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The Witch
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In a small, sleepy town, a mediocre witch, in a mediocre marriage, tries to pass on her gifts to her twin daughters, who, it becomes immediately apparent, have skills far beyond her own.
Lucie comes from a long line of witches, powers passed down from mother to daughter. Her own mom was formidable in her powers, but ashamed of her magic. Perhaps as a result, Lucie's own gift is weak: she can see into the future, sometimes-but more often, she can only see the present of some other location. Not very useful. And the worst part? All she can ever see are insignificant details - a scrap of outfit, the colour of the sky. Lucie's own children are initiated into their family's peculiar womanhood when they reach twelve years of age, and in a few short months, Maud and Lise are crying the curious tears of blood that denote their magical powers. Having learned, they take off quickly and fly the nest. Literally.
Witty, dreamlike, vaguely unsettling, and utterly enchanting (pun intended), The Witch brings the mysteries of womanhood and motherhood into sharp relief and leaves us teetering on the edge, unbalanced by questions as seemingly unbreakable relationships break down left and right.
Who is to blame for family failures? And how can you - can you? - build a nest that no one wants to fly?
Lucie comes from a long line of witches, powers passed down from mother to daughter. Her own mom was formidable in her powers, but ashamed of her magic. Perhaps as a result, Lucie's own gift is weak: she can see into the future, sometimes-but more often, she can only see the present of some other location. Not very useful. And the worst part? All she can ever see are insignificant details - a scrap of outfit, the colour of the sky. Lucie's own children are initiated into their family's peculiar womanhood when they reach twelve years of age, and in a few short months, Maud and Lise are crying the curious tears of blood that denote their magical powers. Having learned, they take off quickly and fly the nest. Literally.
Witty, dreamlike, vaguely unsettling, and utterly enchanting (pun intended), The Witch brings the mysteries of womanhood and motherhood into sharp relief and leaves us teetering on the edge, unbalanced by questions as seemingly unbreakable relationships break down left and right.
Who is to blame for family failures? And how can you - can you? - build a nest that no one wants to fly?
144 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1996
18 people are currently reading
8205 people want to read
About the author
Marie NDiaye
57 books438 followersMarie NDiaye was born in Pithiviers, France, in 1967; spent her childhood with her French mother (her father was Senegalese); and studied linguistics at the Sorbonne. She started writing when she was twelve or thirteen years old and was only eighteen when her first work was published. In 2001 she was awarded the prestigious Prix Femina literary prize for her novel Rosie Carpe, and in 2009, she won the Prix Goncourt for Three Strong Women.
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March 1, 2026Lucie is a wife, a mother of twins, and a witch, albeit a mediocre one. Her skills are limited to vague images of present events that leave her with lightly blood-stained tears. But when her daughters come of age she initiates them into these mysterious powers and finds that they are quite strong in their perception, crying real tears of blood. When the girls begin to test the limits of their powers and fly the coop, Lucie reckons with the life she is left with: a mortgage, a loveless marriage, and a mission to reunite her own separated parents.
Told in long and winding, lyrically written sentences, NDiaye’s prose (and Stump’s excellent translation) creates a dreamy almost surreal atmosphere. While a majority of the story is very grounded in reality, the obvious fantastical elements woven into everyday life create an aura of mysticism and confusion that mirrors Lucie’s own experiences. In some ways it reminded me of the sort of nightmarish plottiness of Ishiguro’s novel, The Unconsoled, where events quickly unravel into the next thing and Lucie is whisked along for the ride.
However, ultimately, despite being beautifully written and offering interesting themes of motherhood, marriage, and the role that power dynamics play in both of those arenas, the story itself felt a bit underwhelming by the end. The book is quite short (only about 144 pages) and divided in 2 parts. I really enjoyed the set-up in part 1, and while I was engaged in part 2 it felt like things happened too quickly and then the ending left me wanting more.
I would definitely check out more of NDiaye’s work because I loved her prose, and perhaps reading this a second time would reveal even more layers under the surface, but overall I just liked, but didn’t love, this one.
Told in long and winding, lyrically written sentences, NDiaye’s prose (and Stump’s excellent translation) creates a dreamy almost surreal atmosphere. While a majority of the story is very grounded in reality, the obvious fantastical elements woven into everyday life create an aura of mysticism and confusion that mirrors Lucie’s own experiences. In some ways it reminded me of the sort of nightmarish plottiness of Ishiguro’s novel, The Unconsoled, where events quickly unravel into the next thing and Lucie is whisked along for the ride.
However, ultimately, despite being beautifully written and offering interesting themes of motherhood, marriage, and the role that power dynamics play in both of those arenas, the story itself felt a bit underwhelming by the end. The book is quite short (only about 144 pages) and divided in 2 parts. I really enjoyed the set-up in part 1, and while I was engaged in part 2 it felt like things happened too quickly and then the ending left me wanting more.
I would definitely check out more of NDiaye’s work because I loved her prose, and perhaps reading this a second time would reveal even more layers under the surface, but overall I just liked, but didn’t love, this one.
February 25, 2026
Lucie is in a lackluster marriage and though she’s technically a witch, her powers are nothing to write home about. She can occasionally muster a glimpse into a present scene taking place elsewhere, but what’s there to see beyond the arrival of her salesman husband who will surely resent the fact that dinner is not ready? After initiating her two daughters into the powers handed down through their maternal line, Lucie finds herself left behind. Her daughters flee the nest, her husband finds himself a new family, and even her pesky neighbor leaves town for good. What’s a witch to do?
