About the Book
Over a hundred years ago, the citizens of F- did something rather bad. And local school teacher Catherine Evans has made writing the definitive account of what happened when Ilsbeth Clark drowned in the well her life’s work.
The town’s people may not want their past raked up, but Catherine is determined to shine a light upon that shameful event. For Ilsbeth was an innocent, after all. She was shunned and ostracised by rumour-mongers and ill-wishers and someone has to speak up for her. And who better than Catherine, who has herself felt the sting and hurt of such whisperings?
But then a childhood friend returns to F -. Elena is a successful author whose book, The Whispers Inside: A Reawakening of the Soul, has earned her a certain celebrity. In search of a new subject, she takes an interest in the story of Ilsbeth Clark and announces her intention to write a book about the long-dead woman, focusing on the natural magic she believes she possessed.
And Elena has everything Catherine has not, like a platform and connections and no one seems to care that Elena’s book will be pure speculation, tainting Ilsbeth’s memory rather than preserving it. Catherine is determined that something must be done and plots to blunt her rival’s pen. However she had not allowed for the fact that the past might not be so dead after all – that something is reaching out from the well, disturbing her reality.
Before summer’s over, one woman will be dead, the other accused of murder . . . but is she really guilty, or are there other forces at work? And who was Ilsbeth Clark, really? An innocent? A witch? Or something else entirely?
Format: eARC (304 pages) Publisher: Bantam Press
Publication date: 23rd February 2023 Genre: Contemporary Fiction, Mystery, Fantasy
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My Review
The publisher describes The Witch in the Well as ‘a deliciously disturbing Gothic tale of a revenge reaching out across the years’. There are elements that match that description, notably the sections entitled ‘The Nicksby Documents’ which have a really fantastical, malevolent and creepy feel. Unfortunately I found the modern day storyline less diverting. It essentially depicts the increasingly fractious relationship between two women, Catherine and Elena, who were once childhood playmates but are now involved in a rivalry about who has the right to tell Ilsbeth Clark’s story.
Neither of the women are particularly likeable. Elena is a prolific poster on social media, a fan of hashtags and an advocate of listening to the voice of one’s SOUL (her capital letters, not mine). For her, the ancient well is not a place of menace but somewhere magical, hence it being her favourite place for her morning yoga workout. She believes she has formed a spiritual connection with Ilsbeth and is possessed by the idea that she can use this to prove the existence of ‘good magic’. Unfortunately, the situation is rather different, creepily different in fact.
On the other hand, Catherine sees Ilsbeth as a victim of prejudice, like so many other women through history, and is intent on bringing this injustice to light. Catherine can’t stop herself posting instalments from an open letter to the inhabitants of F- in response to their accusations against her. She feels she’s the victim of a modern day ‘witch hunt’. Unsurprisingly, comments such as ‘In my humble experience, none of you are geniuses’ don’t endear her to the local people. And her unfiltered posts which include conversations with her family and her lawyer, Louise don’t go down well either. Responding to Catherine’s protestation that she felt she had to write it all down, Louise says, ‘Then keep a journal, for God’s sake! You don’t have to paste it all over the internet!’. Quite.
A combination of folk tale, horror story and mystery, the book incorporates a number of narrative structures, including Elena’s journal, Catherine’s Facebook posts, emails, excerpts from Catherine’s novel about Ilsbeth Clark and the aforementioned ‘Nicksby Documents’ written by an unnamed author but whose identity it’s not too difficult to guess . The latter was probably the most successful bit of the book for me but overall the story felt rather disjointed and moved a bit too slowly.
I received a review copy courtesy of Bantam Press via NetGalley.
About the Author
Camilla Bruce was born in central Norway and grew up in an old forest, next to an Iron Age burial mound. She has a master’s degree in comparative literature, and have co-run a small press that published dark fairy tales. Camilla currently lives in Trondheim with her son and cat. (Photo: Twitter profile)
Connect with Camilla
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What Cathy Read Next... 
Gothic novels tend not to have my name on them, and your review did nothing to change my mind that this might be The One.
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