Something Wicked in Leonberg

This is a story set in the Holy Roman Empire in a small town in The Duchy of Württemberg in the early part of the 17th century. A time and place where ordinary people aka peasants were plagued by witches or being accused of being one (females only), the Black Death, famine, aristocratic rule (males only), and the Thirty Years War.

It was a tough time, especially for women, especially old ones, and especially ones with higher levels of intelligence than your average Joachim.

The story is told in the most part through the eyes of an old woman, as are so many stories written in.the 21st century.

The central character, Katherina is in her seventies and husbandless, again as are many main characters of current fiction. She lives alone her companion being her cow, Camilla. Life is good until she is accused of being a witch for causing the infertility of a fellow townswoman, who had been given a drink by Katherina. Other charming citizens rise to the occasion with their own stories of Katherine’s witch activity. A pig’s foot is broken, a man has a sore knee, someone falls ill with symptoms of the plague. All Katherina has to do is cross their paths.

A trial ensues and in the end … well that would spoil the story. Suffice it to say that many people die and Camilla’s cow is re-homed.

The engaging feature of Everyone Knows Your Mother is a Witch is the way it describes the lives of ordinary people in the early 17th century in what is now part of Germany. There are no plot twists, no moral lessons, no ambiguities or parallels. It is a story simply told.

I enjoyed it. What you see is what you get - a well-written book by a scholarly writer. The sort of book one could imagine reading in front of a fire in a leather armchair while it is ever-so softly snowing outside.

In short a pleasant book about unpleasant people. ( )

Inspired and partly based on the records of the court case where the mother of Johannes Kepler, the astronomer, was accused of being a witch. The title recurs in the text in several places—it seems Katharina is accused and the accusation rings true because everybody is already saying it. In the background, it seems to be about anything other than witchcraft—ordinary village gossip, jealousies, years of bad harvests, people not getting along. It's not about facts or evidence, but gossip, hearsay, stories, statements to the authorities, which are reflected in the structure of the book. ( )

What a curious, yet delightful novel. Katharina Kepler is an elderly widow. She is the mother of the noted astronomer, Johannes Kepler. She is kind to neighbours and to cows. Yet her kindness is rewarded with envy, aggression, and calumny. She is accused of witchcraft. The charge, of course, is a nonsense spurred on by a grasping desire to make a profit off her pain. Despite the absurdity of the charge, Katharina, her children, her neighbour, Simon, and others must fight the charge for nearly all the remaining years of her life.

Katharina is a wonderful character, gentle and wise, despite her lack of schooling. But she lives in a world that is fallen. Wars, both secular and religious, sweep across the land. Plague regularly breaks out. The plague of ignorance is even more virulent. What is most surprising, perhaps, then is that Katharina remains the kind, gentle person she has always been.

Rivka Galchen found something in the historical record that inspired her fictional account of Katharina’s troubles. But it is her genius that paints this picture with humour and grace and a willingness to be generous to the disappointment that some people bring into the world. It’s a most unusual subject for a novel, yet it totally works.

Gently recommended. ( )

Life feels fragile in the German Duchy of Württemberg, for it’s 1618, and not only does plague stalk the land, the Thirty Years War brings the passage of armies and their attendant depredations. But in the village of Leonberg, these afflictions only lap around the edges. What really matters is that Katharina Kepler is accused of witchcraft.

Katharina is an old woman, a grandmother who puts more faith in her beloved cow, Chamomile, than in people, young children excepted. Known for herbal remedies and her strange way of talking — she seldom answers a question directly, and asks in turn those that nobody else would dream of — she’s a busybody. She thinks nothing of bursting into someone’s house, whether to bring a gift or tell them how they should be living. The Yiddish word “nudnik” comes to mind.

She’s the sort who has an opinion about everything, and if you’re really lucky, you’ll get to hear it. She has a way of summing people up in insulting terms: “The crowd of them looked like a pack of dull troubadours who, come morning, have made off with all the butter.” Finally, her son, Johannes, is Imperial Mathematician, and Katharina’s neighbors are always asking her if he’ll cast their horoscopes. Apparently, he knows things about the heavens and writes books. These are suspicious activities, especially if the desired horoscope isn’t forthcoming.

From this eccentric yet harmless profile emerges the most incredible folklore. The good citizens of Leonberg believe, or come to believe, that Katharina has the power to poison, make people lame, pass through locked doors, cause livestock to sicken and die, and consort with the devil. How they arrive at these fancies — and why — makes a brilliant narrative, at once chilling and hilarious, absurd, yet with the ring of absolute truth.

In a novel like this, especially in the first-person narratives Galchen deploys, voice matters greatly, and you might suppose, as I did at first, that she owes a debt to Kafka. Not quite. In Kafka’s bureaucratic nightmares, the hand that wields power remains obscure, sometimes invisible. Here, you see the workings, or many of them; more importantly, you see their paranoid, angry underpinnings. Kafka is said to have read his work out loud to friends, causing general laughter. I’ve never laughed at Kafka — maybe that says something about me — but I did at Galchen. Until, that is, the accusations gather steam.

Everyone Knows is a feminist statement, for we have a free-thinking woman blamed for heresies, mostly by other women, interestingly. It’s as though they resent her for doing what they’ve never let themselves even think of. But though misogyny, including the self-inflicted variety, has historically fed attempts to suppress witchcraft, there’s much more here. Galchen has delved into the paranoia that produces conspiracy theories, and her reconstruction of their origins is spot on. Life has disappointed them, hasn’t granted what the conspiracy theorist assumes he or she deserves and, by God, someone will pay. If that’s not a diagnosis of a sickness that threatens this country’s social, cultural, and political fabric, I don’t know what is.

Some readers will find that this novel ends abruptly, and maybe it does. But that doesn’t trouble me. Galchen’s less concerned with what happens than its origins and legacy; she’s not so focused on the plot, and I accept that. More bothersome is the language, entirely brilliant, yet with occasional lapses in diction. Images like troubadours stealing butter or an otter in a doublet strike my ear perfectly, so I’m not prepared for modern idioms like okay, open up (meaning reveal), be fine with, or share your story. If Galchen, a careful writer, is trying to suggest that these seventeenth-century Germans are just like us, she’s proven that in other, deeper ways. ( )

Strange, sad, but funny at times. Highly fictionalized account of the astronomer Kepler’s mother, who was tried for witchcraft in the 1620s. She was found innocent but died shortly afterwards, I’m sure due to the stress of it all and the lengthy pre-trial imprisonment. The legal proceedings are scary and absurdly bureaucratic. Life seems really different then, but in some ways exactly like now, like always.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katharina_Kepler
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