There’s a dreamlike haze to the story, with one foot set firmly in reality and the other in a world where daughters turn into crows and fathers into snails. Despite the uncanny magic that Ndiaye weaves through the story, it’s really a story of the mundane, of familial relationships, of mothers and daughters and weak and spineless men. The fantastical elements function more as a symbolic device to expose the small devastations plaguing an ordinary life: isolation, powerlessness, and domestic strife.
Ndiaye’s prose is engrossing, so verbose, but in the best way possible. Adjectives and adverbs accumulate in sentences that go on and on but retain their clarity. It’s a style I could get lost in for hours.
I'm thrilled to see that this was recognized on the 2026 IB longlist!
There’s a dreamlike haze to the story, with one foot set firmly in reality and the other in a world where daughters turn into crows and fathers into snails. Despite the uncanny magic that Ndiaye weaves through the story, it’s really a story of the mundane, of familial relationships, of mothers and daughters and weak and spineless men. The fantastical elements function more as a symbolic device to expose the small devastations plaguing an ordinary life: isolation, powerlessness, and domestic strife.
Ndiaye’s prose is engrossing, so verbose, but in the best way possible. Adjectives and adverbs accumulate in sentences that go on and on but retain their clarity. It’s a style I could get lost in for hours.
I'm thrilled to see that this was recognized on the 2026 IB longlist!
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
Longlisted for the 2026 International Booker Prize
I found myself wordlessly pleading with my daughters not to abandon me, but their elusive, morose stares showed me they’d already gone off to a place where, with the slim resources of my labored talent, I could never go.
The Witch (2026) is Jordan Stump's translation of Marie NDiaye's La Sorcière (1996).
This is the 7th novel by Ndiaye which I've read, all in Stump's translation (see below), a wonderful author who I discovered via their first longlisting for the International Booker in 2016.
The novel is narrated by Lucie and opens with her initiating her two pubsecent 12yo twin daughters into a particular matrilineal gift of divination:
They learned quickly, both at the same speed. After eleven months the first tears of blood dripped down their cheeks on the same day, and— as I loudly enthused to conceal my emotion at this immutable proof that Maud and Lise had gained the power to see the future and the past, the latest in a whole parade of variously talented ancestresses, the oldest and perhaps the most gifted to date being my own mother— my daughters, as if already bored with it, calmly wiped their cheeks with a tissue and sighed in gladness that they’d finally come to the end of the lessons.
“No offense, Mama, but really, it’s all just so lame,” said Maud, and that was their only comment upon joining the ageless procession of occult- powered women.
But while Lucie's powers are rather feeble, allowing her to see "trivalities, nothing more", her daughters, already ruthlessly efficient in most aspects of their lives, quickly surpass her.
Meanwhile her husband, who sells timeshares across the world at a luxurious garden-club is clearly increasingly unhappy with their marriage, rather over-infatuated with one of his customers who comes to visit after he's left his own wife - this an example of the wonderfully constructed sentences that are a feature of the prose:
All through the subsequent dinner, as I realized ever more clearly that there was nothing about this man that wasn’t perfectly ordinary, and that Pierrot must meet busloads of pleasant, mannerly little men just like him at the Garden- Club, Monsieur Matin went on inspiring in my husband, and then even in Maud and Lise, such an excited, respectful curiosity that I soon understood it was leaving his wife and his child that had made Monsieur Matin a hero for my husband, who would otherwise never have looked twice at anyone so mundane.
The story, despite its commendable brevity, also features one of Lucie's neighbours, Isabelle (both ambitious for, and contemptuous of, her son); Pierrot's mother and Lucie's teenage sister-in-law; and Lucie's own parents - her mother whose powers are much stronger than hers, and her father, her parents having split up after many years of marriage.
Towards the novel's end and abandoned by her husband and her daughters, who have literally taken flight, Lucie ends up working in an academy created by Isabelle, although oddly one where she realises 'I make a better professional fake than a real witch'. Another excuse for me to showcase two sublime sentences:
Cutting each other off, desperate to be heard, dismissively mocking the others’ tales, the teachers whispered loudly as they stretched their tendinous necks over the table, holding out their long, skinny faces on which foundation made greasy beige masks that contrasted with the pallor of their napes, and in furious, hard, frantic voices recounted their harrowing poverty, fortunately behind them for now, their relentless, violent husbands gone off who knows where (and good riddance), their children in foster homes, whom they haven’t heard from, whom they nebulously vowed to take back some day, whom they’d given extraordinary, recherché names reminiscent, I thought, of the names people give puppies or kittens. And while this exchange of frantic monologues was going on at the teachers’ table, the students, on the other side of the dining hall, were calmly discussing the lessons dispensed by those same hard- luck teachers (Technique of Fervent Meditation, Therapy by Subliminal Herbs, Astral Voyages Without Turbulence, Climbing the Silver Thread), all the while voraciously downing their steamed vegetables and various grains, which seemed to do wonders for them, to contribute to the beautiful pinkness of their very taut skin, the luxuriant health of their negligently coiffed hair, while the teachers seemed more shrunken and hollowed with every mouthful, choking it down with no attempt to hide their repugnance, missing only one thing from their past, they said, meat, of which many dreamt at night and admitted that its absence was torture.
