THE WITCHES: Three Tales of Sorcery

by Francoise Mallet-Joris ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 22, 1969

Mme. Mallet-Joris, occasionally (ibid The Favorite) leaving present-day France where she is very successful as a popular practitioner of the novel, now provides a triptych of the 16th and early 17th century where prostrating passion often concealed itself as piety, and where ladies, both well-born and peasant girls -- prone to wild transports of ecstasy and evil -- were for burning. For example, Ann de Chantraine, as a child dragged across the countryside by a drunken father, placed with the Soeurs Noires in Lieges, and later released to a widow who with another younger man introduced her to dark spells and midnight sorties. At seventeen, she ended up on the stye. Or the arrest of Jeanne Harvilliers, tried as a witch as was her mother before her. But by far the most interesting story here is the middle one, with its more obvious psychogenic intimations, that of Elizabeth de Ranfaing -- from childhood on escaping the bitter divisiveness of her parents, or is it herself? hoping to take the veil when married to an older, invalided husband; falling in love after his death but denying her feelings to the point where she was altogether ""possessed."" Mme. Mallet-Joris' sometimes passionate prose is absorbed to a degree by the theme and the period, and these chafed spirits, trapped by an irrationale of Good and Evil, engage a certain interest. All three are based on authentic accounts of the times.

Pub Date: Sept. 22, 1969

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Farrar, Straus & Giroux

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1969

Categories: FICTION