The Witching Hour

source : Amazon.com
author : Anne Rice

In this engrossing and hypnotic tale of witchcraft and the occult spanning four centuries, we meet a great dynasty of witches--a family given to poetry and incest, to murder and philosophy, a family that over the ages is haunted by a powerful, dangerous and seductive being.

"We watch and we are always here" is the motto of the Talamasca, a saintly group with extrasensory powers which has for centuries chronicled the lives of the Mayfairs--a dynasty of witches that brought down a shower of flames in 17th-century Scotland, fled to the plantations of Haiti and on to the New World, where they settled in the haunted city of New Orleans. Rice ( The Queen of the Damned ) plumbs a rich vein of witchcraft lore, conjuring in her overheated, florid prose the decayed antebellum mansion where incest rules, dolls are made of human bone and hair, and violent storms sweep the skies each time a witch dies and the power passes on. Newly annointed is Rowan Mayfair, a brilliant California neurosurgeon kept in ignorance of her heritage by her adoptive parents. She returns to the fold after bringing back Michael Curry from the dead; he, too, has unwanted extrasensory gifts and, like Rowan and the 12 Mayfairs before her, has beheld Lasher: devil, seducer, spirit. Now Lasher wants to come through to this world forever and Rowan is the Mayfair who can open the door. This massive tome repeatedly slows, then speeds when Rice casts off the Talamasca's pretentious, scholarly tones and goes for the jugular with morbid delights, sexually charged passages and wicked, wild tragedy. 300,000 first printing; BOMC main selection.  -- Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Reader's review:
"The Witching Hour," Anne Rice's 1990 foray into witchcraft and the occult, is not really a change of pace for the uniquely gifted author more than it is a better realized creation emphasizing her strengths and obsessions. As most readers know, Rice cut her teeth with the enormously successful Vampire Chronicles including "Interview with the Vampire" and "The Vampire Lestat." With "The Witching Hour," Rice has taken a well-deserved break from the immortal lives of her witty vampire clan, creating a fascinating legend of a family of witches stretching back four centuries and two continents.

The witches, known as the Mayfairs, are connected by the haunting thread of the mysterious spirit Lasher, appearing ghost-like to a selected few, standing within the shadows of ominous trees and forming within mirrors, tears streaking his pale face. Lasher forms an eerie, if not erotic bond with the women of the Mayfair clan, providing untold riches and eventually amorous damnation. But Lasher, much like the legacy of the Mayfair family, is an exotic mystery waiting to be solved, and this intimidating responsiblity falls into the modern-day hands of Michael Curry and Rowan Mayfair. This appealing, love-struck couple, set out for New Orleans to solve the mystery and reclaim the souls of the Mayfair family.

"The Witching Hour" was eventually followed by two sequels, but it stands alone as one of Rice's greatest novels, an enthralling, complex epic filled with gothic mystery, dancing ghosts and heartbreaking irony. Her descriptions of the decayed mansion on First Street, situated in the Garden District of New Orleans, a moody, ancient home owned by the Mayfairs for over 100 years, provides some of this novels most sensual and memorable passages. This house is indeed haunted by spirits and the hovering mysteries of past tragedies, but like Shirley Jackson's classic "The Haunting of Hill House," what is lurking within the home is much more than just crying spirits of the dead.

Rice's body of work has always had an old fashioned taste for the finer things in life, from exquisite bottles of wine to antique furnishings and dusty historic paintings. She caresses these lush trappings, much like a lover embraces an old flame. And her descriptions of these tasteful adornments - clothes, artwork, china, food and even New Orleans culture, all glowing within the flame of yellow candlelight, are examples of her sensual writing style. Granted, the passages leading up to the novel's final conflict, in which Michael and Rowan begin renovating the ancient Mayfair home, move slowly, perhaps providing more architectural detail than the reader is interested in. But Rice is strategically building a growing sense of dread. Horror is going to pay a visit to this young couple, and when it eventually does, the reader's mouth will be agape.

"The Witching Hour" is a mesmerizing novel, combining comfortable elements of the English ghost story with a feather-touch dash of erotica, witchcraft and the occult. As in all Anne Rice novels, the dead will simply not go away. They lurk in the shadows of history, as they have for centuries. Time may have passed these pseudo banshees by, but their power is far reaching. Even within the shadows of skyscrapers, automobiles and computers, these timeless supernatural fears are hiding. In Anne Rice's fascinating worlds, ancient legends live and wait, and our imagination is entranced.  -- Chris K. Wilson

Besides her vampire novels, this is my favorite Anne Rice book. I love reading about witches and the like and she really draws you into the story of the Mayfair witches and Lasher. I was creeped out and also intrigued as I read, to say the least. Ms. Rice really knows how to make the book suspensful enough to keep reading, that's for sure! I highly recommend this one. It's a classic, in my opinion.  -- Courtney White Dove

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