The Witch had, for me, a more playful tone that some of Ndiaye's work, almost Anne Serre style. But underneath the humour of the text, there are various serious themes at work, including that of marginality; social and familial relationships, including between genders; economic equality and inheritance; and, hinted at but not explicit, Lucie's ethnicity.
Thanks to the publisher via Netgalley for the ARC
Interesting English language take on the original novel: here
Bibliography of works I've read
I also include others works in English translation which I've not got to in italics, all translated by Stump unless otherwise shown.
En famille (1991) / Among Family by Heather Doyal (1997)
Un temps de saison (1994) / That Time of Year (2020): my review
La Sorcière (1996) / The Witch (2026): my review
Rosie Carpe (2001) / Rosie Carpe by Tamsin Black (2004)
Tous mes amis, nouvelles (2004) / All My Friends (2013)
Autoportrait en vert (2005) / Self Portrait in Green (2021): my review
Mon cœur a l'etroit (2007) / My Heart Hemmed In (2009): my review
Trois femmes puissantes (2009) / Three Strong Women by John Fletcher (2013) [non-fiction]
Ladivine (2013) / Ladivine (2016): my review
La Cheffe, roman d'une cuisinière (2016) / The Cheffe (2019): my review
La vengeance m’appartient (2022) / Vengeance Is Mine (2023): my review
Booker judges' citation
‘Lucie, a long-suffering housewife, inducts her daughters into a secret practice passed down by the women in her family: witchcraft. As the two girls begin to explore their new powers, Lucie’s husband disappears, upsetting the balance of their stifling, suburban life. The language in this novel – and in Jordan Stump’s translation – is exquisite: sentences twist and transform in unexpected ways. Each character is observed with icy precision. Through Lucie’s daughters – with their nonchalant acceptance of the immense power they’re beginning to wield – the nuances of motherhood are brought into sharp focus. The Witch is pure magic.’
I found myself wordlessly pleading with my daughters not to abandon me, but their elusive, morose stares showed me they’d already gone off to a place where, with the slim resources of my labored talent, I could never go.
The Witch (2026) is Jordan Stump's translation of Marie NDiaye's La Sorcière (1996).
This is the 7th novel by Ndiaye which I've read, all in Stump's translation (see below), a wonderful author who I discovered via their first longlisting for the International Booker in 2016.
The novel is narrated by Lucie and opens with her initiating her two pubsecent 12yo twin daughters into a particular matrilineal gift of divination:
They learned quickly, both at the same speed. After eleven months the first tears of blood dripped down their cheeks on the same day, and— as I loudly enthused to conceal my emotion at this immutable proof that Maud and Lise had gained the power to see the future and the past, the latest in a whole parade of variously talented ancestresses, the oldest and perhaps the most gifted to date being my own mother— my daughters, as if already bored with it, calmly wiped their cheeks with a tissue and sighed in gladness that they’d finally come to the end of the lessons.
“No offense, Mama, but really, it’s all just so lame,” said Maud, and that was their only comment upon joining the ageless procession of occult- powered women.
But while Lucie's powers are rather feeble, allowing her to see "trivalities, nothing more", her daughters, already ruthlessly efficient in most aspects of their lives, quickly surpass her.
Meanwhile her husband, who sells timeshares across the world at a luxurious garden-club is clearly increasingly unhappy with their marriage, rather over-infatuated with one of his customers who comes to visit after he's left his own wife - this an example of the wonderfully constructed sentences that are a feature of the prose:
All through the subsequent dinner, as I realized ever more clearly that there was nothing about this man that wasn’t perfectly ordinary, and that Pierrot must meet busloads of pleasant, mannerly little men just like him at the Garden- Club, Monsieur Matin went on inspiring in my husband, and then even in Maud and Lise, such an excited, respectful curiosity that I soon understood it was leaving his wife and his child that had made Monsieur Matin a hero for my husband, who would otherwise never have looked twice at anyone so mundane.
The story, despite its commendable brevity, also features one of Lucie's neighbours, Isabelle (both ambitious for, and contemptuous of, her son); Pierrot's mother and Lucie's teenage sister-in-law; and Lucie's own parents - her mother whose powers are much stronger than hers, and her father, her parents having split up after many years of marriage.
Towards the novel's end and abandoned by her husband and her daughters, who have literally taken flight, Lucie ends up working in an academy created by Isabelle, although oddly one where she realises 'I make a better professional fake than a real witch'. Another excuse for me to showcase two sublime sentences:
Cutting each other off, desperate to be heard, dismissively mocking the others’ tales, the teachers whispered loudly as they stretched their tendinous necks over the table, holding out their long, skinny faces on which foundation made greasy beige masks that contrasted with the pallor of their napes, and in furious, hard, frantic voices recounted their harrowing poverty, fortunately behind them for now, their relentless, violent husbands gone off who knows where (and good riddance), their children in foster homes, whom they haven’t heard from, whom they nebulously vowed to take back some day, whom they’d given extraordinary, recherché names reminiscent, I thought, of the names people give puppies or kittens. And while this exchange of frantic monologues was going on at the teachers’ table, the students, on the other side of the dining hall, were calmly discussing the lessons dispensed by those same hard- luck teachers (Technique of Fervent Meditation, Therapy by Subliminal Herbs, Astral Voyages Without Turbulence, Climbing the Silver Thread), all the while voraciously downing their steamed vegetables and various grains, which seemed to do wonders for them, to contribute to the beautiful pinkness of their very taut skin, the luxuriant health of their negligently coiffed hair, while the teachers seemed more shrunken and hollowed with every mouthful, choking it down with no attempt to hide their repugnance, missing only one thing from their past, they said, meat, of which many dreamt at night and admitted that its absence was torture.
