Casting a spell on the Big Apple

Crafty heroines take Manhattan in McKay novel

BOOK REVIEW livelihoods, their reputations and their very lives. A killer is lurking in the shadows of the city, a zealot who burns with a purifying fire. Meanwhile, a man of science seeks to explore (or is it exploit?) Beatrice’s rapidly emerging powers, while the lingering traces of a romantic relationship may spell the end of the tea shop, and of the sisterhood.

As that brief summary suggests, there’s a lot going on in The Witches of New York, and the novel unfolds with a hurtling intensity. But McKay doesn’t let the compulsive momentum interfere with her deeper explorations of her characters.

Shifting between the novel’s main figures, McKay is able to tease out hidden depths and contradictions with ease, revealing the characters in their confounding (and occasionally off-putting) complexity.

The focus of the novel is resolutely (and rightly) upon the women, although this means that the main villains are a bit thin, a touch pro-forma. One barely notices, however.

In addition to the welldeveloped individuals, McKay places the very idea of witchcraft in the foreground, tracing elements of its history and its fundamental beliefs through spells, verses and passages incorporated from Eleanor’s grimoire, seemingly countered with newspaper articles detailing scientific discoveries and advertisements warning about the evils of witches.

In many ways, the novel is a labour of love, and a testament to the craft. In her author’s note, McKay describes learning partway through the writing of the book that one of her ancestors, her “nine times greataunt Mary Ayer Parker” was hanged for witchcraft in the seventeenth century. This discovery seems to have galvanized the writing of the novel, providing a personal stake for the author and giving the novel the air of a rallying cry. (McKay’s writing thrives on personal connection: The Birth House was inspired, at least in part, by the midwife who had lived in the house which McKay and her husband later moved into, while The Virgin Cure was inspired, in part, by her great-great grandmother “Dr. Sadie”, who worked with street children in New York in the mid-19th century). Threaded throughout The Witches of New York, sometimes explicitly, sometimes subtextually, is a question for the destiny of young women: “princess or witch?” Beatrice, Eleanor and Adelaide have made their choice; the novel is a story of the consequences of that decision, an examination of different kinds of power, of previously littleexplored potential.

For all its ideas, its imperatives, The Witches of New York is a keenly pleasurable reading experience, and over all too soon. One cannot help but want to spend more time in the company of these witches, and, unless appearances are deceiving, there may be an opportunity in the future. By the end of The Witches of New York, there are enough strands left dangling that it seems very possible there may be a sequel in the offing, if not a trilogy.

To quote the witches, “So may it be.”