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She's My Witch
Strange things happen on social media, such as the almost chance encounter between a London born-and-bred fitness instructor and a drug-fuelled Spanish witch. At first Maria Remedios and Martin Cooper share their love for super-dumb two-chord thud in private messages, but when they meet magic happens.
Maria knows that she and Martin have been lovers before and sets out to convince the former skinhead that her occult beliefs aren’t just bollocks. As the two meet in budget pubs and coffee bars to discuss everything from tarot to cult film, ongoing austerity and riots signify the unbridgeable gap between their lives and that of London's wealthy elite. As Martin gets ever closer to Maria, she constantly surprises him by detailing different aspects of her past – such as running a bar for a criminal motorcycle gang in Valencia, her seven-year stint as a professional dominatrix and a decades-long struggle with heroin.
Even wilder than Maria's tales of teenage drug dealing and murder on Spain’s notorious Ruta Destroy party scene are her accounts of other times she's spent with Martin. Maria insists that in some of their past lives together she was the man and Martin the woman, in others they both had the same gender, but every time they reincarnate they are destined to meet so that they can realise themselves through sexual mysticism and mind-blowing orgasms. In one notable past encounter they had a gay relationship as twelfth-century members of the Knights Templar at Montesa Castle in the hills inland from Valencia.
On the surface an unlikely couple, Martin and Maria have different but complimentary flaws and before long can’t live without each other and the bizarre sexual rites they indulge in together. She’s My Witch is a dark romance with an incendiary conclusion written to reflect today's online world, the tragedy of the opioid epidemic, and a resurgent interest in the occult and kink.
Maria knows that she and Martin have been lovers before and sets out to convince the former skinhead that her occult beliefs aren’t just bollocks. As the two meet in budget pubs and coffee bars to discuss everything from tarot to cult film, ongoing austerity and riots signify the unbridgeable gap between their lives and that of London's wealthy elite. As Martin gets ever closer to Maria, she constantly surprises him by detailing different aspects of her past – such as running a bar for a criminal motorcycle gang in Valencia, her seven-year stint as a professional dominatrix and a decades-long struggle with heroin.
Even wilder than Maria's tales of teenage drug dealing and murder on Spain’s notorious Ruta Destroy party scene are her accounts of other times she's spent with Martin. Maria insists that in some of their past lives together she was the man and Martin the woman, in others they both had the same gender, but every time they reincarnate they are destined to meet so that they can realise themselves through sexual mysticism and mind-blowing orgasms. In one notable past encounter they had a gay relationship as twelfth-century members of the Knights Templar at Montesa Castle in the hills inland from Valencia.
On the surface an unlikely couple, Martin and Maria have different but complimentary flaws and before long can’t live without each other and the bizarre sexual rites they indulge in together. She’s My Witch is a dark romance with an incendiary conclusion written to reflect today's online world, the tragedy of the opioid epidemic, and a resurgent interest in the occult and kink.
336 pages, Paperback
First published July 29, 2020
50 people want to read
About the author
Stewart Home
95 books288 followersStewart Home (born London 1963) is an English writer, satirist and artist. He is best known for novels such as the non-narrative "69 Things to Do With A Dead Princess" (2002), his re-imagining of the 1960s in "Tainted Love" (2005), and more recent books such as "She's My Witch" (2020) that use pulp and avant-garde tropes to parody conventional literature.
Home's unusual approach to writing is reflected in the readings he gives from his novels: he recites from memory, utilises ventriloquism, stands on his head and declaims his work and even shreds his own books.
Home's first book "The Assault on Culture: Utopian Currents from Lettrisme to Class War" (Aporia Press and Unpopular Books, London, 1988) is an underground art history sketching continuations of dadist and surrealist influences on post-World War II fringe radical art.
Home's first novel "Pure Mania" was published 1989 (Polygon Books), and details a violent neo-punk subculture. Unmistakenly postmodern but nfluenced by surrealism and the nouveau roman, it pushes the appropriation of pulp tropes and use of repetition found within historical avant-garde fiction to such an extreme that some critics mistook it for a piece of low-brow writing.
Home continued in much the same vein with his next four novels, starting with "Defiant Pose" (Peter Owen, 1991) and continuing with "Red London" (AK Press 1994), "Blow Job" (published in 1997 but written in 1994) and Slow Death (Serpent's Tail 1996).
All Home’s early fiction collages in large amounts of prose from a wide variety of sources – and while it is often close in spirit to the work of ‘postmodern extremists’ such as Kathy Acker, the appropriated material is much more heavily reworked than in the latter’s books.
The novels Home wrote after the mid-nineties featured less subcultural material than his earlier books and focus more obviously on issues of form and aesthetics. Home’s sixth novel "Come Before Christ And Murder Love" (Serpent's Tail 1997) featured a schizophrenic narrator whose personality changed every time he had an orgasm. This was the first novel Home wrote in the first person, and much of the fiction he wrote after this utilised the device of an unreliable first-person narrator.
"Cunt" (Do Not Press 1999) is a postmodern take on the picaresque novel. "69 Things to Do With A Dead Princess" (Canongate 2002) mixes porn with capsule reviews of dozens of obscure books as well as elaborate descriptions of stone circles, while in "Down and Out In Shoreditch & Hoxton" (Do Not Press 2004) every paragraph is exactly 100 words long. "Tainted Love" (Virgin Books) is based on the life of the author's mother, who was part of the London subcultural scene in the 1960s. "Memphis Underground" (Snow Books 2007) has a long conventional literary opening that is slowly unravelled.
