Chollet has a knack for entertaining prose, and that makes this dense narrative easy to read. She looks at the work of researchers, psychiatrists, actors, writers, sociologists, journalists, some of her friends, and even her own experiences and enters into a conversation with them, and with herself and the reader, to make her points. In the process, she asks important questions with a historical perspective...makes scathing observations about what many call 'social institutions'...and makes strong declarations that, given the amount of evidence presented, are impossible to argue with ... In Defense of Witches celebrates women, offers a plethora of reasons to accept a variety of viewpoints, and shows how women are still expected to act certain ways or be ostracized. Despite all that, the element that overpowers all others is the celebration of feminist minds and their work, our modern witches. Yes, this book will make you angry at the staying power of misogyny, but it will also make you scream 'Long live witches!'—and that makes it a must-read.

... revelatory ... Even a devoted reader will find it difficult to think of a book besides Chollet’s that does more to redirect preconceptions of how the world was formulated. In that sense, for most, her book will be rewriting history ... reorients past and present events and further exposes the subterfuge that has monumentalized a patriarchal worldview. It connects dots across centuries of Western time, mapping a slow and methodical repression that created a phenomenon of physical and 'psychological alienation' from women. Lastly, the 'witch' permeates the present. Through a genuine interrogation of the past, a modern truth is uncovered, making this book necessary for those who are eager to possess a greater understanding of how human civilization works or is rather, not working ... Ultimately, Chollet’s book leaves us with a lot to ponder and some hope, too.

[A] thought-provoking, discursive survey by Mona Chollet, a bright light of Francophone feminism ... Chollet has emerged as a quiet revolutionary, pushing back against the clichés and the patriarchy that shapes them ... Above all, In Defense of Witches explores what it means for a woman not to have children, and how women can find a positive identity without motherhood ... Although Chollet draws on French sources — Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex remains a foundational text — much of her vocabulary comes from the Anglosphere, popularizing American-style feminist thinking for French audiences. In Defense of Witches is a kind of French answer to Rebecca Traister’s 2016 All the Single Ladies, which Chollet cites admiringly ... Chollet’s style is accessible. She mixes personal experience with astute analysis of pop culture, leavened but not dominated by feminist theory. Her tone is one of self-aware curiosity ... Sophie R. Lewis’s translation into British English is crisp; the book itself would have benefited from a more rigorous edit ... Still, for all Chollet’s endeavors to reclaim the witch as a positive symbol, I frankly wish we could retire the role. Can’t we come up with a better term? Chollet’s entire project underscores the paucity of our vocabulary for describing womanhood outside biology or family.

This isn’t a new idea: in the 1970s in San Francisco, a movement was founded by Diane Barker in order to revive and develop neopagan rituals. Since then, the recasting of witches as figures of power and wisdom has been seen in everything ... What sets Chollet’s book apart is her aligning so clearly the historical mistreatment of so-called witches with the misogyny of the 21st century. The subtitle sums it up: why women are still on trial. Over the course of four engaging, complementary chapters, she details the history of witch hunts and society’s fear of independent women down through the ages ... a rousing read ... As a woman who chose not to have children, Chollet is particularly strong on the prejudice, and the fear, of a society that judges her deficient based on this decision.

Chollet’s English-language debut is a smart feminist treatise reclaiming the witch and her radical way of life as a path forward for women, as opposed to the death sentence it once represented ... She also spends time with less familiar ideas such as normalizing mothers who regret having children. Chollet’s informed and passionate treatment will appeal to readers looking for more substance amid the witch trend that’s otherwise been largely commodified and often scrubbed of its feminist origins.

The introduction, the witchiest bit of the whole book, properly shocks ... Chollet’s thesis is simple: women today are still on trial for the same reasons witches were: for independence, childlessness and ageing. But after the force of the introduction, the book slides too often into the simple too. It rests heavily on second-hand sources ... I wanted to like this book, because skewering misogyny is fine by me. But Chollet’s first three chapters read mostly like the magazine articles she quotes, and from years ago ... Chollet has an intriguing exploration of how holistic female healers — who thought the body and mind one and treated accordingly — threatened the 'masculinisation' of medicine ... Does Chollet prove her thesis that women are still on trial? Of course. It’s an easy one to prove against any metric of inequality ... I am grateful for any book that highlights that, even this flawed one.

Chollet extensively discusses the torture of accused witches, then brings us up to current attempts to control and malign women ... The author also examines the objectification of women in modern medicine ... Feminists will appreciate this exploration of rebellion and independence.

In this spirited yet uneven polemic, journalist Chollet traces misogynistic attitudes in Western society back to witch hunts that occurred in Europe and the U.S. from the 1300s to the 1700s ... Though her iconoclastic wit shines, Chollet’s provocations ultimately come across as more defensive than revolutionary. This call for change feels like old news.