The Witch of Exmoor

Aug 03, 2012 Simon rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: philosophy-philosophers-in-fiction

An entertaining book about a willful and eccentric writer and her three adult children, in Britain in the 1990s. The treatment of the characters is clinically cold; they squirm about like specimens in a lab, and the narrator's constant collusion with the reader ("what do you think X does?," "I'm afraid this is really what they think," "we'll come back to her in a bit but first let's..." and so on) brings out this detachment from the characters even more. Almost inevitably (is this right?), such...more

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Nov 17, 2012 Laurie rated it 5 of 5 stars

‘The Witch of Exmoor’ begins with the adult children of Frieda Haxby Palmer having a weekend together for the purpose of deciding what to do about their mother. She has, they feel, lost her mind or gone senile. The problem is, there is not one sign that she is incompetent, except by the standards of her upper middle class, consumerist children. What they call signs of a failing mind are selling the house they grew up in, suing the government over tax issues, making a public investigation and sce...more ‘The Witch of Exmoor’ begins with the adult children of Frieda Haxby Palmer having a weekend together for the purpose of deciding what to do about their mother. She has, they feel, lost her mind or gone senile. The problem is, there is not one sign that she is incompetent, except by the standards of her upper middle class, consumerist children. What they call signs of a failing mind are selling the house they grew up in, suing the government over tax issues, making a public investigation and scene over a manufacturer of over processed foods, and moving to a rambling, falling apart white elephant on the coast far from ‘civilization’. And embarrassing them in the process of all that. That’s the worst; the embarrassment and the worries over what she might be doing with their future inheritance. Frieda doesn’t care what they think; she’s never been an attentive mother; when they were young, she was busy writing and earning a living, now they mostly bore her so she doesn’t bother with them. The only family members she cares to interact with are her son-in-law, who believes in social activism, and his son, who is bright and curious and has so far avoided becoming average. Her children feel she is a monster because of her past and current inattentiveness. They really have no idea how she spends her days and who her friends are.

The characters are close to caricatures: the moral-less lawyer, the good wife who hides concerns in a Martha Stewart existence, the bad child (drugs), the good child (does what her family wants), the poor man who has no chance at an equitable life because of the circumstances of his birth, etc. Frieda is the character who is best filled out; she is like a 1960s hippie and feminist who has grown into old age with her values intact; we find more and more about her as the book goes on, like peeling an onion.

The book is really less a family novel (although it is that) than it is a social commentary that is as apt today as it was in 1996. Britain is still trying to figure out how to fix the NHS, human rights are still being trampled everywhere. Corporations are still soulless entities who will do anything for a profit.

I really enjoyed this book. I wanted to know more about Frieda; she’s a woman with a sense of adventure, one whom I would like to sit down and have a drink and a good conversation with. She’s a real person in a cardboard world.
(less)

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Nov 01, 2012 Orna Ross rated it 3 of 5 stars

`Let them have everything that is pleasant. The windows are open on to the terrace and the lawn, and drooping bunches of wistaria deepen from a washed mauve pink to purple. The roses are in bloom.' With an opening paragraph like this, where else could we be but England?

But we are reading Margaret Drabble, so ye olde English scent of roses soon fades. The people of this novel inhabit the same country that the author outlined in her acclaimed 1980s trilogy: "Not a bad country... just a mean, cold,...more `Let them have everything that is pleasant. The windows are open on to the terrace and the lawn, and drooping bunches of wistaria deepen from a washed mauve pink to purple. The roses are in bloom.' With an opening paragraph like this, where else could we be but England?

But we are reading Margaret Drabble, so ye olde English scent of roses soon fades. The people of this novel inhabit the same country that the author outlined in her acclaimed 1980s trilogy: "Not a bad country... just a mean, cold, ugly, divided, tired, clapped out, post-imperial, post-industrial slag-heap covered in polystyrene hamburger cartons".

So though Drabble allows the Palmers - the middle-aged, rational, privileged and selfish family at the centre of this book - to begin with "everything that is pleasant", by the novel's end "the pond" silt up, the lawn is not mown, bindweed embraces the sundial and ground elder ramps around the roots of the wistaria".

