The Witches

 

Image credit: Penguin NZ

After (finally) closing the cover of what is considered one of the most masterful and challenging works in literature: Moby-Dick, you had better believe that my next reading experience had to be light, breezy, and fun. So I went back to one of my favourite childhood authors and plucked one if his darker and more frightening books from the shelf: The Witches.

A tale of horror and bravery, told in that classic nonchalant Dahl-esque way, The Witches tells the exciting story of a little boy who lives with his grandmother who is in the habit of telling him horrible and exciting stories and facts about witches. While at first he doesn’t believe her, he soon experiences first-hand the horrifying power of witches when he and another boy are captured and transformed into mice. They manage to escape being squashed and reconvene with his grandmother. Together the three of them come up with a plan to eradicate all the witches in England, including the fearsome Grand High Witch who just happens to be staying in the same hotel. 

Made into two major films, The Witches is one of Roald Dahl’s more dark and scary stories, not only in various points of its narrative, but also in its lack of a conventionally happy ending. A larger volume than most of his other works, this is the book that harbours some more dramatic life lessons for its younger readers. The most prominent being that not everything ends the way you want it to and sometimes you have to adapt to dramatic changes in your life. 

Image credit: IT Irish Times

A number of smaller and twisted stories make up the central narrative and help to flesh out the world and establish the drama, but which conclude in a relatively unhappy way. However Dahl, with his frank and happily nonchalant narrative tone manages to dial down the drama and sinisterness of these stories, making them seem not so scary and therefore, the lesson easier to swallow. 

Despite the horrific implications of the villains and their plots, the book reads with an aspiring and endearing optimistic tone, which makes it all the more compelling. And like many of Dahl’s works, The Witches makes great heroes out of unlikely age groups, a truly lovely flourish.

Author: Roald Dahl, 1983

Published: Jonathan Cape (Great Britain). Farrar, Straus, & Giroux (USA), 1983.