Book Review - 'How to Catch a Witch' by Abie Longstaff

Spoilers ahead:

In my quest to consume every witch/magical girl product in the media - every witchy thing I come across - here is 'How to Catch a Witch', which is... one of them.

It's an obscure little witchy book for children, first discovered and sought out because I like the author's 'The Fairytale Hairdresser' picture book series, and I have things I want to say about it.

I have decided to list the positives and negatives in bullet points:


Positives:

• It is a cute and quick book that can be read in a day.

• The main character, Charlie Samuels, is a "weird" loner new girl in town, and considerably a "scaredy cat", but not really. She is inquisitive, and shy, yet she gets on with things and is brave and determined. She's highly imaginative and superstitious in a way that a lot of young children are. I could see my younger self in her, especially in our shared intrigue and fascination with fairy tales and witches! It is one of the reasons I know I would have liked 'How to Catch a Witch' a lot more if I had read it as a child.

• Charlie could be on the autism spectrum, too. She constantly makes lists. And she has a stutter, which explains her social anxiety when it comes to communicating with and connecting to people. Thankfully, she learns that her stutter is not a "curse" (she really thought this) that she needs to overcome. It is a part of her, and there is nothing wrong with it - there is nothing wrong with her. It's nothing to be ashamed of, and she's great as she is. She grows in confidence as the book progresses. Her stutter doesn't magically go away by the end of the book. Good, subversive, challenging, refreshing, and reassuring representation for child readers there.

• Charlie's family are a laugh and a delight, especially her dad and baby sister. They are charming, funny and endearing.

• There are authentic details when it comes to the witchcraft aspect, such as symbols, sigils, herbs, flowers, and referencing paraphernalia like witch bottles, candles, familiars (not all of them animals, as it turns out, but I'll get to that), and grimoires. There are pagan and wiccan influences. It's pleasantly surprising to see in a light, playful, playground children's book. All witchy stuff is taught to Charlie by the witch she "catches" (well, more like whose cottage in the woods she just happens to wander into one day), whose name is Agatha. Plus, there's even a witchcraft shop in Charlie's new town called Moonquest.

• The fairy tale references are neat, and add to the overall cuteness of the book. Nice to see that in this modern fairy tale, not all witches are evil.

• Nice feminist messaging, when discussing past witch burnings and persecuted women, too.


Negatives:

• Not much actually happens in 'How to Catch a Witch'. It is very tame, with no (living) antagonist, no difficulties, hardly any pushbacks or low points, and no serious threat or stakes beyond a girl we hardly know losing her singing voice (yes, really). There are many contrivances and convenient moments, to either help the child protagonist Charlie along without hardship, or to serve as annoying setbacks; bumps along the road to make the short book longer. There's nary a plot to speak of, beyond: an oblivious schoolgirl, Suzy, who is barely a side character, is cursed to lose her ability to sing on her seventeenth birthday, and Charlie must help a witch in the woods, Agatha, and attempt to cast spells herself to break the curse.

• There's very little about "catching witches" in 'How to Catch a Witch, as it turns out; an imaginative Charlie wants to seek out a witch to "cure" her stutter and fit in in her new school, and she finds one easily on one trip in the woods. Agatha knows about Suzy, whom Charlie met in her neighbourhood and then her school, and that she's cursed to lose her singing voice on her seventeenth birthday, due to a tragic backstory and history with a mysterious dark witch friend, and Charlie sets out to break or delay the curse with Agatha's help. They become master and apprentice, and friends. Magic is real! It's not a bad idea for a children's story, actually, and it shows how witches, and magic, are not inherently evil. It teaches tolerance, and antiprejudice. Then there's this final line in the book: 'Charlie grinned as she remembered the list she'd made: Ways to catch a witch, she'd called it. Now, in her head she added: Number 7: Look in the mirror.' (page 175) Maybe the whole idea and execution could have benefitted from being longer and more developed, to reach its full potential, and earn the ending of its well-meaning premise.

• Speaking of underdevelopment, this also applies to the characters. Except for Charlie, everyone is pretty one-note, and not that fleshed out. Suzy barely figures into the story, when she is the reason there is a story at all, because of her curse (BTW, the witch who cursed her at her Christening is dead before the events of the book take place), a curse she remains oblivious to - she never finds out about it, nor the existence of magic and how it is effecting her life. She's a plot device, and nothing more. She only interacts with Charlie like, twice throughout the novella, whilst Charlie gets to stalk her and perform amateur, potentially dangerous spells on her without the older girl's knowledge or consent. It's kind of creepy and screwed up, if you think about it.

• There is absolutely nothing concerning stranger danger when it comes to Agatha's character. It turns out that Charlie going into the woods alone and into a complete stranger's home there is okay. No red flags, no warning bells ringing, at the recluse/hermit woman saying off the bat that she's a witch, and that magic is real and the little girl who entered her cottage should do spells for her to "break a curse". No suspicions, no questions, no apprehension on Charlie's part, not even initially. That Agatha does turn out to be "good" (though that's debatable, but I'll get into that in a bit) and "safe", and that this is a subversive fairy tale where there are "friendly" witches, is beside the point; going into a stranger's house in a hidden area in a place you're new to is a reprehensible message to put into a children's book.