The destruction of the Palmers - Daniel and his sisters Rosemary and Gogo - is rooted in their obsession with their mother, Frieda, the eponymous Witch. Frieda Haxby Palmer, writer and capricious free spirit, had, in the opinion of her family, gone mad.

The basis for their concern is that she has moved house: bought a crumbling mansion on the edge of the Exmoor coast, where she intends to write her memoirs and change her will. But Frieda has not been the best of mothers and her children's filial concern is more than a little self-interested.

Thus we have a classic 19th century novel plot of family inheritance given a 20th century outing. But Drabble is no Dickens, and prefers the cerebral to the sentimental. Her acute observations about human psychology and family relationships are a camera through which she captures the swarming throng of contemporary British life and culture.

The Palmers represent Britain's free-market, greedy and selfish present; Benjamin D'Anger - Gogo's son - its multicultural future. And Frieda - daughter of the Fens and the Vikings, who elevated herself by "a genetic freak of talent, intelligence or mother-wit" its past. And the past is a shifting, contradictory, complex mystery: "there were so many versions of the story, and all of them were false".

Ideas are at the heart of this book and a mocking, ironic tone deliberately distances the characters so that, while its comedy hits a bleak, black funnybone, its tragedies leave the reader as unmoved as a news report or a video nasty. Which is, of course, precisely the point.

The book ends on an upbeat note, with the younger generation, represented by Emily (Daniel's daughter) and Benjamin (Gogo's son) embracing life: "on they go and onwards, to the next point and the next. They are young, and on they go."

However, as Emily calls for Benjamin to jump the waves of an incoming tide, an earlier line about Emily and her ill-fated brother, Simon, reverberates in the reader's mind: "only ankle-deep in their lives as yet. Perhaps not even that. But the mud pulls and sucks".

The achievement of this novel is its imaginative hold on the "mud" that is contemporary life.(less)

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Jul 16, 2010 Susan added it

Two-thirds of The Witch of Exmoor is about successful author Frieda Palmer and her relationship with her three children and their spouses.
Frieda, who decides to move to a ruin of a house in Exmoor to examine her life and write her memoirs, is considered "cracking up" and "eccentric" by her family. There are discussions over who should be looking out for mother. Frieda is merely independently living her life and not caring much what other people think of it.
While her children think her "cracker...more

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Feb 01, 2013 Janet Gardner rated it 4 of 5 stars

While plenty happens in this book—including death, madness, drug abuse, and the keeping and unraveling of several secrets—it’s really not a plot-driven novel at all. Rather, it’s a novel of ideas. The characters talk a lot about big ideas, particularly how to define and/or move towards The Just Society, but they actually spend their time worrying about far more mundane things: their health, their jobs, and so forth. (This, of course, is part of the point: what we claim to believe and care about...more

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Jun 20, 2012 Sheri rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: poverty-class-issues

There are a few interesting commentaries here about social class, family relationships, and especially the squabbling that goes on over inheritance. BUT in general I thought it was boring, lacking in suspense, and in need of a good editor.

First, there are several points in which Drabble contradicts herself. She describes Nathan as very ugly (pg 3) and then later as an attractive man (pg 17). Certainly we come to discover that he is a bit of a playboy, but how is it that he is simultaneously unat...more There are a few interesting commentaries here about social class, family relationships, and especially the squabbling that goes on over inheritance. BUT in general I thought it was boring, lacking in suspense, and in need of a good editor.

First, there are several points in which Drabble contradicts herself. She describes Nathan as very ugly (pg 3) and then later as an attractive man (pg 17). Certainly we come to discover that he is a bit of a playboy, but how is it that he is simultaneously unattractive yet attractive? Personally, I did not find him compelling (either in physical description or as a character..he was a bit of a whiner). Another point at which Drabble needed editorial help was round about pg 90; she says that they write to Frieda, but then quickly back tracks to wondering if Frieda gets mail and when David and Gogo visit, they have a packet of things to give PRESUMABLY because they have no mailing address for Frieda. A third instance of this is when Frieda's car is referred to on pg 158 as a Saab after having been called a Volvo. Maybe Drabble was trying to make a point about the interchangeability of these high end machines, but I found it to just be sloppy, inconsistent, and distracting stuff for an attentive reader.

