“In Three to Five Paragraphs” Untoward Book Review Series — Everyone Knows Your Mother is a Witch by Rivka Galchen | by Matt Rowan | Untoward

“In Three to Five Paragraphs” Untoward Book Review Series — Everyone Knows Your Mother is a Witch by Rivka Galchen

Matt Rowan
Untoward
4 min readJan 24, 2022

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A brief explanation of what exactly it is I think I’m doing here. This is a new project for me, Matt Rowan, on Untoward and intended to get me to 1.) update the website more often and 2.) be a better literary citizen and say something about the books I read. I’ve been trying to find the right balance, though, and writing the often long-winded pieces I’ve written about certain books just isn’t facilitating much output. I’m going to take a page out of the plan I had to exercise more frequently by committing to getting outside for ten minutes every morning for a brisk jog or run (which I diligently accomplished for about a month until the wheels fell off that effort), and intend to write AT LEAST three paragraphs (but no more than five) about a book I’ve read, and then, naturally, share it with you here. I’m going to do everything I can to live up to this goal I’ve set for myself and perhaps more will be gained in the process, and hopefully it will last longer than my ill-fated exercise routine (though I’m trying to get back on track with that, as well).

Onward.

Rivka Galchen is one of those writers I’ve been hearing about in literary circles for years, going at least as far back as her landing in The New Yorker’s “20 Under 40” all the way back in 2010. My how the time does fly. I don’t know what took me so long to finally dig into her work. Perhaps it was a really quite alluring title? Everyone Knows Your Mother Is a Witch (FSG, 2021) has so much punch — and it didn’t disappoint, ending up an absolute delight by making full use of the historical fiction genre.

We meet Katharina Kepler when she is being subjected to an inquiry presided over by the ducal governor Lukas Einhorn (the False Unicorn as Kepler calls him) and on behalf of her accuser, Ursula Reinbold, who believes Kepler has poisoned her with a witchy brew of some kind (likely just a spoiled wine). Einhorn quickly calls an end to this meeting when, per her legal right, Kepler reminds him she should have a guardian present. Going the further step afterward to formally lodge a complaint against the ducal governor, Kepler feels the full weight of Einhorn’s authority to prosecute and punish crash down upon her.

This is a story all about fact and fiction and how each can become blurred in the minds of many. How some can grow to believe their lies and others can fail to be able to discern truth. I hadn’t known the real-life Johannes Kepler, a famed 17th century astronomer’s mother had been accused of witchcraft (as the events of Everyone Knows Your Mother Is a Witch are meant to, with various liberties, depict), but given the time period, one not entirely different from our own (I couldn’t help but see the parallels that exist between decrying as witches those women who fail to understand their place in the the 1600s and decrying all we know about our nation’s history and science when it fails to conform to a very specific cultural narrative of righteousness and entitlement), and driven by intense feelings of fear and paranoia, I can’t say I was altogether surprised.

I loved reading this novel, felt immersed in the struggle the various parties found themselves in, and was impressed by how much humor Galchen could pack into otherwise grim subject matter. It made me feel heard, understood, and frustrated with a system that can enable — hell, wield — small-mindedness, as though it were a cudgel. Force desperate people who are already struggling to meet the needs of their day-to-day life, and are constantly confronted with a new tragedy each day as well (the untimely passing of children from disease is a constant refrain in both the novel and historical record), and it hardly feels like a stretch they could fall victim to those in power who might manipulate such fears for their own purposes, no matter how petty and equally small-minded (to say nothing of greedy) those purposes might be. That was true then and it remains true now, in a time when people are forced to make unthinkable choices in order to secure a livelihood. I once read that the more major stressors a person experiences in their everyday life the less ability they have to think (much less care) about what’s happening around them. It’s no wonder we’ve arrived here again, as we work harder than ever to alienate teachers from their profession and make education on the whole far less accessible to people.

Above all, Everyone Knows Your Mother Is a Witch is a heartening call — in the midst of this long waking global and national nightmare — to choose community over mistrust, love over fear, and the combination of reason and empathy over cowardice.

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Educator, reader, writer, editor. Story collection, How the Moon Works (Cobalt Press). @veryrealbatman