The Witch had, for me, a more playful tone that some of Ndiaye's work, almost Anne Serre style. But underneath the humour of the text, there are various serious themes at work, including that of marginality; social and familial relationships, including between genders; economic equality and inheritance; and, hinted at but not explicit, Lucie's ethnicity.
Thanks to the publisher via Netgalley for the ARC
Interesting English language take on the original novel: here
Bibliography of works I've read
I also include others works in English translation which I've not got to in italics, all translated by Stump unless otherwise shown.
En famille (1991) / Among Family by Heather Doyal (1997)
Un temps de saison (1994) / That Time of Year (2020): my review
La Sorcière (1996) / The Witch (2026): my review
Rosie Carpe (2001) / Rosie Carpe by Tamsin Black (2004)
Tous mes amis, nouvelles (2004) / All My Friends (2013)
Autoportrait en vert (2005) / Self Portrait in Green (2021): my review
Mon cœur a l'etroit (2007) / My Heart Hemmed In (2009): my review
Trois femmes puissantes (2009) / Three Strong Women by John Fletcher (2013) [non-fiction]
Ladivine (2013) / Ladivine (2016): my review
La Cheffe, roman d'une cuisinière (2016) / The Cheffe (2019): my review
La vengeance m’appartient (2022) / Vengeance Is Mine (2023): my review
Booker judges' citation
‘Lucie, a long-suffering housewife, inducts her daughters into a secret practice passed down by the women in her family: witchcraft. As the two girls begin to explore their new powers, Lucie’s husband disappears, upsetting the balance of their stifling, suburban life. The language in this novel – and in Jordan Stump’s translation – is exquisite: sentences twist and transform in unexpected ways. Each character is observed with icy precision. Through Lucie’s daughters – with their nonchalant acceptance of the immense power they’re beginning to wield – the nuances of motherhood are brought into sharp focus. The Witch is pure magic.’
November 5, 2023
I recently read a profile in the New York Times whose DEK dubbed Marie NDiaye "one of France’s best-known novelists,” and I was ashamed to admit that despite studying French literature and living in France for over a decade, she had somehow eluded me. I immediately headed off to the bookstore to remedy this, plucking two of the extremely prolific writer's livres de poche at random (or almost), chosen entirely for their titles. The first, La Sorcière, seemed perfect for the period leading up to Halloween, but of course the book is anything but a seasonal fantasy. Blurring realism and magic in a wholly novel way, this book explores landmarks in the lives of women and the expectations we have of ourselves and those around us, all reflecting the period in which it is both written and set: as the new millennium is quickly approaching. Ndiaye expects her readers to do a lot of the work as they read, and this indeed is part of the pleasure of reading her. I look forward to coming back to this one with a pen – and to delving into even more of the work of this writer who has embarrassingly eluded me thus far.
August 24, 2020
No sé muy bien qué pensar de este libro. Cuando comencé a leerlo, pensé que iba a hablar sobre algo relacionado con la feminidad (los dones para la hechicería transmitidos por vía materna a las hijas, cómo cada generación de mujeres asume ese saber con distinto talante, etc). Luego me encontré, de manera nada desagradable, con una historia en que cada personaje parece ajeno por completo a los demás, encerrado cada uno en designios no solo egoístas sino un tanto disparatados. La prosa de Marie Ndiaye es prolija y bastante sensorial a ratos, nada que objetar por ahí. El problema es que a partir de determinado momento ya no se sabe hacia dónde se dirige la historia ni qué la mueve. Hay tramas que avanzan de A a B por un camino más o menos claro (camino que percibes aunque sea al llegar a su fin), y hay otras historias que consisten más bien en la presentación de una serie de escenas o peripecias concatenadas, con un fin generalmente abrupto. No soy en absoluto contraria a estas últimas, siempre y cuando me dejen, al acabar, la sensación de que me han mostrado todo lo que tenían que mostrarme. La última página de La hechicera, sin embargo, me ha dejado con un «¿ya?» que de inmediato se ha convertido en indiferencia. Ni zozobra, ni anhelo, ni mucho menos satisfacción. Na de na. Lo mismo se me escapa algo, pero en este caso no logro ni lamentarlo.
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January 7, 2026
Book Riot’s Most Anticipated Books of 2026:
A witchy book in translation about a mom of twins, written by a Black woman? Did Reparations Club publish this book just for me? I'm new to NDiaye, but I can see this book introducing the prolific and award-winning novelist, playwright, and screenwriter to an even wider audience. Translated from the French, this novel set in modern France tells of a woman, a witch, a mother whose twins fly the coop upon initiation. For anyone who understands or seeks to understand the multitudes motherhood contains, this book is set up to deliver. —S. Zainab Williams
A witchy book in translation about a mom of twins, written by a Black woman? Did Reparations Club publish this book just for me? I'm new to NDiaye, but I can see this book introducing the prolific and award-winning novelist, playwright, and screenwriter to an even wider audience. Translated from the French, this novel set in modern France tells of a woman, a witch, a mother whose twins fly the coop upon initiation. For anyone who understands or seeks to understand the multitudes motherhood contains, this book is set up to deliver. —S. Zainab Williams
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
A magical story about complicated family dynamics, this book might be the most unique take I've seen on witches. It touches on all the usual topics — feminine forms of power, sisterhood, superstitions, creepy birds, and other horror elements. It's also a more observational and domestic book about class anxiety, nosy neighbors, marriage, desperate compromises, and what happens when the next generation mediates their lives through the lens of things like television. (The book was originally written in the nineties. I'm just reviewing the new English translation.)
