By Heidi Simmons
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The Witching Hour
By Anne Rice
Fiction
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A black silhouette of a hunched woman flying on a broom while hideously cackling, hair aloft, frock flapping as she sails over the world below is one of the iconic images of Halloween. The witch! Although frightening and hardly a creature you want to meet, it is the ordinary appearing witch next door that we most fear. In Anne Rice’s epic tale, The Witching Hour (Random House, 1056 pages) the reader is introduced to a very serious coven of witches.
The story is driven by two beautiful, intelligent and successful people who come together in a most unexpected way. Rowan Mayfair is out on her yacht when she pulls Michael Curry from the freezing waters of San Francisco Bay and brings the man back to life after resuscitation. What seems purely a coincidence is really an evil orchestration to manipulate the innocent two in order to bring back Lasher, a powerful entity and ancient master of an infamous witches coven.
When Michael recovers he now has psychic powers and is challenged to understand his near death experience. He is certain he was in contact with someone on the “other side” and made a promise he cannot recall. When Rowan is compelled to help Michael understand his visions, they become lovers. They soon realize they both have roots in New Orleans, which leads to a very specific house. And to both their surprise, discover Rowan is a witch.
She is not just any witch, Rowan is the only living heir in a matrilineal line of powerful and wealthy witches with a documented history back to sixteenth century France. A group called the Talamasca, with their own extra sensory abilities, have been keeping track and monitoring the coven in detail since its beginnings.
It is through the concise records of the Talamasca that we learn about witches and their abilities to cure and curse. Their knowledge of illness and healing is often misunderstood leading to their capture and burning at the stake. Other times the witches’ power is misused or manipulated. Sometimes there is a fine line between good and evil acts. The coven was driven out of Europe to the island of Saint-Dominique (now Haiti) before settling in the southern United States.
When Rowan realizes she is pregnant, she and Michael marry and move into the magnificent New Orleans mansion built by her Mayfair family. Rowan takes possession of the house and her role as head witch in the Mayfair legacy.
Michael restores the house and garden to pristine condition. But all is not well. Lasher, whose presence haunts the property, also wants to be restored back to being human so he can take his rightful place as the coven master. Unfortunately for Rowan, the only way to do that is through a human fetus. Hers.
Rowan hopes to defeat Lasher but she is unsuccessful. Michael battles the demon witch Lasher, but is left alone in his beautiful home believing Rowan is a good witch and will someday return. The Witching Hour is the first volume in Rice’s “Mayfair Witches” trilogy.
This story could be told in half the pages or less. But then it wouldn’t be Anne Rice. Rice clearly has a love for history, architecture, New Orleans and San Francisco. She obviously enjoys writing about beautiful things and is a romantic who indulges in the details. And she does it exquisitely. The restoration of the mansion is better than a Home & Garden TV episode.
Though The Witching Hour lags in parts, and there are sequences that are impossible to put down. The imagery is so rich you can smell the pungent lantana, feel the salty ocean breeze and taste the velvety wine. Make no mistake, the novel must be given ample time (and it takes time to get through a thousand pages). If you have patience for it, the book can wrap around you and pull you in with the grip of a supernatural spell.
Witches are a curious bunch and it is hard not to find them intriguing. They have been a part of our world since the start of history. They are human and not immortal. Some are good, others are evil. It is a clan that is dominated and run by women. Perhaps what scares us most about witches is that they are mysterious creatures. If we do not fully understand them, maybe it’s that we simple choose not to.
