Book Review - Anne Rice's The Witching Hour
The Witching Hour by Anne Rice
Published by: Ballantine Books
Publication Date: October 19th, 1990
Format: Kindle, 1,058 Pages
Rating: ★★
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The Talamasca is a secret society whose mission is to monitor the supernatural. There motto is "We watch. And we are always here." They do not get involved, they document. But there have been mishaps along the way. They have been watching the Mayfair Witches since the 1600s when the secret order became irrevocably entwined with the Mayfairs when one of their members, Petyr van Abel, begat a child by Deborah Mayfair. Deborah was the daughter of the first Mayfair Witch, Suzanne, a clever woman at a time when clever women were often put to the stake. Both mother and daughter would feel the flames in their lifetimes. A rare instance when a witch hunt caught the genuine article. They were the beginning of the line. A line that prospered in the new world, first in Saint-Domingue and later Louisiana. Down the generations they built an empire, first at their plantation Maye Faire, then Riverbend, and then in New Orleans at the house on First Street. Yes, they were clever, but one cannot discount supernatural assistance at the hands of Lasher, a spirit called forth from the stones at Donnelaith by Suzanne. And while all the family has some psychic abilities there is only one in each generation, the designee, who wields the power and the ability to command Lasher and the family's vast empire. They wear the Mayfair emerald as a symbol of their power. The same emerald necklace that Deborah wore when Rembrandt painted her in Amsterdam, a painting which hangs in the Talamasca Motherhouse there. After the death of Petyr van Abel at the hands of Lasher the Talamasca has twice more attempted to approach the family, both times fatally. The files on the Mayfair Witches are filled with secondhand accounts and stories. Sightings of Lasher and any intel anyone was able to give them. Gossips, lovers, servants, all were in the employee of the Talamasca and anything was fair game. And to some of the Mayfairs it was a game. They knew full well who the Talamasca were and what they were up to, but as time went on it seemed the family wanted to be ignorant of their own history. When Aaron Lightner took over the files on the Mayfair Witches he knew it would be his life's work, he just never knew he would be so intimately involved. But when poor Deirdre Mayfair dies and her daughter Rowan, the thirteenth witch, becomes the designee everything changes. Rowan has been raised in California by her adoptive mother, Ellie Mayfair. Rowan was raised in ignorance and when Ellie died she made Rowan sign a document that stated she would never return to New Orleans. But it is her destiny to return there with the man she rescued, Michael Curry. There they are to return the house on First Street to it's former glory and bring all Lasher's plans to fruition.
Anne Rice had lofty ambitions for this Gothic doorstop of a novel. She wanted it to be "as great or greater than Henry James." Instead this is if Stephenie Meyer wrote Frankenstein. Though in fairness to Anne Rice, I don't think Stephenie Meyer would have included so much incest that it would make a Targaryen blush. The Witching Hour, coming in at over a thousand pages, is very faithful to the structure of Mary Shelley, in that only the middle section of the book is worth reading. I honestly didn't know what I was getting into with this book and there were many times over the three months I slogged though it that I had to just put in down and walk away. But my struggle with the book mirrors the book's struggle with itself. The Witching Hour is in the grip of an identity crisis, it doesn't know if it wants to be an ode to the cities that Anne Rice loves, a sexually explicit YA romance, historical fiction of epic proportions, or a home improvement book. Because yes, there's an almost hundred page section of the book, "Come Into My Parlor," which is nothing but detailing the renovations of the house on First Street. This entire section could have been omitted. I did not need to know that the original pine floor was still there. And no, I didn't need to know about the linens. Oh, she's talking about the linens anyway. Please not the china. She's going for the china. All the patterns. Please no. Not the silver. NOT THE SILVER I internally scream and cry as I look in vain for her editor. Oh no, I'm learning about flue structure. Can Michael fall off the roof already at the hands of Lasher? Oh, you're choosing peach with tan curtains for the double parlor? How cliched late eighties early nineties do you want to be? Why are they cleaning during construction, shouldn't one thing follow the other no matter the speed so you don't have to clean more than once? Or, you're not going to go into that lunacy and instead tell me more about how surprisingly the swimming pool has very minimal damage for how long it was unattended. I did not need to have this in my life. And knowing that she based the house on First Street after her own house I'm wondering if this was just her instructions for her remodelers and no one bothered to notice that it somehow was thrown into this book. But she does love that house, as she does New Orleans and San Francisco, writing about the locales in the most lyrical way. I just could have done completely without Michael and Rowan and their rape fantasies with occasional conspiracies theories thrown in. When the hero and supposed heroine of the book are so annoying and milquetoast that you long for Aaron's case files on the Mayfair Witches, comprising ten parts and clocking in at around four hundred pages, maybe you want to rethink the overall concept of the book. And I do think there were times when Anne Rice rethought her plans for her characters. At over a thousand pages this book ends on a cliffhanger. Which is really shitty to do to your readers, but more so, as another reviewer pointed out, really shitty to do to your characters. Rowan's motivation completely changes in the last few chapters. Chapters that I think were rewritten to leave it open ended. Why not make it a trilogy she pondered? Again where is her editor!?! And here I am thinking I have to read two more books to even finish the story? How many months will that take me? And do I even want to try?