Written with prose that is both meandering and breathless, the story follows a mother trying to raise twin witches who seem alarmingly powerful, but in short page time, the plot blooms quite a lot into something almost resembling a messy and peculiar family drama. By the end, the story basically forgets about the twin witches in favor of more broadly exploring womanhood. I recommend it if you like literary fantasy.
~Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for a Digital ARC. All opinions are my own.~
Written with prose that is both meandering and breathless, the story follows a mother trying to raise twin witches who seem alarmingly powerful, but in short page time, the plot blooms quite a lot into something almost resembling a messy and peculiar family drama. By the end, the story basically forgets about the twin witches in favor of more broadly exploring womanhood. I recommend it if you like literary fantasy.
~Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for a Digital ARC. All opinions are my own.~
April 16, 2023
Cela commence bien, écriture élégante, agréable. Dommage que le récit soit sans grand intérêt. Les filles sont esquissées seulement alors qu'elles auraient pu constituer des personnages intéressants et donner du ressort à l'intrigue. C'est du moins ce que j'attendais. Très décevante lecture. On s'ennuie a mesure que le récit s'étire sans que les promesses narratives ne mènent nulle part.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
This ended up being 95% lit fic and 5% magical realism, which wasn't what I expected. But I'll admit, I still enjoyed this novella for what it was.
Would I actually recommend this? Sure, if you're looking for something quick, depressing, and slightly whimsical.
Like other reviewers have mentioned, the prose is the strongest part of this novella. I'm not usually a huge fan of these kinds of slice of (tragic) life stories, but the author's writing style drew me in to the point where I was interested in what would happen to the FMC and her daughters. It was difficult to put the novella down. I was surprised to learn that things actually happen and the plot kept unfolding page after page. (Typically, I feel like nothing usually happens in this genre. Lit fic can be a bit navel gazey at times.)
I really wish there was more magic though. I wanted more of her daughters using their abilities because those parts were so cool. Alas, this story was focused a lot more on Lucie's life and marriage falling apart. Also, there were one too many references to fat characters being terrible or undesirable people that felt off to me.
If you're into tragedies with themes of motherhood and marriage (to horrible men), then this might be the book for you.
Thank you to Vintage and NetGalley for this arc.
Would I actually recommend this? Sure, if you're looking for something quick, depressing, and slightly whimsical.
Like other reviewers have mentioned, the prose is the strongest part of this novella. I'm not usually a huge fan of these kinds of slice of (tragic) life stories, but the author's writing style drew me in to the point where I was interested in what would happen to the FMC and her daughters. It was difficult to put the novella down. I was surprised to learn that things actually happen and the plot kept unfolding page after page. (Typically, I feel like nothing usually happens in this genre. Lit fic can be a bit navel gazey at times.)
I really wish there was more magic though. I wanted more of her daughters using their abilities because those parts were so cool. Alas, this story was focused a lot more on Lucie's life and marriage falling apart. Also, there were one too many references to fat characters being terrible or undesirable people that felt off to me.
If you're into tragedies with themes of motherhood and marriage (to horrible men), then this might be the book for you.
Thank you to Vintage and NetGalley for this arc.
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March 10, 2026Osećam se onako *underwhelmed*.
June 19, 2019
faut vraiment que j'arrête de choisir des livres au hasard....
Want to read
March 18, 2026Still waiting on my ARC request... not sure I will read this by the time the shortlist is announced (despite being nice and short)
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February 2, 2026
Livre bien écrit et étonnant mais je n’ai rien compris et le personnage principal m’irritait par la suite de ses mauvaises décisions. C’est sans doute le but. La fin me laisse aussi perplexe.
On voit bien le mélange entre le fantastique et le quotidien à la fois ordinaire et étrange de Lucie, qui se laisse flotter dans sa vie.
J’en ressors somme toute assez confus.
On voit bien le mélange entre le fantastique et le quotidien à la fois ordinaire et étrange de Lucie, qui se laisse flotter dans sa vie.
J’en ressors somme toute assez confus.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
Thank you to Quercus Books/ MacLehose Press and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.
3.5 stars.
We follow Lucie, a witch from a long line of witches but with little power herself, who is living a mundane life with her husband and two girls.
She initiates her girls into her family's witchy ways and finds their powers rapidly surpassing hers, while her husband grows increasingly distant.
This was a very weird little book, with a strange tone that was satirical at times, surreal and unsettling at others. At times I was confused, but I mostly went along for the ride. It did end very suddenly and I was left a little unsure what conclusions we are meant to draw.
A book I'll likely be pondering for a while.
3.5 stars.
We follow Lucie, a witch from a long line of witches but with little power herself, who is living a mundane life with her husband and two girls.
She initiates her girls into her family's witchy ways and finds their powers rapidly surpassing hers, while her husband grows increasingly distant.
This was a very weird little book, with a strange tone that was satirical at times, surreal and unsettling at others. At times I was confused, but I mostly went along for the ride. It did end very suddenly and I was left a little unsure what conclusions we are meant to draw.
A book I'll likely be pondering for a while.