The veil of ignorance word game and the whole class consciousness throughout felt just too overdone. Yeah, these are upper middle class Brits who undeservedly have a higher social position than many other people (Will Paine for example), yeah they are educated and intelligent and aware of their undeserved position. But do they really talk about it this much? Do they think about it? Maybe David would (he is a sociologist), maybe Frieda would (she is a radical author), but Gogo and Rosemary, Patsy, Daniel, and Nathan would not ever think about or question their entitled position. Nathan, Freida and Belle end up in "heaven" (beyond the veil of ignorance, but still
contemplating it), which was not only disgusting to my agnostic mind but simplistic and unnecessary. Are we to understand that when Benjie jumps he will join them in the watery-bliss?

As other reviewers have mentioned, I found the narrator annoying. I disliked the 2nd person conversational tone "you might have guessed..." or "now we shall walk through the garden and into the night." Either be a narrator or be omniscient, but please do not condescendingly discuss my opinions with me AS A READER.

On the other hand, there were a few fine points of social commentary: Freida's rejection of modernity certainly is compelling; Drabble's description of the way that Benjie can feel his parent's begin to change their minds as they enter the cave tourist destination (pg 93) rings true both as a parent and (in memory) as a kid; Drabble's note that "greed and selfishness have become respectable. Like family jealousy, they are not new, but they have gained a new sanction. It is now considered correct to covet." is lovely, concise and accurate (in my opinion); Freida's questions on the continuity of one's own character through life is interesting.

Overall there are some fine points, but I think it could have been much better done and would have been much more readable with some editing.(less)

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Feb 06, 2010 Nancy rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

Two-thirds of The Witch of Exmoor is about successful author Frieda Palmer and her relationship with her three children and their spouses.
Frieda, who decides to move to a ruin of a house in Exmoor to examine her life and write her memoirs, is considered "cracking up" and "eccentric" by her family. There are discussions over who should be looking out for mother. Frieda is merely independently living her life and not caring much what other people think of it.
While her children think her "crack...more

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May 20, 2011 Rebecca Burke rated it 4 of 5 stars

I want to give St. Margaret the best rating but don't want to steer newbies to this book of hers. Better to stick with her earliest novels or her trilogy. The Witch of Exmoor has many fine moments, chiefly its characterizations and sharp social satire of the upper middle class in English society. Alas, the disjointed narrative becomes irritating. She has some things she wants to tell you about the state of modern England, and I am totally open to hearing those things, being political myself. But...more

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Jan 28, 2013 Elizabeth rated it 2 of 5 stars

It seems as if there are dozens and dozens of relatives in this slightly comical novel about a supposedly elderly and eccentric woman (she's in her early 60s), her three middle-aged children, their spouses and a passel of grandchildren. Unfortunately the central character is not especially characterized, and I found it hard to remember who the offspring were, who they were married to and what kind of people they were. A lot happens in this book, but it feels like almost nothing until the last 30...more

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Aug 10, 2010 Joan Colby rated it 3 of 5 stars

Reading Margaret Drabble is tantamount to having a wide ranging conversation with intellectuals. Her digressions into philosophies, politics, history and nature are fascinating. The Witch of Exmoor is mainly a story of a dysfunctional family—all the members of which are more effectively portrayed than Frieda (the witch) herself. The lack is that while Frieda is regarded as a noted author and intellectual, none of this is actually shown; instead we know Frieda by her eccentricities which also don...more

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Aug 02, 2007 tamar rated it 3 of 5 stars

i liked the ending a lot. this book is very intense. british.

