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Mary Watson (2) (1975–)

Författare till The Wren Hunt

För andra författare vid namn Mary Watson, se särskiljningssidan.

5+ verk 252 medlemmar 4 recensioner

Om författaren

Foto taget av: Mary Watson, c.2006.

Verk av Mary Watson

The Wren Hunt (2018) 154 exemplar
Blood to Poison (2022) 38 exemplar
The Wickerlight (2019) 32 exemplar
Moss (2004) 9 exemplar

Associerade verk

Taggad

Allmänna fakta

Födelsedag
1975-05-31
Kön
female
Nationalitet
South Africa
Land (för karta)
South Africa
Födelseort
Cape Town, South Africa
Bostadsorter
Galway, Ireland (2009)
Utbildning
Cape Town University (MA | creative writing | 2001|PhD)
Bristol University (MA|2003)
Organisationer
Cape Town University (lecturer in film studies|2004-2008)
Kort biografi
Also author of, not yet on LT:
The cutting room (Penguin, Johannesburg, 2013).
The wickerlight (Bloomsbury, 2019).

Medlemmar

Recensioner

Originally posted on Just Geeking by.

Content warnings:
There are scenes of sexual harassment, physical and verbal abuse at various points throughout the novel. There are flashbacks to sexual assaults, including the sexual assault of a slave. Slavery is discussed frequently as Savannah’s ancestor, Hella, was a slave. This novel includes racism, and apartheid is discussed. This includes how black people were treated before apartheid was abolished.

There are on page and off page deaths, violence, blood-letting (for magic) and a childhood accident with boiling liquid. There are also themes/scenes of betrayal, captivity, magical control, controlling/manipulative behaviour and a home invasion.


Blood to Poison follows Savannah’s steps to save herself from her family’s curse, a blood curse created by her ancestor Hella to curse her enslaver and his family after he assaulted her. Unbeknown to her when she laid the curse she was pregnant with his child, and in doing so cursed her own child. For generations the women of Savannah’s family have been cursed with the anger Hella unleashed on her enslaver. The anger can kill them, and the angrier they are, the younger they die. Following the vague clues in a notebook that belonged to her aunt Freda, the last woman in her family to die from Hella’s curse, Savannah discovers the hidden world of witchcraft that most people have no idea exists. With help from new allies she begins to unravel the mysteries of Hella’s life, starting with who she was before she became a slave.

Part mystery, part supernatural, Blood to Poison is at its core a story of a young woman trying to cope in a society that constantly fights against her. Watson introduces the Blood to Poison with an author’s note that provides context for the novel, speaking of her own experience of a family curse and recognising it for what it was; generational trauma. Blood to Poison, she writes, is about magic, witches and self discovery, and “is inspired by the very real historical trauma and injustice of enslavement and discrimination in South Africa”. Watson’s writing is superb. It’s captivating, drawing the reader into a mysterious and intoxicating world of magic. This isn’t a book with information dumps; the trauma that Watson refers to is very much ongoing, and it’s expressed through her character’s emotions and dialogue. As we watch Savannah wrestle with her anger, and try to unravel the past, Watson connects the past and present. There’s a particular discussion with Savannah and her friend Rosie that illustrates how aware their generation is of their own connection to the history of South Africa. Rosie asks her if she thinks about her ancestors, and explains that she does, especially about how they had come from all over the world. So many stories, she tells Savannah, entwined like a double helix inside her.

I found the characters of Blood to Poison easy to relate to, and what impressed me in particular was Watson’s ability to create a book that was so real and gritty while also remaining filled with unique fantasy elements. The world-building is wonderful, the world of witches and veil witches exciting and intriguing. The world Watson has created is visceral and dangerous, people get hurt, they are suffering, and they can and do die. This isn’t a young adult book where things might go wrong, and the heroes will inevitably save the day. Every step of Savannah’s journey to unlock the secrets surrounding her ancestor Hella and her curse are filled with danger, and some of those dangers are ones that are hidden from her until it’s too late.

It’s not just the world-building of Blood to Poison that is authentic. Watson’s carefully reveals the vulnerabilities in her characters and the complexities beneath the surfaces of lives that seem perfect but in reality are far from it. She juxtaposes them against Savannah who has always been the epitome of everything that “is wrong”, the angry girl who can do no right. This is very much a book about finding oneself and your people, the people who accept you for who you are regardless of your faults. By showing that people are complex, they’re not inherently good or bad, Watson shows that the problem isn’t the “angry girls” like Savannah, but rather those who always put them in the box with that label. Around those who let them be their own people and take the time to understand them they can and will flourish.

I personally found Savannah very relatable, I was (and probably still am to a degree) an “angry girl”. As a disabled bisexual woman I’ve seen, and still seem my fair amount of injustices. In one scene Savannah has to relive all the transgressions that her tormentors had visited upon her, and this particularly stuck with me. How many women have been assaulted on public transport? Been taunted on the side of the road? I’m sure I won’t be the only reader that saw something familiar in that list of transgressions.

There isn’t much else to say other than Blood to Poison is a book I wish had existed when I was a teenager. It is a must-read.


For more of my reviews please visit my blog!
… (mer)
 
Flaggad
justgeekingby | Jun 6, 2023 |
The ideas in this book are so interesting it's a shame the book itself is a disjointed shambles patched together from convenience and "cleverness." Rarely have my fingers so itched to rewrite an entire book, preferably with storylines and characterization that actually go somewhere instead of terminating in smug, lazy nonsense.
 
Flaggad
slimikin | 2 andra recensioner | Mar 27, 2022 |
I received a free e-book copy of this book for an honest review.

This is the gem for me. The one that I have been hoping to find in various other books but it was never discovered until now. I will admit I was slightly confused when I first started reading, but once that scene ended and I was given the reaction of various characters around the main character, I was hooked. I was pulled along a crazy roller coaster of a story, and I didn't regret any of it. I was up until four in the morning, and even with the lack of sleep, having to go to work a few hours later, I would gladly have done it again.

There's very little I can actually divulge about this book, and if I attempted to, I doubt I would be able to do it justice. The characters are all well-rounded, and human. It's so difficult to find books that don't give the people in their novel quirks, but actual personality traits that are good, and some that would make them nasty; not someone you would want to be a friend of. None of the background characters just appear to move the story along, but have a point. While not all of their motives are ever explained, at the same time the reader is given enough to guess. The reader may be completely wrong, but even the supposed villains of this book are interesting.

This entire book blew way above my expectations, even the bits I was unsure were the imagination of the author, or else had foundations in Irish lore, for example. I will certainly be googling to find out, but no matter what I might discover, I applaud the author for the amount of work was put into this.

This is one that I will be buying within the next couple of days, and I highly recommend for any other reader who enjoys mysteries, who doesn't need romance to be the forefront of the story, and who enjoy complex threads weaved together to come to a crescendo at the end that rips apart the reader's heart. I can only hope there is a sequel, though at the same time all the possibilities that could be in the main character's future is just as good.
… (mer)
 
Flaggad
CatKin026 | 2 andra recensioner | May 19, 2018 |

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Associerade författare

Statistik

Verk
5
Även av
2
Medlemmar
252
Popularitet
#90,785
Betyg
½ 3.4
Recensioner
4
ISBN
29

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