March 3, 2026
Lucie is a witch from a long line of witches. She's not particularly powerful but her twin daughters have recently come into their powers and they are. So much so that they up and fly away one day. And her husband leaves with a huge whack of her money. And she has an annoying, nosy neighbour.
This was short but very compelling. Lucie is pathetic, no two ways about it. I mean her life is falling apart around her and her main focus is getting her divorced parents back together? At her age? You have bigger problems! I know a loser when I see one. Made for a great story though!
*read via Netgalley
This was short but very compelling. Lucie is pathetic, no two ways about it. I mean her life is falling apart around her and her main focus is getting her divorced parents back together? At her age? You have bigger problems! I know a loser when I see one. Made for a great story though!
*read via Netgalley
May 20, 2024
« Qui étais-je encore pour mes filles, certes tendres envers moi, mais déjà sorcières si accomplies qu’elles ne pouvaient certainement s’empêcher de ressentir, envers leur mère peu douée, une sorte d’indifférence condescendante «
Roman existentialiste - ou est ma place? Le doute parsème cette œuvre et le langage, la grammaire le transmettent.
Une belle lecture, une leçon de français.
Roman existentialiste - ou est ma place? Le doute parsème cette œuvre et le langage, la grammaire le transmettent.
Une belle lecture, une leçon de français.
January 23, 2015
It 's a kind of social critizism through a peculiar and wonderful story, wrapped in an original style that I like very much: long sentences with great clarity. JM
Want to read
March 6, 2026The Witch is a witty, dreamlike, unsettling and enchanting novel about a mediocre witch, in a mediocre marriage.
Lucie comes from a long line of witches, powers passed down from mother to daughter. Her own mother was formidable in her powers, but ashamed of her magic. Perhaps as a result, Lucie’s own gift is weak: she can see into the future, sometimes, but more often she can only see the present of some other location. Not very useful. And the worst part? All she can ever see are insignificant details – a scrap of outfit, the colour of the sky.
Lucie’s own children are initiated into their family’s peculiar womanhood when they reach 12 years of age, and in a few short months, Maud and Lise are crying the curious tears of blood that denote their magical powers. Having learned, they take off quickly and fly the nest. Literally.
The Witch brings the mysteries of womanhood and motherhood into sharp relief and leaves us teetering on the edge, unbalanced by questions as seemingly unbreakable relationships break down left and right. Who is to blame for family failures? And how can you build a nest that no one wants to fly?
The novel is published in the UK by MacLehose Press. This extract is taken from the opening chapter.
Lucie comes from a long line of witches, powers passed down from mother to daughter. Her own mother was formidable in her powers, but ashamed of her magic. Perhaps as a result, Lucie’s own gift is weak: she can see into the future, sometimes, but more often she can only see the present of some other location. Not very useful. And the worst part? All she can ever see are insignificant details – a scrap of outfit, the colour of the sky.
Lucie’s own children are initiated into their family’s peculiar womanhood when they reach 12 years of age, and in a few short months, Maud and Lise are crying the curious tears of blood that denote their magical powers. Having learned, they take off quickly and fly the nest. Literally.
The Witch brings the mysteries of womanhood and motherhood into sharp relief and leaves us teetering on the edge, unbalanced by questions as seemingly unbreakable relationships break down left and right. Who is to blame for family failures? And how can you build a nest that no one wants to fly?
The novel is published in the UK by MacLehose Press. This extract is taken from the opening chapter.
March 24, 2025
La Strega è un libro di Marie NDiaye uscito originariamente nel 1996 e pubblicato solamente quest’anno in Italia grazie alla Casa Editrice Prehistorica Editore con una traduzione di Antonella Conti.
Nata da madre francese e padre senegalese, NDiaye è stata la prima scrittrice donna e afrodiscendente a vincere il Premio Goncourt (con il romanzo Trois femmes puissantes nel 2009) e nei suoi libri, compreso quello di cui vi parlerò oggi, indaga sulle problematiche che può avere un individuo diverso dai canoni prestabiliti nel costruirsi un’identità sociale e personale.
Tra le sue influenze viene citato Kafka: sebbene in modo meno “burocratico” anche lei illustra le assurdità che sono associate alla vita quotidiana e fa percepire il senso di alienazione dell’individuo nella società odierna.
Il resto della recensione su https://www.leggoquandovoglio.it/Rece...
Nata da madre francese e padre senegalese, NDiaye è stata la prima scrittrice donna e afrodiscendente a vincere il Premio Goncourt (con il romanzo Trois femmes puissantes nel 2009) e nei suoi libri, compreso quello di cui vi parlerò oggi, indaga sulle problematiche che può avere un individuo diverso dai canoni prestabiliti nel costruirsi un’identità sociale e personale.
Tra le sue influenze viene citato Kafka: sebbene in modo meno “burocratico” anche lei illustra le assurdità che sono associate alla vita quotidiana e fa percepire il senso di alienazione dell’individuo nella società odierna.
Il resto della recensione su https://www.leggoquandovoglio.it/Rece...
December 17, 2025
Lucie is somewhat of a witch. She inherited powers from her mother, but these powers have mostly atrophied. However, she teaches her daughters how to mobilize this gift, and they take to it with a little more enthusiasm and pizzazz.
Meanwhile, Lucie’s marriage is falling apart. Her husband is outright disdainful of her, even bringing home a colleague who has abandoned his own family, and sitting in awe of him. When Lucie’s husband runs off, taking with him a substantial amount of Lucie’s inheritance, things get incredibly weird as Lucie tries to track him down.
