The Witching Hour

(Spoilers)

The Witching Hour by Anne Rice, 1990

My reading of The Witching Hour was an homage to my parents, both of whom read it at around my age. I went into this novel on the premise of reading a fictional story about witches—finished this novel a month later (she’s a big gal—my copy has 1,038 magnificent pages) feeling that I had been fooled by the devil. I recall being frozen in my seat on the LIRR, completely disconnected from the mundane commuter sounds, thinking what the hell just happened to me? 

The novel spans 3 centuries, making our protagonist, Rowan Mayfair, a 13th generation Witch. Turns out, that’s like, definitely not a good thing to be. Rowan is raised – unaware of the Mayfair family legacy – in San Francisco, after being adopted at birth by a cousin three times removed (a very intricate family tree).

Rowan’s biological mother, 12th generation witch Deidre Mayfair, has been living catatonically in New Orleans, in her beautiful and gothic Mayfair home. She is cared for by her 4 elderly and reputedly bitter aunts, Carlotta (she’s the main hag), Nancy, Millie, and Belle. When Deidre dies, Carlotta begrudgingly makes a call to Rowan (now in her late 20s). By law it’s required Rowan be made aware of the Mayfair legacy, which states that Rowan is next in line to become matriarch of the Mayfair gothic mansion in New Orleans’ Garden District, as well as receive a very large sum of a Mayfair inheritance. The amount of this inheritance I don’t recall as being disclosed in the novel, but it is made to seem like a near infinite amount, and understood as impossible to be spent.

This is the foundation of the plot, but the novel is so intricately woven that Rowan’s story is only one chunk of the action. The novel is split into four parts; the first of which acts as exposition and provides lengthy introductions to the complex, extensive lives of the story’s most important characters. It isn’t until the end of the first part that readers are able to see how each character’s storylines interconnect . 

We have the gentlemanly, good-samaritan, Aaron Lightner, a research member of The Talamasca (a secretive group which, simply put, studies, records, and seeks to help those involved with the paranormal). Aaron has devoted a large portion of his life to his assignment studying the Mayfair case. He has slight supernatural powers of his own, which explains his involvement with this classified research group. His powers include telepathy, and he is described as having an uncanny ability to make those around him feel comfortable and willing to confide in him.

(Just for the record, Aaron Lightner is my favorite character). 

We have our male “hero” (Rowan’s love interest), Michael Curry, 48, who grew up around the New Orleans’ Garden District, and remembers from his childhood the Mayfair mansion on First Street; and has always felt drawn to it. Part of Michael’s characterization is his endearing appreciation (near obsession) for architecture and the aesthetic appeal of homes. He recalls one occasion from his boyhood of seeing the “man” (spirit) which has attached itself, generations before, to the Mayfair Witches, and he recalls it as a terrifying moment that always stuck with him but, at least then, was without consequence. In his adulthood, he moved to San Francisco and began a home-renovation business. During a depressive episode in 1985, he falls into a stupor and drowns at Ocean Beach, where he receives a vision—to him, feeling deliberate and important—and, once revived, has supernatural powers (telekinetic abilities to see memories attached to the people and objects he touches). He struggles to understand the exhaustive, all-encompassing feeling that he’s been brought back for some higher purpose, and heavily feels as though it involves the woman who saved him—Rowan, while on her boat. 

Our main character is Rowan herself, described as having features of a delicate but androgynous nature. Her characterization emphasizes her considerable intelligence and attractiveness, and she comes off as powerful, reserved, and, in my opinion, somewhat unapproachable, but is generally liked. She is a neurosurgeon—an ardent researcher of life as it is in the brain. After the death of her adoptive parents, she lives alone in their large boathouse on the shore. Her real home, however, is her boat the Sweet Christine, which I believe was gifted to her by her adoptive father, whom she did not have a good relationship with. The Sweet Christine is where she is able to feel her most authentic self. She sleeps with lousy, superficial firemen who adore her in the bottom bunk, unable to form a connection with them. On the Sweet Christine is where she decompresses the odd occurrences from her past which can not be explained by her field of science, such as the few times when people around her have died—almost at her command—and the oddly accurate diagnostic sense, revealing if her patient will live or die, she receives when performing surgery.

