Camilla Bruce, The Witch in the Well (Tor Books 2022)
200 years ago in the town of F-, Ilsbeth Clark drowns in the well.
Elena Clover is dead, and schoolteacher Catherine Evans wants to write the true account of it, to exonerate herself. She remembers a happy childhood with Elena.
Elena is clearing out the house, called ‘the castle’ of her deceased Uncle John. She remembers a rather supernatural experience from childhood. She is very drawn to the well.
Cathy happily researches the story of Ilsbeth. Then, Elena announces she will write her own book, and her version is very different, suggesting a female-driven magic cult. Elena claims a ‘soul connection’ to Ilsbeth, their consciousnesses intertwined. Ilsbeth’s soul imparts her witchcraft to Elena.
Cathy and Elena have it out, but Elena refuses to halt her book. Elena is visited by a white horse, Ilsbeth’s token? She finds a dead rabbit on her doorstep and catches Cathy breaking into her house. She takes out a restraining order.
Ilsbeth, reluctantly wed to Archibald Clark, enters an affair with the reverend Owen Phyne. Her mother Anna gives her a ‘daemon’, which she releases into the well, from there to consume quantities of raw meat.
The plot, which mostly deals with the relationship between Cathy and Elena, unravels slowly. It’s page 241 until the death of Elena is narrated. It’s page 265 until we learn what childhood event influenced Cathy.
The narrative probes deeply into the characters’s feelings. While Elena is obsessed with ‘Ilsbeth’s soul’ Cathy becomes obsessed with stopping Elena’s book. Point of view shifts between Cathy and Elena, and Ilsbeth, including excerpts from Elena’s diary and Cathy’s book, making an patchwork of material.
Cathy, Elena and Ilsbeth are all, due to their obsessions, unreliable narrators. Is witchcraft real? Are daemons really eating children? How does it work? This gives the story a dream-like quality.
This review first appeared in Historical Novels Review.
Susie Helme 
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