The Witch is one of those books that nothing much really “happens”. There is no real big finale with fireworks, no big revelation. Yet, there are small, uncanny moments in this novel that will stay with me forever. But the way Lucie is almost indifferent to these strange moments is just wonderful. I really enjoyed NDiaye’s stream-of-conscious style of writing (and indeed Jordan Stump’s translation)
I don’t know whether it’s because I am a tired wife and mother with witchy sensibilities, but this novel really appealed to me. I found it incredibly easy to read, enjoyable, with just enough weirdness.
Meanwhile, Lucie’s marriage is falling apart. Her husband is outright disdainful of her, even bringing home a colleague who has abandoned his own family, and sitting in awe of him. When Lucie’s husband runs off, taking with him a substantial amount of Lucie’s inheritance, things get incredibly weird as Lucie tries to track him down.
The Witch is one of those books that nothing much really “happens”. There is no real big finale with fireworks, no big revelation. Yet, there are small, uncanny moments in this novel that will stay with me forever. But the way Lucie is almost indifferent to these strange moments is just wonderful. I really enjoyed NDiaye’s stream-of-conscious style of writing (and indeed Jordan Stump’s translation)
I don’t know whether it’s because I am a tired wife and mother with witchy sensibilities, but this novel really appealed to me. I found it incredibly easy to read, enjoyable, with just enough weirdness.
Read
November 25, 2024begins with the elements of a good story, even carries some of them throughout, but these ultimately come to nothing. i adore marie ndiaye's writing style and greatly enjoy her meshing of the quotidian with the dreamlike, but this felt incredibly pointless—the book itself seems incomplete, and not in any meaningful or subversive way, but like ndiaye merely lost steam and left our protagonist in the middle of her plotline. left feeling confused, frustrated, and oddly betrayed by what i was ready to count among one of my favourites.
« Il n'y a que toi qui sois restée la même. »
« Il n'y a que toi qui sois restée la même. »
March 6, 2026
Bellino ma sono confusa perché non capisco cosa ne é di metà personaggi.
La storia ti prende soprattutto nella seconda parte e alla fine avrei voluto leggerne molto di più.
La storia ti prende soprattutto nella seconda parte e alla fine avrei voluto leggerne molto di più.
December 9, 2025
2,5 ⭐️
July 22, 2024
Je n ai pas passé un mauvais moment, mais je ne sais pas quoi en penser. Je comprends les avis expliquant qu ils en attendaient plus.
February 27, 2023
The first part of the book revolves the simplistic life of Lucy, her relations with her husband, her daughters, her neighbour and her parents(in law). The second half is about her life after her husband takes her money and leaves her.
In this half, the protagonist is concerned only about one thing: getting her parents back together. After some traveling to see every family member, she ends up alone, abandoned by everyone in a town she doesn’t know, working as a con-witch (more like a fortune teller) for Elizabeth (the neighbour).
As soon as Lucy starts working for her, the book just becomes incomprehensible. They try to describe the life at a campus of a “university”, at which they succeed but, at this point, the plot has driven from its original course so much where you stop caring for it. You try and make connections with the first half but there is nothing to connect to.
In conclusion, i enjoyed reading this book, i really liked the first half even if it was about Lucy’s boring life as a trophy wife. The second part of the book was not well thought out and our protagonist didn’t learn anything from her story, she just wallows in her misery, which isn’t very pleasant to read.
In this half, the protagonist is concerned only about one thing: getting her parents back together. After some traveling to see every family member, she ends up alone, abandoned by everyone in a town she doesn’t know, working as a con-witch (more like a fortune teller) for Elizabeth (the neighbour).
As soon as Lucy starts working for her, the book just becomes incomprehensible. They try to describe the life at a campus of a “university”, at which they succeed but, at this point, the plot has driven from its original course so much where you stop caring for it. You try and make connections with the first half but there is nothing to connect to.
In conclusion, i enjoyed reading this book, i really liked the first half even if it was about Lucy’s boring life as a trophy wife. The second part of the book was not well thought out and our protagonist didn’t learn anything from her story, she just wallows in her misery, which isn’t very pleasant to read.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
When my daughters turned twelve I initiated them into the mysterious powers. Mysterious not so much in that they didn’t know those powers existed, or in that I’d kept them secret (I hid nothing from my daughters, since we were of the same sex), but rather in that, having grown up dimly and apathetically aware of that reality, they no more understood the need to care about it or suddenly somehow master it than they saw the interest in learning to cook the dishes I served them, the product of a domain just as remote and unenticing.
Longlisted for the 2026 International Booker Prize.
This novella was first published in 1996 as La Sorcière by the 2009 Prix Goncourt winning French (with a Senegalese father) novel/novella writer, playwright and screenwriter.
It was translated from the French by Jordan Stump who has over the last few years translated much of her work (albeit not her Prix Goncourt winning book) with original publishing dates from 1994 to 2022 including “Ladivine” which was International Booker shortlisted in 2016 (and in the following two years shortlisted for the Best Translated Book Award and International Dublin Literary Award) – it is perhaps telling that this is one of her last remaining works to be translated.
The translation – of the author’s often (and I understand) trademark sinuous sentences ((an apt description here given the book’s witchcraft themes) – reads extremely naturally in English.