Part one of The Witching Hour finishes by bringing these characters together, to a hotel in New Orleans, where Rowan plans to accept her inheritance and Michael plans to follow her, as he is preternaturally convinced she will help him decode the vision he received while drowned and lead him to the overwhelming purpose he is so sure and confident in.

Aaron, who has studied all 13 generations of the Mayfair Witches, presupposes the dangers Rowan and Michael are about to get into, and he allows Michael to read the extensive Mayfair report. This report is almost the entirety of part 2, which is, if I may say, the absolute most riveting part of the novel. Gosh, it brings you someplace else. Such a complete, eerie, historically accurate transcription of 3 centuries of Witches and their powers, as well as their relations with Lasher, the cryptic spirit who latches to each of the Mayfair Witches for their sexual and monetary gratification.

You are no longer here as you’re reading this; you’re, to begin, in 1650’s Scotland with Suzanne Mayfair, the first Witch, who calls to Lasher whilst being burned for Witchcraft, and leaves her young daughter Deborah with the newly birthed spirit. Deborah is taken in the care of Talamasca member, Petyr Van Abel, to the Talamasca headquarters. She is the first Witch to be given Lasher’s riches and sexual favors, and she later seduces the innocuous Petyr, who already lusts after her. Together they conceive a child, Charlotte, before Deborah runs off to marry a Comte in France.

Before Deborah is put to death by witchcraft (many years later), Petyr visits her while imprisoned in a dungeon, and witnesses the power given to her through Lasher, as with her burning at the stake comes a storm, causing the death of all involved. Before her death, she warned her daughter, Charlotte (next in line for Lasher’s attachment), to flee to Saint Domingue, where Charlotte marries a wealthy man and runs a plantation. Charlotte, who is characterized as a somewhat more benevolent witch than Deborah, is known for her kindness and healing powers. 

Much to our discomfort, Petyr not only fathers Charlotte, but Charlotte’s child as well! He is again seduced by a Mayfair witch (though this time it’s his daughter), and is then murdered by Lasher (despite Charlotte’s request for Lasher’s mercy; this is one of the biggest points of contention in the novel, as we ponder Lasher’s ability for free will, his “naturalness,” and his capacity for “goodness,” as he claims to be in complete servitude to the Mayfair witches, but where is the line?)

There is a long, long history recorded through this Talamasca document, which is being read by Michael as he waits for Rowan to meet him in New Orleans. Each succeeding Witch has her own lore and short history, outlining her relation to Lasher and the Mayfair Legacy. I’ll quickly go down the list: we have Jean-Louise, Angelique, Marie Claudette, Marguerite, Katherine (though her “stronger” brother Julien is the designated Witch of this generation), Mary Beth, Stella (Carlotta’s sister), Antha, Deidre, and Rowan. Of these witches, some are “good,” hoping to reject Lasher (this includes Katherine, Antha, and Deidre), and some are “bad,” hoping to use the complete power Lasher gives them (this includes Mary Beth, Stella, and, most evil is Julien). 

When Rowan arrives in New Orleans, Carlotta warns her of Lasher’s power and the Mayfair Legacy, urging her to reject it. Carlotta becomes violent and dies, likely due to Rowan’s supernatural ability. Rowan decides to accept The Mayfair Legacy, overcome by her fantasy of riches in a beautiful mansion with her newly discovered large family and her new lover, Michael. Lasher does visit her – raping her on one occasion and seducing her on many others – but she finds herself torn between fearing him/staying loyal to Michael, and enjoying his company and sexual favors. As her life has been devoted to biology, specifically in understanding lifeforms, she desires to discover what Lasher is.

Rowan’s conversations with Lasher are the second best thing to come from this novel—what interesting questions they posit about life and the spirit realm, specifically in free will and what it is to be “natural” and “good.” Lasher does not know what he is or where he comes from; the best he can say is that he is a non-thing, and has come from nowhere, and his purpose is to be with the Mayfair Witches (please note my short descriptions do not do these conversations justice; Lasher’s responses to Rowan’s questions had me feeling as though I was reading a Bible). 

