The Hour of the Witch by Chris Bohjalian

Book Review

Have you read Hour of the Witch? If so, I would LOVE to hear your thoughts! Thank you Doubleday Books for my gifted copy!

You likely know this author from The Flight Attendant, which I didn’t read, but I absolutely LOVED the HBO Max series. I was hoping I would love this story just as much, but I found it far too convoluted and occasionally downright infuriating.

The story takes place in Boston in the early 1620s, which was the height of the witch trials in Salem - just a stone’s throw from Boston. The protagonist, Mary, is a devout puritan married to an older man who thinks quite little of her and often uses violence to put her in her place (TW: domestic violence). After Mary’s husband, Thomas, stabs her with a three-pronged fork in a fit of rage, she mounts a legal battle to divorce him. During the divorce proceedings, Mary is accused of witchcraft for the presence of the three-pronged fork (a sign of the devil) as well as several other loosely related “signs of evil.”

For starters, the dialogue is all written in old-english, which drove me BANANAS. Secondly, I found the divorce proceedings exceptionally tedious - which took up half the book. The second half of the book was far more interesting, but by that point, my interest was already waning. Third, the religious overtones were FAR too much for me. Between the absurd beliefs that permeated the Puritan society to the incredibly oppressive treatment of women… I found myself feeling angry or annoyed for the majority of the book (although to be fair, those things were an accurate representation of New England in the 1600s). Fourth, I didn’t much care for Mary or any of the other characters. While I felt sympathetic to her circumstances, I found her rather dull and weak.

I did enjoy the ending of the book, as Mary’s character finally develops some substance beyond being a damsel in distress; but overall, this one just wasn’t for me. Though I’ve seen many positive reviews, so perhaps I’m just an outlier. 🤷🏼‍♀️

⭐️⭐️💫/5