The Daylight Gate
Jeanette Winterson
This is seventeenth-century England. To be a witch or a Catholic are equal offenses, punishable by death. This is the start of the first-ever documented witch trial, from which The Daylight Gate takes its tale. This is a slim, seductive book of magic, religion, devotion, love, and power.
With spare, poetic prose, Winterson peels back layer after layer of story, revealing broken loyalties and unbreakable bonds, forging connections where you don’t expect them. Alice Nutter, the thread that ties the story and large cast of characters together, is a complex woman of courageous depth, though she never quite reveals the secrets of her charmed life. She is a fine, nuanced character, inspiring awe and sympathy despite her obvious affiliation with the darkest forces of this book. Her past haunts her, and in a way, her past haunts every character here. Winterson’s penchant for myth and magick is on full display in The Daylight Gate–it shines through her old-fashioned storytelling. The plot unfolds in a glorious, inevitable rush of events, exposing each of the characters, and binding them closer and closer together, as the noose tightens, collectively, around their necks.
The Daylight Gate carries the weight of a big, dense book–so much is crammed into its 200 pages. The descriptions of squalor and torture will make your skin crawl–consider this sentence describing the dungeon in Lancaster Castle: “A rat runs over her foot and drinks from the indent of her shoe.” There’s plenty more where that came from. And Winterson doesn’t shy away from displaying humanity’s darkest behaviors: the things we do for love and power; the things we do to satisfy hunger and greed. Yet, the darkness she writes is never gratuitous. Instead, the darkness is raw, evocative, harsh, archetypal–and terrifying.
The Daylight Gate is a show-stopper. A tour de force. It’s a dark dazzler, break-neck (literally, metaphorically), brutal and beautiful. Once you pick it up, you won’t put it down. ~ Sara Rauch
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Details
ISBN | 9780099561859 |
Genre | Historical Fiction |
Publication Date | 25-Sep-12 |
Publisher | Random House |
Format | Hardcover |
No. of Pages | 192 |
Notes | Lambda Literary Award Finalist, Lesbian Fiction |
LoC Classification | PR6073.I558 .D39 2012 |
Language | English |
Rating | Good |
Subject | Great Britain – History – Fiction; Witches – Fiction |
BookID | 2766 |