Oct 30

Oct 30 Witches

Author: Brenda Lozano, translated by Heather Cleary
Publisher: Catapult
Goodreads | The StoryGraph

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Note: Content and trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.

Cover Description

The beguiling story of a young journalist whose investigation of a murder leads her to the most legendary healer in all of Mexico, from one of the most prominent voices of a new generation of Latin American writers

Paloma is dead. But before she was murdered, before she was even Paloma, she was a traditional healer named Gaspar. Before she was murdered, she taught her cousin Feliciana the secrets of the ceremonies known as veladas, and about the Language and the Book that unlock their secrets.

Sent to report on Paloma's murder, Zoe meets Feliciana in the mountain village of San Felipe. There, the two women's lives twist around each other in a danse macabre. Feliciana tells Zoe the story of her struggle to become an accepted healer in her community, and Zoe begins to understand the hidden history of her own experience as a woman, finding her way in a hostile environment shaped by and for men.

Weaving together two parallel narratives that mirror and refract one another, this extraordinary novel envisions the healer as storyteller and the writer as healer, and offers a generous and nuanced understanding of a world that can be at turns violent and exultant, cruel and full of hope.

TL;DR Review

Witches is an absolutely beautifully written (and translated!) novel told in alternating POVs. I was more engaged with the first half than the second, but still enjoyed it overall.

For you if: You like translated novels, and those that examine gender and Indigenous issues.

Full Review

Thank you, Catapult, for sending me a copy of Witches! I’m slowly making my way into more translated literature, and I was drawn in by the synopsis right away. Verdict: This book is absolutely beautifully written (and translated!). I was a bit more engaged with the first half than the second (although I got very busy so that was almost certainly a ME thing), but I think it was a great literary fiction choice for October.

The novel is told in alternating POVs — one of Feliciana, an Indigenous Oaxacan healer (curandera); and one of Zoe, a reporter who lives in Mexico City. Feliciana’s cousin, Paloma, who is a third gender recognized by her people called Muxe and taught Feliciana everything she knows of being a curandera, has been killed. Zoe travels to interview her about it — but ends up much more changed than she ever expected.

The most noteworthy part of this novel is the language, which speaks to Brenda Lozano’s original as well as Heather Cleary’s translation. I loved Feliciana’s voice, and how Cleary seems to have preserved her looping, lyrical cadence. The whole book is very immersive and culturally rich, even in translation.

I also loved the alternating POV structure. This is one of those books where it really does the work a favor, from a craft perspective. Each narrative needs the other, plays off the other, builds off the other, until we have something greater than the sum of the parts. The story deals with sisterhood, gender and gender roles, tradition vs modernity, Indigenous vs western approaches to life and thought, and above all, the power of the stories inherent to us and how they shape our bodies and lives.

If you’re looking to read more novels translated from Spanish, or if you just love books that feel the tiniest bit witchy, give this one a shot.