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Apr 05, 2012 My Inner Shelf rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: _ebook, contemporains

Amateurs d’action et d’intrigues complexes passez votre chemin. Amoureux de la perfide Albion, ce roman est pour vous. Pour peu que vous soyez amateur d’ambiance so british, de personnages antipathiques, et de sociologie britannique, ce roman vous comblera du début à la fin. Car l’auteur nous dévoile ici un pan de la société britannique de fin de siècle (du XXe, hein !) au travers d’une famille de parvenus qui ont bien profité de la célébrité et de la richesse de leur mère, un auteur reconnu d’o...more Amateurs d’action et d’intrigues complexes passez votre chemin. Amoureux de la perfide Albion, ce roman est pour vous. Pour peu que vous soyez amateur d’ambiance so british, de personnages antipathiques, et de sociologie britannique, ce roman vous comblera du début à la fin. Car l’auteur nous dévoile ici un pan de la société britannique de fin de siècle (du XXe, hein !) au travers d’une famille de parvenus qui ont bien profité de la célébrité et de la richesse de leur mère, un auteur reconnu d’ouvrages sociologiques et historiques. Tout le monde en prend pour son grade, les institutions, les politiques, ainsi que les personnages eux-mêmes, les trois enfants Palmer, de véritables affreux, d’antipathiques enfants gâtés pourvus de conjoints plus ou moins bien placés dans la vie. Mais ce n’est pas leur faute, car leur mère, Frieda Haxby Palmer, vieille dame excentrique à la retraite, est elle-même une affreuse bonne femme. Cette dernière décide de s’exiler sans raison apparente et à la surprise de tous dans une vieille bâtisse en décrépitude avancée, au bord d’une falaise, loin de tout. Mais Frieda, qui n’a de compte à rendre à personne, et encore moins à ses rejetons qui l’indiffèrent, envisage d’écrire ses mémoires, de cracher sur le papier son histoire et celle de sa sœur décédée. Le roman est foisonnant, alors que finalement il ne s’y passe pas grand-chose, du moins en apparence. Car ici rien n’est important, mais tout compte. Le secret de famille passe au second plan. Les petits et grands soucis des enfants Palmer et de leurs pièces rapportées sont un détail du tableau de peint Margaret Drabble, de même que la retraite inexpliquée et de la vieille Frieda, de son désir d’écrire ses mémoires. L’indigne mère passe pour sénile aux yeux de ses proches, pauvres individus bas du front à qui il faut une explication pour tout. Frieda, son désir d’isolement, ses enfants nantis et leurs aspirations, son passé marqué par sa propre mère et sa sœur, tout autant de détails et d’aspects qui finalement n’ont de sens que dans un ensemble, dans un tableau de famille avec tous ses aléas et ses sentiments refoulés ou absents. Un portrait de famille comme une autre dans le fond, où les personnages sont au bout du compte plus nuancés qu’il n’y paraît.(less)

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Dec 31, 2008 Laura rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2008-mt-bookpile

This is my first Drabble since The Ice Age almost 30 years ago. While the plot was interesting enough to hold me, the tone drove me nuts. The entire book was written with an unseen, offstage narrator ("and now we look at the D'Anger family" or "here is Gogo") and all I could hear was a mash-up of the "Mutual of Omaha"'s narrator and one of those plummy BBC voices. Very distracting. Had that not been there, I'd have given this four stars.

It was also distracting - unintentionally so - to have a ma...more

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Feb 09, 2011 Olduvai rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2011, reading-the-world-challenge

My first Margaret Drabble! I liked how it opened with a family dinner, as I’m a sucker for books that feature food. It takes a while for us to actually meet the ‘witch’, that is, Freida Palmer, the matriarch of the family who has just moved into a ruin of a house in Exmoore, as quite a bit of the story is about her three children and their respective families. Frieda then disappears about halfway through the novel, and the focus is then back on her family’s exploration of their eccentric mother....more

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Apr 21, 2013 Carol Wakefield rated it 5 of 5 stars

I'm a new fan of Margaret Drabble. I'll seek out other of her books. Loved the wry social commentary accompanying the family story. Enjoyed dribbles assessments of her characters, their strengths and their weaknesses and her final accounting of their futures. All told as if by an observer from afar. Great fun, many giggles along the way. On to more Drabble!

