Gabino Iglesias Reviews The Witch in the Well by Camilla Bruce
The Witch in the Well, Camilla Bruce (Tor Books 978-1-25030-209-0, $26.99, 308pp, hc) October 2022.
Pulling off novels with various points of view is no easy task, but Camilla Bruce does it beautifully in The Witch in the Well. A story of lost friendship, animosity, murder, magic, and writing, The Witch in the Well looks at history and obsession while telling the story of two old friends turned enemies who want to bring to the page the life of a local woman who was murdered for being a witch.
Centuries ago in the town of F–, a young, beautiful woman by the name of Ilsbeth Clark was accused of witchcraft after several children went missing. The authorities looked into the matter and she was eventually acquitted of all charges, but that didn’t stop the locals from taking matters into their own hands and drowning Ilsbeth in the same well where all the children had been seen before they went missing. Now Cathy, who has spent her entire life in F– and grew up playing in the same woods and going to the same well, is on the verge of finishing a meticulously researched book that tells the real story of Ilsbeth. Cathy has spent years going through documents in order to tell the most comprehensive, accurate, and fair chronicle of Ilsbeth’s life. Unfortunately, Cathy suddenly has some unexpected competition.
Elena used to spend her summers in F–, where she was friends with Cathy despite all their differences. Now she has returned to her family’s manor house to clean it up and get the place ready to sell. However, she doesn’t get much done. Elena is a writer and social media influencer who is always writing and talking about the ‘‘SOUL,’’ and once she starts living in F–, she makes a connection with Ilsbeth’s spirit and becomes convinced the witch has moved into her body, resides in her psyche, and wants to teach her all about her magic. Elena decides to discard her previous idea and instead write a book about Ilsbeth and her magic. Cathy and Elena’s friendship withered when they were young, but now it turns into a bitter rivalry, and one in which dark magic, the past, and whatever resides at the bottom of the well will all play a role.
The Witch in the Well is narrated by both Cathy, who is writing an open letter to the people of F– to explain what happened because she has been accused of killing Elena, and by Elena, who is writing about her experiences in her journal. However, the novel also contains chapters that are excerpts from Ilsbeth in the Twilight, which is Cathy’s novel, and transcripts from documents about the history of the place. The various points of view do not add up to the same story, and one of the best things about this novel is the way it forces readers to question everything they read and to distrust both Cathy and Elena.
While the shifting points of view make this an interesting read, one of the most interesting elements about this story is how Bruce manages to make it work and keep readers turning pages despite having two somewhat unlikeable narrators at its core. Cathy is a sour woman who never got over a lot of childhood trauma. She reacts to things strangely, treats Elena awfully, and doesn’t do much to help her case in her open letter. On the other hand, Elena is annoying, uses more exclamation points than our previous president, and fully embodies the role of an influencer, turning everything into a hashtag for Instagram and thinking about how big her next book will be instead of focusing on the matters at hand. This makes it hard to pick a side, and as a result Ilsbeth ends up looking like the most likeable character in the narrative despite the fact that we don’t really know her all that well and get conflicting versions of who she was and what she did or didn’t do.
The last third of The Witch in the Well becomes a bit confusing if readers aren’t careful, but by then they will be invested in the story and all the horror stuff, and the surreal passages about what happens at the bottom of the well fit perfectly with the story despite their much darker tone. Also, while it’s hard to develop empathy for Cathy or Elena – and empathy is a crucial element in for dark fiction to work – the shifting points of view and the growing mystery of Ilsbeth’s true nature are more than enough to make this an enjoyable read.
Gabino Iglesias is a writer, journalist, professor, and book reviewer living in Austin TX. He is the author of Zero Saints and Coyote Songs and the editor of Both Sides. His work has been nominated to the Bram Stoker and Locus Awards and won the Wonderland Book Award for Best Novel in 2019. His short stories have appeared in a plethora of anthologies and his non-fiction has appeared in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and CrimeReads. His work has been published in five languages, optioned for film, and praised by authors as diverse as Roxane Gay, David Joy, Jerry Stahl, and Meg Gardiner. His reviews appear regularly in places like NPR, Publishers Weekly, the San Francisco Chronicle, Criminal Element, Mystery Tribune, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and other print and online venues. He’s been a juror for the Shirley Jackson Awards twice and has judged the PANK Big Book Contest, the Splatterpunk Awards, and the Newfound Prose Prize. He teaches creative writing at Southern New Hampshire University’s online MFA program. You can find him on Twitter at @Gabino_Iglesias.
This review and more like it in the January 2023 issue of Locus.
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