For a while, Rowan and Michael are living in a fantasy. They are happy, they are in love, they are pregnant, they are beginning their lives; however, they both worry their honeymoon phase will not last for long. They have deciphered, through the Talamasca’s long history, that Rowan’s being the 13th Witch makes her the key to something, though they are unsure exactly what. They prepare and plan to deal with it as it comes, though it comes sooner than expected. 

Rowan intends to bring Lasher to the physical realm, and then kill him with her supernatural ability to cause death. Of course, this does not go as expected. This is where we begin to feel the full force of our disillusionment, as her plan to “beat him” has been the Witches’ plan all along. 

This was the entire scheme—Michael’s life, Michael’s death, Michael’s vision, it was all for this moment. Every single present-day movement this novel has taken has been directed by a devil’s plot of witchcraft to bring Lasher to a corporeal body. During Rowan’s struggle with Lasher, Lasher becomes the baby in Rowan’s womb, and essentially births himself to a full-grown manly form. 

Subsequently, Michael drowns in the Mayfair mansion’s pool where he revisits the vision that has started all of this. The Witches he had seen then, whom he was so sure throughout the novel (despite Rowan’s apprehension about it) that were pushing him toward a purpose of good, reappear in his unconsciousness to congratulate him for completing his purpose. 

*chills*

Lasher has now been brought to physical consciousness, he and Rowan disappear, and Michael is left alone in the house (which Rowan has left to him), feeling as if this is not over. He waits for Rowan to return. 

I was sick. I, too, was convinced that Michael was the hero of the story, and he and Rowan were going to save the Mayfair line from the Devil, or, at the very least, save themselves! A novel like this changes your opinions on “good” in this world, because we are feeling, through Micheal and Aaron Lightner, the hopeful, heavenly capacity for “good’s” ability to persevere, despite Rowan’s insistence that it is just Michael’s innocence and naivety. And then, in a sick twist of events (though not really, because these “events” were crafted all along), good doesn’t persevere. The entire time, the whole 1,031 pages, were a devil’s plot. We are puppets. Good and evil are equals. I am sick. 

There is so much I can say about the religiosity among this plot, which for me was the novel’s foremost strength. One discussion can be formed from the primal lust that Lasher embodies physically, despite delivering it in a non-corporeal form. This makes sexual pleasure the equivalent to selling your soul, and if you add the Mayfair riches and wealth to it, you’re nearly convinced money and lust stem from the same root of evil (that is, of course, if you believe in evil, which I believe Rice persuades us is real and is here). 

For other novel strengths, I would argue the complex descriptions of the many, many characters could have built a foreground in which all characters are monotonous and base, but Rice has written them to each be clearly distinctive. In a Youtube review I watched (from Joshua J-Clarke-Kelsall) the speaker includes The Mayfair House as a character of its own, which I think is a great perception, and I agree is one Rice definitely intended. 

This also goes for Rice’s landscapes. We are given such vivid visuals that we see exactly what the characters see, whether that be the Sweet Christine swaying on dark, stormy waves out Rowan’s large window, or a pyre in a Scotland grassfield where Suzanna is burned at the stake, or a shut-in cottage on a cliff which Petyr is shackled to, or one of Stella’s parties at the Mayfair Mansion, or Rowan’s family picnic in the Mayfair Garden. It is all given so much life. 

I will admit the exposition, especially to start, was so intense that the novel can read slowly at first, and to someone who doesn’t appreciate wordy, descriptive (beautiful!) prose, it could be hard to get into at all.

The contention between science and spirituality, and then the later coagulation of the two, is another piece of genius which I admire about this novel. Rowan, an advanced neuroscientist, researches life, and then is met with a spirit, which may or may not be “alive,” and has it  BIRTHED through her own womb. 

