Week 8

I feel like we’re reaching the state of…winter? Pandemic? Pandemic winter?

Where all the days kind of blur together and I have trouble separating them out, or feeling like I am doing anything particularly meaningful with my days.

Anyway, books!

#11) THE WITCH’S HEART by Genevieve Gornichec

I’d like to begin by saying that I did actually LIKE this book, eventually.

It did take a while to get there. Like, at least 100 pages, possibly much more than that. I think there were a bunch of factors, one of which being that if I wanted to hear about a woman suffering with a deadbeat husband, I’d just call up a couple of my friends (badum tss).

I think part of my disconnect comes from the fact that so much about this story ends up being about the bond between mother and daughter, and it just didn’t quite connect for me. I’ve enjoyed similar stories in the past (The Broken Earth trilogy comes obviously to mind), and it did eventually come together, but woo was there a rough patch in the middle there.

Perhaps this is due to timing/length; the book is fairly short, for what it’s trying to do, only just over 300 pages. The obvious comparison is to Madeline Miller’s Circe, which I must say I enjoyed more and seems to me to be perhaps a hundred pages or so longer.

Several parts of the book feel a little like flyovers; I didn’t ever quite connect to Angrboda’s relationship with Loki, and therefore later scenes didn’t hold as much emotional depth as they could have. Similarly, much of the book feels like other characters recounting the Prose Edda to the main character and therefore also the reader.

The other thing that sticks in my mind is the odd glossing over of queer elements. Not to say that they’re missing entirely, but there’s inconsistency in how they’re portrayed, especially with regards to Loki. It’s referenced that the other gods scorn him for being unmanly, but this never really goes anywhere or is addressed in any depth, perhaps due to lack of time.

I’m not sure if perhaps Gornichec preferred not to tackle this particular element, which is fair enough (either because that would make a different story, or because it didn’t fit with this), but it did stick a bit oddly with me, particularly because Loki himself makes a joke about being a “man in a dress” that sat strangely IMO.

Again, I did actually enjoy this book! I liked the depiction of Skadi, whom I knew little about prior to this book, and I really liked how Hel was written. Like I said, I did eventually connect with the emotions of the book and once there, I found them compelling, it just took me a little longer than I would have perhaps preferred to get there.

Perhaps I just don’t know enough about Norse mythology. Or perhaps I have listened to The Bifrost Incident too much recently.