• Agatha isn't, in fact, a very good or friendly character. As a Baba Yaga-archetype, supposedly, she's cold, stoic and formal, and scares Charlie, though there's every indication that she doesn't mean to, and she is just bad at socialising, as a loner local witch in the woods. Worst of all, she puts the child in danger with no appropriate amount of care and remorse. She allegedly gave up magic after her best friend, Eliza, who made mistakes and tragically turned to the dark side of magic, cursed Suzy with a bad singing voice because she wasn't invited to her Christening (yep, and it is silly and makes no sense). Then Eliza died. Agatha felt guilty, but apparently never once attempted to break the curse herself throughout Suzy's seventeen years of life. Charlie shows up conveniently about a week before Suzy turns seventeen; before her curse would take hold. It turns out Agatha needed a child's help to do risky, dangerous curse-breaking magic for her. She's a tragic mentor character who never gets off her backside to do anything herself, outside of her house. At best, she's useless and pathetic. At worst, she's heavily irresponsible. Child endangerment is definitely on her list of crimes.

• In what could be another flaw in Agatha, or a flaw in the writing, is as follows: she explicitly states to Charlie a few times that no one is to see her performing magic - whether out of secrecy and the risk of magic exposure and a resurgence of witch hunts, or the spells will not work otherwise, or both, is unclear. Another girl at school, Kat, catches Charlie in every instance of her trying out magical solutions on Suzy to break her curse, and has even deliberately prevented her from performing them a couple times. It turns out that Kat is magical, too (but not a witch, specifically, but oh, I'm finally getting to that next up). So, does the no-witness rule count if the witness is also magical? Would all of Charlie's spells worked regardless? Why doesn't she keep trying the same ones, if her first attempts failed due to either bad timing or sabotage? Are there any real stakes, obstacles and difficulties in 'How to Catch a Witch' on any level (including metaphorically)?

Aaaaaand speaking of Kat...

• After her third failed curse-breaking spell, Charlie thinks Kat, aka her obvious future first friend her own age in town, might be a witch. Kat can see "glows" - essences in things and people. Charlie is disappointed because she thinks Kat is a witch and not her, and so Kat would become Agatha's new apprentice and leave the "poor, stuttering, magicless" Charlie behind. This is despite the fact that Charlie has been performing magic spells throughout the book, even succeeding in one or two. Also throughout the book she feels a "buzzing" in her body whenever there's magic present. We get a drawn-out sequence where Charlie takes Kat to see Agatha in her cottage in the woods, where she expects the older woman to declare her friend a witch and Charlie a nothing, when it is obvious she is a witch. Both girls could be witches, together. But what ends up happening is the most baffling "twist". Agatha does say that Charlie is a witch, and Kat... is a familiar.

Okay. Strap in, rant ahead:

In this book, witches' familiars can be people as well as animals. Not witches themselves, but assistants to witches. Servants. Second to them. Lower than them. So low that they're comparable to an animal, and Kat seriously says that animals have always liked her, and she connects to them more than people. Human "familiars" absorb energy and magic and give them to the people who are supposed to be the witches. Why aren't they witches when they too can cast spells? Can they only do any kind of magic when they are partnered with a "real witch"? Is a "real, proper witch" just more powerful? How are they special? How are they different from familiars? Are familiars basically witches' slaves? Are human familiars destined to be slaves to witches? They have no choice in the matter? Like, tough, it is something they have to deal with, as it's their undisputed lot in life, set in stone?

Wow. If I were Kat, I'd be raging, dispirited, disheartened, even devastated. Quite literally dehumanised. But no. She is delighted by the news that she has to play second fiddle to Charlie; to be what is essentially the equivalent of a pet cat. Heck, she's compared to a cat in appearance a few times by Charlie, and her name is Kat! It's good that the two magical girls become friends, and are happy and close - the best of witchy friends by the end of the novella - and they share a kind of psychic connection, with Charlie's buzz and Kat's glow - but why can't Kat be a witch, too? How is she not a witch? Why a familiar? What makes a familiar? What is the difference? Who makes these stupid, elitist, bureaucratic master-and-subservient rules?

Ahem.

Final point:

• The ending is too abrupt and too easy. Charlie, with Kat's "help" via energy transfer to the "real witch" (urgh, how is that fair and equal?), captures Suzy's curse from outside her window, at night, while Suzy is asleep (totally not creepy at all), and bottles it, and hands it to Agatha, who destroys it by breaking it in her fireplace, and Charlie and Kat each go home to sleep, and that's it. The reader still hardly knows anything about Suzy, the blissfully oblivious victim who should have been a friend and confidante to the protagonist. If Suzy was made aware of the curse, and indeed of anything that's going on, at some point in what little story there is, it would have been a lot shorter, or more dramatic, emotional and personal, depending on how well the writer could pull it off convincingly and flowingly.


'How to Catch a Witch' isn't empty and unsatisfying, exactly, as it is funny, clever, cute, and contains more laudable messages than bad ones. Additionally it's breezy and easy to read. But I wanted more substance, more character work - solid characterisation - even if the magic, figuratively and in-story, was still there. And that human familiar idea needed to be outright rejected in-story, for the reasons already mentioned above, not accepted as a done thing, no question. Not something to be happy about and proud of. Not something that is natural and normal. Not an assigned, destined role, due to what I can only assume to be genetics (witch genes are mentioned), which should not define a person, and it is another dangerous and irresponsible message to send to the youth of today.

Phew! I managed to say far more than perhaps was necessary about an unassuming little children's witch book that is meant to be read at school during playtime. But like I said, this is something I would have liked as a witch-loving schoolgirl myself, so there is a nostalgic wonder to it for me.

It sadly wasn't enough for my adult brain. My wise, weary, worldly adult brain and heart.

Final Score: 3/5