The narrator is Lucie (subtle clues imply of potentially mixed ethnicity) and the daughter of an insurance executive and an insurance firm secretary who are estranged (more later) – but her most significant (at least for the novel – I was more interested in the insurance parts) genetic inheritance is a matrilineal one – the powers of witchcraft which include the powers of divination (efforts to do so marked by beads of blood).
For Lucie these powers are extremely limited – she mainly uses them to check her husband Pierrot’s journey back from his work selling timeshares to their suburban home, one which together with his marriage he increasingly seems to see as beneath the circles in which he moves with his customers/victims.
However when she decides to initiate her twelve year-old teenage daughters (Maud and Lise) their seeming indifference is in compete contrast to their much greater powers of witchcraft – ones they employ almost as matter of fact to look ahead to the next day say, but quickly also to turn into birds at a whim in a rather obvious metaphor for fleeing the parental nest. As an aside a more successful metaphor for me was the gift-initiation as puberty (with its sometimes socially awkward shedding of blood, and the way that the men of the house are both slightly excluded from the rituals and come to regard it as something slightly distasteful/unspoken) and latter to some darker purposes.
In what is a short novel a lot is packed in
Pierrot’s own mother is very possessive of him but also her other child – the overweight Lili who part way through the novel becomes pregnant. To Lucie’s despair her parents after what she believes to have been decades of happy marriage have happily separated – her mother living with a new man and she tries to force the two to spend a weekend together (her father by promising to return an early inheritance he paid her but now needs to cover up his insurance fraud but which Pierrot has used to set up a new life complete with step-children). Her mother warns her this will only end in an unfortunate application of her own witchcraft powers (which she had for years successfully supressed) and does indeed end with her father as a snail in a bouillon-cube box.
Her best friend Isabelle is obsessed with her disdain for her own son – but after she packs him to boarding school then sets up a rather bizarre University of Spiritual Health (staffed by unfortunates who teach a very odd curriculum to the daughters of the well-off) and recruits Lucie to teach divination – Lucie’s decision to use clairvoyant type plausible visions given the physical strain of her actual gifts ends up with her on effectively facing a non-witch trial.
And this makes it for much of the novel a rather delightful read – much less dark than I expected but still not in any way lightweight.
But where the brevity does not work is that few if any of these storylines really reach a conclusion – it feels a little like a novella composed of a collection of connected short story ideas (but not actual short stories) so I did feel a little let down at the end.
I also did have some reservations about the message of the novel – potentially a little too much body-shaming and too negative a portrayal of women in what I had assumed would be a fiercely feminist novel.
Overall, I suspect that the late translation of this means that this is far from her best work – and perhaps the longlisting is more on reputation than individual merit - but it was overall an interesting and enjoyable read.
My thanks to Quercus Books for an ARC via NetGalley
And so Pierrot had become not a teacher but a talented and permanently worn-out sales agent, and there was nothing more I could do for him. Maud and Lise enjoyed the fruits of his success, but neither his mama nor his daughters admired him, and I annoyed and repelled him. What could I do? I looked after the house, having failed to find work in our little city over the two years since we moved here, I watched bewildered as Maud and Lise grew, and I tested the lackluster powers I had as a semi-failed witch, here and there glimpsing a future that could only trouble me without teaching me much.
September 29, 2025
je sais pas si je dois me sentir déprimer ou fou après ce livre
le côté « sorcière » de ce livre est beaucoup mis de côté par rapport à ce que j’attendais
elle est tellement peu une « sorcière » comme l’annonçait le titre que c’est à se demander si c’est pas sa vie qui est qualifiée de la sorte car, honnêtement, elle est maudite
mari de merde, enfants de merde, travail de merde, mais qu’est-ce qu’elle prend pour pas péter un plomb et rester passive comme ça ? ils sont là ses pouvoirs c’est fou
le côté « sorcière » de ce livre est beaucoup mis de côté par rapport à ce que j’attendais
elle est tellement peu une « sorcière » comme l’annonçait le titre que c’est à se demander si c’est pas sa vie qui est qualifiée de la sorte car, honnêtement, elle est maudite
mari de merde, enfants de merde, travail de merde, mais qu’est-ce qu’elle prend pour pas péter un plomb et rester passive comme ça ? ils sont là ses pouvoirs c’est fou
December 14, 2008
I put this book down for awhile and picked it back up again and so this might count for my ambivalence about this book. It's definitely French fiction in that none of the characters are sympathetic. It's certainly biting and sharp social commentary about suburbia and middle class values and it really makes France look dystopian, but everyone ends up getting screwed over and looking stupid and so I felt kind of "eh" about it in the end.
December 5, 2021
Ce n'est pas ce que j'attendais mais je l'ai bien aimé:
Après avoir lu la 4ème de couverture, j’espérais que le livre porterait sur la relation féminine entre une mère et ces deux filles, et que les "larmes de sang" sont une métaphore exprimant la tristesse que la mère ressentais envers ses enfants qui quittent leur maison. Je ne m'attendais vraiment pas à un livre fantastique, mais honnêtement la lecture étais pertinente.
Après avoir lu la 4ème de couverture, j’espérais que le livre porterait sur la relation féminine entre une mère et ces deux filles, et que les "larmes de sang" sont une métaphore exprimant la tristesse que la mère ressentais envers ses enfants qui quittent leur maison. Je ne m'attendais vraiment pas à un livre fantastique, mais honnêtement la lecture étais pertinente.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 7, 2020
Truly not what I was expecting. The writing style didn't work for me at all despite a good plot idea.
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