Review: The Witch of Cologne

One of the many, many, MANY things I've done in the past 10 days while in Chicago was finishing Tobsha Learner's The Witch of Cologne. I was a fan of Learner's Soul (2008), which I found highly enjoyable (but not "unputdownable" as one critic lauded), so I was pretty eager to test this one out.

The Witch of Cologne is set in the late 17th century Germany, when the chaos of the Thirty Year's War, the plague, the Spanish Inquisition, and racism still rocked the fledging country-state of Cologne. The main character, Ruth, is a Jewish (actually she's more modern-atheist-Jewish than medieval-Jewish) midwife whose dangerous ideas about philosophy, science, and mankind land her firmly in opposition with the Inquisition. As if that wasn't hard enough, the book is replete with gory details of medieval life that make it a marvel anyone survived long enough to breed more miserable miscreants.

Genre: historical fiction

Plot: Learner started strong, really strong, but she got carried away a la Peter "which ending is the real one?" Jackson. There were at least 3 times when I was confounded by uncomfortable juxtaposition between the emotional closure I felt on the page and the blunt fact that there were still more pages to read. On top of this, the novel was just far too predictable. The climax was hardly climactic (unlike the numerous, NUMEROUS sexual liasons) and the offing of the main villain just plain weird. It felt very deus ex machina, and I found myself once again saddened that a plot with such promise was sacrificed to poor planning on the author's part. The biggest problem was that it was dragged on too far and lost a good deal of the emotional energy an earlier closing in the plot would have provided.

Plus, I for one got bored reading about a certain priest's fondness for cunnilingus (6 different instances, by the way).

The supernatural elements were gimmicky, too. Even as a woman of faith I found them far too Hollywood to be very effective, and particularly the aforementioned final scene of the inquisitor. I nearly laughed aloud. But the tension that Ruth felt between science/logic/knowledge and faith/superstition/the supernatural is a real enough one that I and many of my friends can relate to. I guess I can say one good thing about this book after all!

Structure: Learner's book is divided into 10 sections which roughly (I imagine) follow the 10 divisions of the Kabbala holy book, the Zohar. A good idea, perhaps, but often I failed to see the connection between plot and supposed heading, so it ended up just feeling rather arbitrary.

Execution and Style: If there was a portion of this book that wasn't mediocre at best, this was it. Learner writes beautifully, although Jasper Fforde she is not. Still, her background as a playwright is quite clear in the theatrical atmosphere, and she writes almost entirely in the third-person present tense.

Theme: The Thirty Year's War, Benedict Spinoza, Kabbalism, Lilith, medival midwifery

Read This If: you're feeling medieval-y but all your D&D friends are out LARPing without you.

2 out of 5 stars.

Other Works:
Soul
Quiver (anthology)

If you liked this, you might also like:
Philippa Gregory's The Other Boleyn Girl
Ken Follett's World Without End
Theresa Tomlinson's The Forestwife