If I must come up with a weakness, I would say the romance between Rowan and Michael could have used more convincing. In a story so illustrated, theirs is only lacking by comparison, but it does feel somewhat hollow. For something meant to be a large part of the story, it does not fill much space on a physical level (lengthiness), and it could be read as superficial. They are connected through this spiritual plot, and they fall in love very quickly, but I’m not sure they very much understand that love themselves (which translates to the reader, who feels their sexual attraction to each other, but not a realistic, sustainable love). In one sense, this may add to the story, as Michael was brought into Rowan’s life intentionally through the Witch’s large plot to impregnate her for Lasher’s birth. It can, therefore, be argued that their love is not meant to have the deepest practical alignment. 

Anyway, this book made Anne Rice my favorite author. (She’ll be yours, too, when you get to my favorite quotes at the end of this review! There’s a bunch there, and that’s with me holding back.)

I am unable to fathom how a single person’s mind can come up with such an intricate and complex story lore. Anne Rice, what, just sat down one day with a pen and paper and wrote an entire lore of witches and demons and in form of a template for all the questions we face about spirits and evil and the human capacity for good and the scientific question of life and, jesus, jesus, so much more! 

AND it’s written beautifully! Beautifully! 

5/5 and likely my favorite novel (there’s some competition with Jane Eyre)

Trigger Warnings: Religious topics, witchcraft, SA, death, suicide, murder

Quotes:

“I remember when I was your age,” said the old doctor. “I was going to cure all of them. I was going to reason with the paranoiacs, and bring the schizophrenics back to reality, and make the catatonics wake up.” 

This highly charged intimacy, if that was the proper thing to call it, alienated him to the core. 

He feared the snobbishness growing in himself, the loathing he knew that he could feel for those he loved if he let such a feeling have life. 

She was something divine, and he needed it so it saddened him. 

“But you know, Stefan, I have no love of this region, for these mountains echo still with the cries of the murdered cathars who were burned in such great numbers all through this region centuries ago. How many centuries must pass before the blood of so many has soaked deep enough into the earth to be forgotten?”

Lost she seemed, clinging to the bedpost, her head bowed. And so beguiling! So seductive! She did not need to be a witch to be a witch. 

He had fallen in love with her under the very worst circumstances—that is, he had fallen in love with her image in her photographs, and with the Stella who emerged from people’s descriptions of her. She had become a myth to him. 

“I’m absolutely unprepared for anything else. When you’ve lived the kind of life I have, you are good for nothing. Only writing can save you.” 

Perhaps I smiled at him. I knew that a crushing misery would follow this curious peak of emotion. The damned son of a bitch was trying to kill me. 

For a long moment, he clung almost desperately to the enjoyment of the cigarette, and watched the changes in the dusky sky. The darkness gathered itself everywhere now on the far-flung landscape, the distant levee vanishing so that he could no longer make out the cars as they passed on the road, but only see the yellow twinkle of their lights. Each sound, scent, and shift of color aroused in him a deluge of sweet memories, some without place or mark of any kind. It was simply the certainty of familiarity, that this was home, that this was where the cicadas sang like no place else. 

There was no single noise in the night. Only a dim continuous purring as if the insects sang and the frogs sang and the faraway engines and cars, wherever they were, sang with them. It seemed a train passed somewhere close, clicking rhythmically and fast beneath the song. And there came the dull faraway sound of a whistle, like a guttural sob in the darkness. 

“I am beautiful, Rowan. My voice is my soul. Surely I have a soul. The world would be too cruel if I did not.” 

“You’re angry now.” “I am in pain. I love you, Rowan.” “To want is not to love, Lasher. To use is not to love.” “No, don’t speak these words to me. You hurt me. You wound me.” 

“Rowan, for the love of god, our consciousness was educated by the flesh from which it evolved. What would we be without the capacity to feel physical pain? And this creature, Lasher, has never bled from the smallest wound. He’s never been chastened by hunger or sharpened by the need to survive. He is an immortal intelligence, Rowan, and you know this.”

He went into the market on Washington Avenue, which was jammed with last-minute shoppers, and in a daze he bought the turkey and the other makings, rummaging in his pockets for the bills he needed, like a drunk searching for every last penny for a bottle he couldn’t afford. People were laughing and chatting about the snowfall. White Christmas in New Orleans. He found himself staring at them as if they were strange animals. And all their funny noises only made him feel small and alone. He hefted the heavy sack into one arm, and started for home.