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Nov 28, 2010 Kathleen rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: england, fiction

I love Margaret Drabble. Her characters are great and wrestle with a myriad of contemporary issues. Frieda is one of the best characters ever -very complex, lovable and hateful at the same time.

In reading other reviews it bothers me when people will rate a book that they have not finished reading. That has happened alot with this book.

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Dec 04, 2009 Emjay rated it 4 of 5 stars

Feminist writer and scholar, Freda Haxby Palmer, entering eccentric old age, has purchased a crumbling mansion in southwest England. Her three middle-aged, never welcomed children, (and spouses) are in various states of alarm about their eventual inheritances. This is a highly readable and witty update on Shakespeare's King Lear theme.

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Oct 08, 2011 Rachel rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2011

Read while on the Amtrak train between NY and Boston. It's a well observed and written, I really loved Frieda, the character reminded me of the Warning poem by Jenny Joseph 'When I am an old woman I shall wear purple'.

This is not a cheering book on the whole it's a rather sombre read, but enjoyable nonetheless.

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Jun 04, 2012 zespri rated it 4 of 5 stars

I loved this book! Freida is a wonderful character, quite wicked and eccentric. She moves to an old rundown mansion on the edge of nowhere to finish out her life and write her memoirs. And to be left alone by her meddling family.

And then we have her family of two daughters and a son, with interesting and fallible spouses and children, who think that this is not how an old woman should exist.

When Freida disappears, her family plunge into chaos, and their tidy lives unravel.

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Oct 11, 2010 Velvetink rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, read-2010

finished.......not quite what I thought it would be, review soon.

5.10.2010. Moving into the 2nd chapter. This is more like it.!!!!

Only into it to the first chapter...not grabbing me so far, but I am stressed = swapping to something to carry me away to the land of Nod. Get back to this one later.

(one of 24 books found today at 2nd hand shop...24 for $10!)

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Dec 30, 2012 L rated it 4 of 5 stars

The mess that is the Kindle version of this book drove me nuts! Page after page with the code #x2013, spaces in the middle of words, and more. It was a mess. None the less, and for reasons I really can't quite fathom, I almost couldn't put down this book.

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Sep 13, 2008 Ruthie rated it 2 of 5 stars

Decrepit. The storyline of this book meandered along the edge of boring all the way from start to finish, without even offering a likeable character. Seriously. Not one. And to top it all off, we get a "heavenly" glimpse of the characters who were killed off - on some paradise of an island. It was interesting to hear their view of how they died, but still...

I gave it the second star because I do like her writing style. I like the remarks to the reader, and I enjoyed her vocabulary. I actually k...more

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Mar 20, 2009 Ana added it

Shelves: no-read

I didn't enjoy this book much. I actually skipped all the way to the end just to make sure I didn't want to read it. Not one I would recommend.

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Dec 01, 2009 Sara rated it 3 of 5 stars

This story was told from the perspective of someone looking in an observing everyone--quite tedious. Interesting characters.

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Aug 28, 2012 Julie rated it 3 of 5 stars

An eccentric older writer disappears on the moors. Her family tries to decide what to do.

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Dec 11, 2012 Charlotte rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to Charlotte by: sherri

The writing style of this book was quite interesting, but the story itself wasn't very engaging somehow. A rather unsatisfying read.

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Sep 08, 2010 Kim rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: books-i-couldn-t-finish

I got about 50 pages into Drabble's post-modern political family saga and was too bored to go on. The book is well written, with detail and character development that I generally enjoy, but the new money snobbish family was totally uninteresting, and I couldn't be bothered to care about the game they were playing as a family - whether or not they would role the dice and live in a totally new society without the guarantee of their current level of privilege. So with this barrier I decided to stop...more

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Dec 05, 2012 Krissi rated it 4 of 5 stars

THis book is witty and wonderful.

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Feb 15, 2012 Catherine rated it 3 of 5 stars

Hadn't read any Margaret Drabble for years; enjoyed this 50c op-shop book. Characters were well rounded and I liked the style of the narrator observing the goings on.

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Sep 01, 2010 Mariya marked it as to-read

ob

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