When Minerva was young, her Nana Alba would begin all her stories with, “When I was a young woman, there were still witches,” but they were just that —stories, tales to entertain her younger self that did not predicate their existence. Now, Minerva is not so sure. A grad student studying all things horror, Minerva became fascinated by the woman horror writer Beatrice Tremblay, whose novel The Vanishing was inspired by Stoneridge College, the institution Minerva currently attends. Remaining at Stoneridge over the winter break, Minerva plans to pour all of her attention into wrapping up her untouched thesis. As she continues her research, Minerva uncovers the extent to which Beatrice was inspired by her own time at Stoneridge through an unpublished manuscript in which Beatrice detailed the events leading up to the disappearance of her college roommate, Virginia Somerset. Eerily, the signs surrounding the disappearance of half a century ago echo in the present, and Minerva swears she feels an evil force watching her steps. Finishing her thesis will require her to plumb deeper into Beatrice’s life, but uncovering the truth may come at the price of Minerva becoming a cautionary tale.
Writing in the tradition of New England horror, Silvia Moreno-Garcia returns with The Bewitching, a tale of witches tethered across generations and one grad student’s descent into the dark magic at work on her college campus. If Silvia Moreno-Garcia writes it, I’m reading it. That has been the case ever since I first read Mexican Gothic back in the early days of the pandemic and fell in love with her craft, and it is still true today. Silvia Moreno-Garcia is a masterful storyteller. Her ability to immerse readers in her richly detailed landscapes and characters, regardless of the time period or the genre has always confounded me, but I am nevertheless grateful for it. The Bewitching is the latest witch struck tale to round out her lengthy backlist. This time, Moreno-Garcia spotlights the eerily quiet winter period on a Massachusetts college campus and an incoming thesis deadline, which is already its own kind of horror. Shifting between multiple timelines and integrating the lost manuscript of Beatrice Tremblay, Silvia Moreno-Garcia presents a different kind of witch, malevolent and intent on destroying others for their own gain. In The Bewitching, the unexpected reigns, and as something stalks the night, the hardest part is not being left forever spellbound.
The Bewitching is everything I have come to expect from Silvia Moreno-Garcia, full of mesmerizing magic, standout characters, and timelines intersecting across the decades. With her latest novel, Moreno-Garcia voices the witch stories of her childhood, where witches were malicious and preyed upon innocent victims. These stories and her own experiences attending college in New England form the bones of this story and the character of Minerva, a resident assistant funding her way through grad school in Massachusetts. This discovery of witches’ and their designs is split between several decades and the experiences of three different women, Beatrice, Minerva, and her grandmother Alba. Though entirely misaligned at its beginning, The Bewitching slowly pulls these individual narratives together into one comprehensive tale of witches and the inherent exploitation of the powerful. I put my fate in Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s talented hands, and as always, she managed to exceed my expectations at every point of this imaginative novel.
The setting in The Bewitching is simply to die for. Opening on Massachusetts in the late 1990’s, The Bewitching introduces us to Minerva as she shunts off the last of the on-campus students for winter break and picks up her incomplete thesis on Beatrice Tremblay. From the unruly peacocks prowling Stoneridge campus to the lore of the Witch Thicket, The Bewitching first finds its footing through this campus setting. Stoneridge College is built up by an expert hand, and these quirks and college legends help better frame the narrative. The unsettling mystery of Beatrice Tremblay’s missing roommate reverberates in Minerva’s research and it is through Moreno-Garcia’s strong sense of place that this first creeps up on the reader. Wandering the woods with Minerva as we accompany her on her RA rounds, to the chilling sounds in the night echo in the disappearances of days past. Yet the past cannot be left behind as an unseen force prowls the campus ready to strike again.
The stories of witches feel grounded in place, Stoneridge Campus for Minerva and Beatrice, and Alba’s family farm in Mexico during the early 1900’s. I have always appreciated the historical connections and deep dives Silvia instills into her novels. The Bewitching is no different in that regard. Much of this novel deals with the dichotomy between the practice of magic and nonbelievers, landowners versus city folk, and the upper and lower class. All of these are connected across timelines and Silvia Moreno-Garcia uses them to initiate the journeys of her three characters. Generational knowledge has a real power here and connection through storytelling tethers Alba and her granddaughter Minerva in the present day. The exploration into the exploitation of the lower class to fuel the lives of the wealthy, spiritualism of the 1930’s, and the folklore of witches are heavily scrutinized across this novel. Moreno-Garcia further challenges this notion of what makes a witch through her stories villains—not only flipping the script on witch folklore but who is truly pulling the strings.
The Bewitching is the latest in a long line of incredible novels from Silvia Moreno-Garcia. Part gothic, part horror, and part historical fiction, the true connection to her past works is that this is a standard Moreno-Garcia genre meld. The Bewitching represents all the horror writers writing on New England, and the horror within these spaces themselves. The way setting informs the horror and the cultural wounds intrinsically tied to a place is central to this novel, and New England horror as a whole. If you’re up on the genre you’ll notice some clever nods to the horror writers of today and I loved dissecting those in line with the actual mystery. The Bewitching is an eerie journey through the folklore surrounding witches across three distinct decades and all of it is extraordinary. Unsettling to the extreme, I never could have expected this novel to end where it did, but I’m afraid that’s yet another Silvia Moreno-Garcia standard. Come for the chaotic grad student desperately trying to finish her thesis, and stay for the real horror underlying a New England college and decapitation unknowingly tethering a family together (no further comment).
Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for providing this arc to review.
Trigger warnings: blood, death, gore, murder, animal death, incest, sexual assault
Literaryrobin 