuted as witches, this usually occurred because men felt that these women had too much power, or they were strange, and so they were persecuted in this way, whereas I put in a contemporary setting where we have had decades of progress recently in feminism, and women have gained a lot more rights. So, it feels like that women should have the the autonomy and power that they want, whereas this character of Lucy feels like she hasn't reached her potential. Um she is so limited in her powers that she is able to use some witchcraft and she can see a bit into the future, but just really inconsequential things. And she has this sense that her both her mother, who does is quite a powerful witch, and her daughters, which have a lot of natural aptitude aptitude for for witchcraft, are just kind of squandering this ability or just using it for mundane things like predicting the weather for the next day or what beverage they're going to be served. And so, it feels like part of this is her frustration and and feeling like the women around her also aren't reaching the the full potential of the times we live in when there's been been so much progress for equality in our society between men and women. So, I think maybe that's one possible meaning of it or way of interpreting it, but there are so many elements to this story. I mean, it's quite random and wild. There There's There's quite a lot that happens in this novel even though it's it's really quite short and it does move through a lot of different events at quite a fast pace. And so, like the the plot really isn't the point of the story. I I think it's more about being completely enveloped in her perspective and following her to this very strange end in the story, but I I found I I couldn't really fully connect with it in the way I wanted to and in the way the story, you know, felt like it promised it might give from the the premise of this novel.

[00:12:09]And I found myself towards the end of the book as I was getting to the last few pages. I I kind of felt like, "Well, I could just put this aside and I don't really need to know what happens at the very end." It It didn't really matter all that much to me. And honestly, even though I just finished reading this novel today, I can't remember exactly what happened at the end, but there are quite a lot of random events throughout the book that I can recall. And there was one moment in the novel that I found quite funny when she There's this element to the story where she gets this idea that, "Well, if I'm failing in my life in other ways, the one thing I want to do is bring my parents back together, who have separated." And so, she tries to arrange this. Although, her parents tell her separately like, "No, this is never going to happen. We are very glad to be apart." But she kind of forces this meeting of them together. And it is And then something occurs to her father, and I won't give away what that was, but I did find that element of the story quite funny. But yeah, the rest of the novel I just didn't find funny. I just found it uncomfortable. It's like, "Like, why are you obsessing about people's weight like this?" It just seemed so yeah, bizarre to me and and kind of inexplicable and had nothing really to do with the the plot. I couldn't tell if the author wanted us really to to laugh along with these jokes she was making about people's weight or if she she meant us to feel critical of Lucy. I'm not really sure and I can't really tell and I think that's kind of an issue with the novel that that's not so much me.

[00:13:55]And so often it feels like being overweight is kind of shorthand for being gluttonous or lazy or stupid because all of the characters that are overweight have this about them. It's It's kind of a shorthand of like an old style of of writing where people are made to be villainous because, you know, they they have a scar or some kind of deformity that that sets them up against other people and and makes you instantly think, "Oh, yeah, that person is bad."

[00:14:29]So, maybe I'm judging this novel in that it just didn't do what I was hoping it would do or or how I thought it could be developed and the author took it in another direction, but yeah, overall, it didn't work for me.

[00:14:45]But if you have read this novel, I would love to hear what you think about it or if you're intrigued now to to try it out and see what you think, I would be glad to hear about that. But I hope you're doing well and reading good things. I'll speak to you again soon. Bye-bye.