Witch By David Cain

'A photographer hires a model to pose as a witch and gets more than he bargains for. Witch is a funny romantic comedy, suitable for all readers. 

Witch is first and foremost, a comedy; light, fun and funny. Secondly, it is a real romance, a story of the love our narrator has for his wife, the witch.
The concept of Witch arose, in part, after reading about the English witch trials that slaughtered random people for bizarrely inoffensive reasons - she has a cat, he made a drawing, they mumble a lot. It wasn’t even a philosophical religious thing - people were just mean.
Then I was thinking about modern witch comedy with the dopey husband domineering his loving witch wife and I thought, no real witch, even though she is wielding awesome magical powers, would ever tell anyone she is a witch, not even her husband. People burn people for being witches. No one must ever know. And she’d certainly never tell a dopey husband.
If she won’t confess, what can her husband do but compile evidence. Either she’s a witch or he’s crazy; he needs to know which is truth. So it begins.
Witch is much less serious than I make it sound here but there are layers of stuff going on what amounts to an open view of my adorable narrator’s heart and soul.
The real effect of Witch, I believe, will be to love the narrator and love the way he loves his wife. I think that part of the story is difficult to escape. The funny parts are funny if you think they’re funny. The love is real.
Interestingly, it’s a whole another book if you hate the narrator. Still funny but different. Witch is in the eye of the beholder.
I won’t bother to liken it to some post-war German fiction, the Mayor of Casterbridge and Browning’s poetic monologues. Lots of cultural references too, particularly for my generation to pick up on. '

This is one of those books which can be analysed from two sides. It totally depends on the readers. If they like the narrator then it would be one way of reading, if not then that would be another.

Irrespective of how the readers choose to see the narrator one thing is glaringly clear, he loves his wife, utterly, impossibly and completely. There is no denying this fact. 

He thinks his wife is a witch and to him it is not even a question, it is a fact. Yet he accepts her, he accepts her with all those qualities that makes her well...her. 

In the beginning of the story it could be felt that he lacks confidence, has low self-esteem and overall lacks any form of cunning to succeed in today's world. One would even go as far as to say that he is quite naïve. He constantly undervalues himself and puts himself down, which can be a reason for his lack of success. 

If one only reads the book and skips the epilogue it would occur to them that maybe this person is slightly on the loony side. 

Which is quite normal among creative people. Most artists tend to be a bit different than ordinary folks. It maybe that he is too much of an artist with a very vivid imagination, that would certainly justify many of his narratives. His brain is capable if producing such superb level of imagery that he mistakes those for supernatural phenomenon or 'witchiness'.
He is in fact falls among those crazy or closeted artistic geniuses.
Every person that he comes in contact with regarding his wife seems like a witch to him. 

There are references and allusions to witches in every sentence. He always calls her relations 'witches' and her, 'witch'. As if to confirm in his mind that she is indeed a witch. Everything in his life that goes well seems to him as if someone cast a spell.

Though it is doubtless that he loves her deeply, sometimes his voice turns negative, "Actually, no one said the word "obey" but I took it for granted. I would be obeying. She's a witch. I'd be taking my life into my hands by doing anything else. I will and would obey."
Yet, for most part the narrative is filled with undeniable love towards his wife and a positive sense of belonging, "She was everything I ever wanted, every dream come true.  And she had vowed her devotion to me. I am humbled when I think of that day, when she agreed to become one with me. I never hoped to be so happy and I've never forgotten that to this day.  She didn't have to cast a spell on me."

They both seem equally devoted to each other and the narrator himself have no doubt about his wife's love for him, "I believe she would sacrifice herself before she allowed me to be harmed. I'm sure I would die for her, if it came to that."

What resonates inside the readers after reading this can be summed up in one sentence ," Maybe witchcraft is a matter of definition; perhaps we are all witches, in our own way. Maybe that's the secret that explains all."

It is a very deep exploration of human psyche. While the narrator here loves his wife and has no quarrels with her being supposedly a 'witch', it could also if taken into account negatively could be the inner workings of a 'witch hunter'. The narrator being in love with his wife does not bother to do anything about his thoughts except write a book as he put it but in a different age and perhaps still now with a different person this story would have had a very different ending indeed.

It shows how very easily a person who is perhaps a bit better at everything than ordinary people can be wrongly justified as being a witch.

The narrative is wrong but quite enlightening.  In the beginning it does feel as if the narrator is a weak willed person and probably having some mental disorders but thankfully that gets resolved in the later section. The narrator can sometimes gets on one's nerves with his all time calling his wife a witch but it balances itself out with his love for her. The one fact which is mildly disappointing is that he believes Annette, one of his associates and since then starts to judge his wife as a witch. It is the turning point where he convinces himself that his wife is indeed, a witch.

The author does an excellentjob of portraying the inner psychology of the narrator. But I think if he developed the wife's character a bit more it would have been perfect. As such the readers are not given any chance to forge a relation with his wife only the narrator and thus she remains a stranger throughout the story. Very little detail is given about her, she is told entirely from her husband's perspective. The readers see her as her husband does. If the author was going for that effect then it is good but the readers would still feel a bit of void.

Overall it was a good read.

I Thank the author David Cain for sending me a copy of this book. It is very much appreciated.