Though it brims with language of arresting loveliness, it speaks plainly when it must ... Rendered with sensuous precision ... The Manningtree Witches ventures into dark places, to be sure, but it carries a jewelled dagger. Blakemore is a poet, and readers given to underlining may find their pencils worn down to stubs.
In Blakemore’s capable hands and vivid imagination, the women, silenced for generations, come alive ... Blakemore expertly wields the colorful language of Oliver Cromwell’s time: her barbs are as sharp and her observations as salty as William Shakespeare’s—but with a feminist twist ... A. K. Blakemore has written a spellbinding novel about the unprecedented persecution of women during the 'Witch Craze' in 17th-century England. But she has done more than that ... Blakemore has given voice to women whose stories have only been told by others and thus provides a very different view of history than what is written in the official narrative.
AK Blakemore’s exceptionally accomplished debut feels especially pertinent now ... The novel’s shining quality is its language. Blakemore is an award-winning poet, and she is as precise in evoking the liminal landscape of the Stour estuary as the inside of a jail cell.
Blakemore, who also is a published poet, brings both beautifully crafted sentences and a thorough understanding of Hopkins’ theology to her fascinating novel ... Witchcraft, real or imagined, has become a somewhat trendy tack among writers turning over the legacies of patriarchy, but Blakemore is no dilettante here. Based on my own dissertation work on the topic, it’s clear that the author is deeply conversant in the historiography of English witchcraft ... Blakemore also depended on court documents and contemporary sources ... [Many accusations were] clearly displaced neurosis over sexual desires that interfered with celestial communion. But as Blakemore shows in her brilliant novel, the spiritual life many of them extolled was as slant and insubstantial as Matthew Hopkins.
... heavily-researched ... there’s little to distinguish the historical fiction from a contemporary account, sans the lack of climate panic, the absence of screens, and the foreignly formal language Blakemore uses both in narration and dialogue ... Blakemore’s novel, as Rebecca Tamás puts it, 'makes the past breathe,' with a captivating ferocity of language, deftly wrought characters, and richly spooky images that tell a story I couldn’t put down despite the dreaded ending I knew I was in for. But the past breathes whether Blakemore brings it to life or not. The present moment is a continuation of the past. We are here because we were there. We are still there.
Manningtree Witches is notable for the beauty of Blakemore’s language. Her poetic imagery exquisitely conjures ambiance, character, and period detail ... The well-realized principal characters are more than simply victims and villains.
The inventive, sharp-witted debut from poet Blakemore draws on the Puritan witch trials of Civil War England ... While Blakemore’s commitment to historical verisimilitude may have kept this from reaching greater imaginative heights ... The author is a devastatingly good prose stylist. On the whole, Blakemore’s ambitious and fresh take on the era will delight readers.
In Blakemore’s debut novel, her background as a poet is clear. The language is striking, full of distinctive insights regarding gender, truth, and religious devotion ... The sections in which Hopkins contemplates his manipulative investigations are duller and slow the plot’s momentum, especially toward the end. Still, historical fiction has rarely felt so immediate. An immersive story with striking prose.
