The Daylight Gate

This book reads like someone had part of an idea and tried to tie it together into some sort of story and wrote it as quickly as possible.

Alternatively, this reads like someone explained the witch trials to extraterrestrials and illustrated it to them with 1970s horror films and the aliens tried to

Show More

write a book about it. Or maybe robots.

Either way, it was definitely the most disappointing book I read in 2015. And somehow, unfortunately, the last book I read in 2015.

Show Less

Not for the squeamish. This is well researched and well written, but when writing about the Nazis or the witch hunters the details are too ugly and stay in the reader's mind long after the book is over. I long ago stopped reading Nazi stuff. Had I know this would be so graphic, I wouldn't have

Show More

subjected myself to it. Yes, we need to know how horrible humans can be when their evilest impulses are left unchecked, but I've got it now. Just as I think being a vegetarian means I'll never have to look at videos of animal abuse in factory farms, I'm going to give myself apass on reading any more about human torture on the grounds that, though those impulses may lurk within my psyche, I haven't yet acted upon them.

Show Less

This slim novella has been published under the Hammer imprint, and Hammer Films has acquired the movie rights, which may explain the unexpected level of gore I encountered through my squinted-up eyes. It is loosely based on actual witch trials in 17th century Lancashire, and centers on Alice

Show More

Nutter, a wealthy woman arrested for witchcraft as a way to pressure her to inform on her Catholic lover ("witchery and popery" being equivalent evils in this time and place).

It was creepy, magical and very fast-moving, yet I didn't quite connect with it. Blame the distractions of the Christmas season, but I had trouble following the plot, and my confusion mitigated against the horror I was hoping for.

Show Less

This is a work of historical fiction based on the Pendle witch trials in Lancashire in the 17th century.

I'd previously read Winterson's [Oranges are Not the Only Fruit] and loved it, so I found [The Daylight Gate] a bit of a letdown. For quite a slim novel, there's an awful lot packed in here -

Show More

John Dee, Edward Kelly, and Shakespeare all make appearances, as well as a host of other characters (good witches, bad witches, devils, prosecutors, ghosts, Protestants, and a Jesuit on the lam), plus no fewer than three love affairs and lashings of gore. The length of the book and Winterson's spare prose style are not really well-suited to such a busy cast and melodramatic plot. The depiction of the grim poverty of peasant life also makes an extremely odd juxtaposition with the fantastical scenes of magic involving the main character of the book, the lady Alice Nutter.

This could have been a better book if more time and attention had been spent on one or two aspects of the plot as it's written, such as the uneasy relationship between Alice Nutter and the local magistrate, Robert Nowell. As it stands, it's not a very good book and nearly as good as [A Mirror for Witches], my favourite novel along similar lines (historical fiction about the witch trials, but with a fantastical element of real diabolic magic added).

Show Less

The Daylight Gate is based on actual events that occurred in rural England in the 18th Century. Fear, jealousy and superstition collide when two families are ensnared in a witch hunt. Both families live in dire poverty, making due by begging and making charms. In one swoop both families are accused

Show More

and condemned for the crime of witch craft. A self made woman of means, Alice Nutter, refuses to believe in superstition and eventually becomes a target for those in the community who covet her fortune and hate her independence.

Show Less

I picked up this book because

1) I like Jeanette Winterson's work

2) I've been watching The Strain - this summer's guilty pleasure

3) It is a short book -- a novella...

not because I read novels about witches, though I do like a good historical novel. So I was fascinated by the controversy reflected in

Show More

these reviews. I think my expectations were lower and they were totally exceeded by the precision of the writing and by the character of Alice Nutter, living in the brutal reign of James I, 1612, in Pendle, witch country. Is she a witch? She doesn't believe herself to be, though she does have certain powers and access to "magik," which keeps her young. However, she is: a smart, powerful, passionate, literate (Shakespeare makes a guest appearance) woman who drives this story to its fantastical end.

The story is loosely based on the Trial of the Lancashire Witches, the most famous of the English witch trials, but Winterson brings the characters to life as only fiction of this caliber can (be prepared for some gruesome details in this story with a strong moral thread about rich and poor, good and evil.)

I can understand why one would want more historical detail, the novella assumes a reader has some familiarity with the times, and even this reader, at moments, wanted a bit more. However, ultimately, I had to keep in mind that this was a novella, rather perfect in that form, a great read for an afternoon, and not a novel.

Show Less

Is that him? The Jesuit?
Yes.
Shall we take him?
Follow him.
where will he go?
to Lancashire, where his home is. To Pendle Forest, where his heart is.

In Lancashire in 1612, the authorities were on the hunt for Catholic traitors as well as for witches, and in Jeanette Winterson's version of the story,

Show More

magic is real and the Pendle witches include former colleagues of Doctor John Dee as well as the poverty-stricken and deluded.

This novella was published by Hammer, and I found the scenes of rape and torture genuinely horrific.

Show Less

Jeanette Winterson's prose is fierce and fearless, and her particular gift as a novelist is to render the strange and wildly unfamiliar (in this case the maelstrom of machinations surrounding the Lancashire Witch Trials of 1612) accessible without diminishing its power to shock and amaze. This can

Show More

be an unsettling experience for a reader, but also wonderfully
stretching. Taken as a whole, Winterson's brilliantly diverse body of work seems meant to illustrate the assertion made in this novel by Alice Nutter (a woman of spirit and independence denounced as a witch) to John Dee (an alchemist and astrologer to Queen Elizabeth I): "I think we are worlds compressed into human form."

