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Witches On The Road Tonight (2011)

by Sheri Holman(Favorite Author)

3.13 of 5 Votes: 5

ISBN

0802119433 (ISBN13: 9780802119438)

languge

English

genre

Historical Fiction

publisher

Atlantic Monthly Press

review 1: I had started one of Sheri Holman's other books, the Dress Lodger, and wound up putting it down. This book is very different than that one. It's a fast read, and pretty interesting. I couldn't help but picture older Eddy as Svenghoulie, the host of the local creature feature we have on Saturday nights. It's as if Holman watched him with his rubber chicken, and goofball antics and skits. I was intrigued when I came across the book about the WPA aspect of the book...it being about a photographer and a failed play writeon the government's dime, exploring Appalachia, marking out, photographing and writing about points of interest, showing America to American's if you will. I've recently read a fantastical book about magic, earlier one about the witches of Pendle Hill in Englan... mored, and it makes me wonder, I suppose magicians are really illusionists, where as witches cast spells, but are also healers, and naturalists. I found it interesting, the parts of the book about Cora's herb knowledge, and simple wisdoms. Was she a witch? Sonia, seemed to me to be Martha Gelhorn and Lee Miller combined. I admired her strength, but she wasn't a very sympathetic character. Tucker Hayes, I liked him, it was easy to picture him as a shambling sort of easy going fellow, and even though WWll was the good war, and people were eager to sign up, not everyone was all that excited about dying over there. Wallis, I find I'm getting very prudish in my old age, and while I liked her as a kid, I wasn't so sure I liked her as a grown woman. Ann, I somehow could only picture as David, Amy and my friend Tiffany Sedaris' mother. Jasper gave me the willies.
review 2: I'm both enjoyed and disliked this story. The aspects I liked:-Father/Daughter narratives-Eddie's story about the time Tucker came to the mountain-Wallace's story about her time with Jasper as well as her believability as a girl on the verge of young womanhoodThe aspects I did not like:-Contemporary Wallace, both her voice and story-The lack of resolution with Tucker and Sonia. I didn't need things spelled out but I would have liked to have had them BOTH show up again in Wallace's timeline-Ann's brief and pointless narrative and the nod to Sonia.Aspects I should have liked but didn't care about:-The witchery, both Cora's and Wallace's-The damned film projector and early Frankenstein movie-Jasper's storyThe reader for Eddie was both good and bad. As old Eddie, he was fantastic. He reads like he's always on his last breath, like he's got to cut sentences short because there is no more air in his lungs. That works for a man dying of cancer. It didn't work nearly so well for a young man having a strange set of experiences in the Appalachians in the '40s or the young Eddie that watched it all transpire.Wallace's reader was fine. She did a great job bringing precocious and somewhat snotty young Wallace to life. However, even her skills couldn't do anything for contemporary Wallace. less

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