The Bewitching

"“Could someone plateau at twenty-four? Could your brain shrink?” asks Minerva, one of three protagonists in this witchy, multigenerational tale. During a summer spent on the grounds of her beloved Stoneridge College, Minerva struggles to write her graduate thesis on the macabre literature of Beatrice Tremblay, an alum from the 1930s. But burnout isn’t quite the issue; Minerva begins to wonder whether she’s being haunted by a witch, a witch of the same ilk that crept into the life of her great-grandmother Nana Alba – and perhaps the life of Beatrice Tremblay as well. Does witchcraft somehow link these women together? There are endless delights to uncover within the novel’s enchanting orbit of historical academic spook. Dead rats abound, for one. And maybe even a touch of the sapphic."