Show Less

This novella is based on the notorious Pendle witchcraft trials, and I was expecting a fairly straightforward fictionalised exploration of the events that took place in Lancashire in 1612, perhaps with some added supernatural overtones à la Karen Maitland, especially as this volume was published

Show More

in the year marking the 400th anniversary of the trials.

It is true that Jeanette Winterson successfully recreates an atmosphere of suspicion and superstition (this is the aftermath of the North Berwick witch trials in 1590 and the Gunpowder Plot in 1605), and shows a society that appears untouched by the early modern age and still lingers in the dark ages: here men wield all the power, while women generally are exploited and the illiterate poor are regarded as deserving their fate; yet I felt that she traded characterisation and historical accuracy for a confusing and unnecessary love triangle story, with supernatural elements, that added nothing to the interpretation of events. The result is an unconvincing muddle, and the final act by one of the characters is immediately called into question, going as it does against everything that person stands for. The image of an area left behind in the dark ages is reinforced in my opinion through the frequent mention of the daylight gate, i.e. the liminal hour (= dusk), the opening words ('The North is the dark place.') and events taking place in early spring, when nature is still bare and the daylight hours are short, adding to the bleakness of the Lancashire landscape.

In my view, the short chapters, and the often extremely short sentences therein, make it difficult to engage with any of the characters, and in the end I didn't really care about what happened to any of them; as these were real people who had lived and suffered, not caring about their fate is an unacceptable outcome.

To me the one highlight was the inclusion of William Shakespeare, who makes a brief appearance in the novella; here Jeanette Winterson captured his quick wit and eloquence in just a few words.

Show Less

I had some serious difficulties to follow the plot in the beginning, but it still gripped me firmly and brutally with fangs made of short, precise sentences. Very homogenic, fascinating, strange, beautiful and fear-inspiring. Wild, mysterious and sharp, like a raven with a bloody beak. Just not

Show More

quite as cheesy as I just said that.

Show Less

Brutal and gruesome.

A clever and evocative story that catches the weird and fearful times of witch-hunting. Just a little too much human horridness for my taste (read: too much torture, though described in the shortest possible words), but I enjoyed the strong female characters and the timeless message of this work.

Fast-paced, graphic, gruesome. A dreadfully vivid picture of the 17th century nightmare of suspicion, torture and paranoia that resulted in the trial of the Lancashire Witches. It is brilliantly told and leaves nothing to the imagination. I hope I forget it very soon.
Reviewed February 2014

ETA:

Show More

February 2017 Bless my soul, I have forgotten it completely!

Show Less

I enjoyed this story of witchcraft in England long ago. It is a short book based on the actual trial of the Lancashire witches. I always love stories containing magic, witchcraft and alchemy. There was some gore, but it is horrific that women in those days were subjected to torture and death on the

Show More

word of ignorant neighbours.

Show Less

I wasn’t quite sure what to expect of this book. Based on historical events, it nonetheless takes liberties with the supernatural elements.

Shakespeare makes an appearance and is one of the few voices of reason in the story. Alice Nutters and her magenta dress, tiny mirror made from alchemy, and

Show More

loyal falcon were my favorite aspects of the tale. She is a strong and intelligent woman standing almost alone among a tide of ignorant and fearful men. Yet there are also good men present in the story.

My least favorite parts were the graphically detailed scenes of torture. That human beings could mistreat other humans so maliciously and gruesomely in the name of a religion is no stranger to history, yet 400 years later it is still hard to fathom and to forgive, but not to forget. Religions are still manipulated to brainwash the weak and give men reasons to make wars and fly plains into towers.

In remembrance of Alice Nutters and the perhaps 9 million other innocent women tortured, tried, and executed as witches in the name of an invisible man in the sky, I say, “Never again the burning times.”

Show Less

A fictionalized retelling of the post-Gunpowder Plot Pendle Witch Trials, featuring Alice Nutter, and with a cameo by Shakespeare.
I'm all for fictional versions of historical events, and I'm also absolutely here for stories about witches and familiars and Shakespeare, but this one was just on the

Show More

other side of too dark for me. I get that to say these women were ill-treated is a massive understatement, but I don't necessarily want to be bludgeoned with it, repeatedly. And maybe that was the point of Winterson's narrative, and if so, well done, mission accomplished, but I would rather have seen her flesh out the story of Nutter more, spend those words used on bleak and gratuitous violence on spinning more web for Alice's mysteries. She's such a promising character, but she doesn't get much more than the nod of that promise. The writing is good; the sentences are clipped and abrupt and stark, which seems right for the content, although in a few spots I think Winterson takes it a bit too far and it crosses over into clunky for brief moments. Anyway. Maybe I just wanted the book to be a different kind of book than it is. I see its merits, but I may stay clear of Winterson in future.

Show Less

The Daylight Gate, Jeannette Winterson I had every intention of loving this book, but unfortunately it didn't grab me the way that Winterson's novel Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit or her memoir Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? did. 
 
Winterson's writing in this novella is as vivid and

Show More

evocative as always, but I wanted more character development and more context. I knew nothing at all about the Pendle witch trials in Britain when I began the book (indeed, I was only vaguely aware that the book is based on a real event in history) and I wonder if I would have gotten more out of the book if I'd know as much about Pendle as I know about Salem, Massachusetts. As it was, I felt like there were too many characters for such a short book, and too much suggestion without much background.
 
 

Show Less

I kept waiting for it to be something other than a chronicle of horrors. Too bleak, too vile, perhaps too real for me. I don't see the point of it, except to illustrate passion's madness and some of the usual inhumanities. Effectively revolting, but I missed the message if there was one.