Home’s 2010 novel "Blood Rites of the Bourgeois" (Book Works) is to date his only work written in the second person. The plot – as far as there is one - concerns an artist hacking the computers of London’s cultural elite to infect them with modified penis enlargement spam. Reviewing Home’s incredibly weird campus novel "Mandy, Charlie & Mary-Jane" (Penny-Ante Editions 2013) for The Guardian, Nicholas Lezard observes: “I think one of the great virtues of Home's work is the way it forces us to address our own complacency.”
"The 9 Lives of Ray The Cat Jones" (Test Centre 2014) is a fictional exploration of the life of one of the author's more infamous criminal relatives. "She's My Witch" (London Books 2020), is a love story exploring an unlikely relationship between a fitness instructor and a heroin addicted witch. "Art School Orgy" (New Reality Records, 2023) is a 'BDSM extravaganza'. Before this Home published his collected poems "SEND CA$H" (Morbid Books 2018) and a book about martial arts films "Re-Enter The Dragon: Genre Theory, Brucesploitation & The Sleazy Joys of Lowbrow Cinema" (Ledatape 2018).
Home's unusual approach to writing is reflected in the readings he gives from his novels: he recites from memory, utilises ventriloquism, stands on his head and declaims his work and even shreds his own books.
Home's first book "The Assault on Culture: Utopian Currents from Lettrisme to Class War" (Aporia Press and Unpopular Books, London, 1988) is an underground art history sketching continuations of dadist and surrealist influences on post-World War II fringe radical art.
Home's first novel "Pure Mania" was published 1989 (Polygon Books), and details a violent neo-punk subculture. Unmistakenly postmodern but nfluenced by surrealism and the nouveau roman, it pushes the appropriation of pulp tropes and use of repetition found within historical avant-garde fiction to such an extreme that some critics mistook it for a piece of low-brow writing.
Home continued in much the same vein with his next four novels, starting with "Defiant Pose" (Peter Owen, 1991) and continuing with "Red London" (AK Press 1994), "Blow Job" (published in 1997 but written in 1994) and Slow Death (Serpent's Tail 1996).
All Home’s early fiction collages in large amounts of prose from a wide variety of sources – and while it is often close in spirit to the work of ‘postmodern extremists’ such as Kathy Acker, the appropriated material is much more heavily reworked than in the latter’s books.
The novels Home wrote after the mid-nineties featured less subcultural material than his earlier books and focus more obviously on issues of form and aesthetics. Home’s sixth novel "Come Before Christ And Murder Love" (Serpent's Tail 1997) featured a schizophrenic narrator whose personality changed every time he had an orgasm. This was the first novel Home wrote in the first person, and much of the fiction he wrote after this utilised the device of an unreliable first-person narrator.
"Cunt" (Do Not Press 1999) is a postmodern take on the picaresque novel. "69 Things to Do With A Dead Princess" (Canongate 2002) mixes porn with capsule reviews of dozens of obscure books as well as elaborate descriptions of stone circles, while in "Down and Out In Shoreditch & Hoxton" (Do Not Press 2004) every paragraph is exactly 100 words long. "Tainted Love" (Virgin Books) is based on the life of the author's mother, who was part of the London subcultural scene in the 1960s. "Memphis Underground" (Snow Books 2007) has a long conventional literary opening that is slowly unravelled.
Home’s 2010 novel "Blood Rites of the Bourgeois" (Book Works) is to date his only work written in the second person. The plot – as far as there is one - concerns an artist hacking the computers of London’s cultural elite to infect them with modified penis enlargement spam. Reviewing Home’s incredibly weird campus novel "Mandy, Charlie & Mary-Jane" (Penny-Ante Editions 2013) for The Guardian, Nicholas Lezard observes: “I think one of the great virtues of Home's work is the way it forces us to address our own complacency.”
"The 9 Lives of Ray The Cat Jones" (Test Centre 2014) is a fictional exploration of the life of one of the author's more infamous criminal relatives. "She's My Witch" (London Books 2020), is a love story exploring an unlikely relationship between a fitness instructor and a heroin addicted witch. "Art School Orgy" (New Reality Records, 2023) is a 'BDSM extravaganza'. Before this Home published his collected poems "SEND CA$H" (Morbid Books 2018) and a book about martial arts films "Re-Enter The Dragon: Genre Theory, Brucesploitation & The Sleazy Joys of Lowbrow Cinema" (Ledatape 2018).
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
June 25, 2020
This is the best work of fiction I've read since my previous novel The 9 Lives of Ray The Cat Jones. It deserved more than five stars but that's the maximum I'm allowed to give myself, so to make up for that I've just given myself a huge pat on the back!
July 16, 2020
I must admit that half way through reading this, I was reminded of Vivian Mercier’s comment about Waiting for Godot: a play in which 'nothing happens, twice'.
In terms of plot not much really happens until the end. Each chapter follows a fairly predictable pattern: couple meet in a pub/cinema (she is late); she reveals something about her past and/or sexual fantasies; they discucss one of her seemingly limitless sets of tarot cards; she tosses him off under a coat (conscientiously wiping him with a Kleenex afterwards); he walks her home and they have sex in the stairwell.
The earlier books I have read by Stewart Home had fantastically absurd plots. Because they didn’t attempt to be credible, I was easily able to suspend my disbelief . Although (because?) this one attempts to be less farce-like (story of a developing relationship) I found it difficult to ignore what I felt to be weaknesses in the narrative.
It also lacked some of the humour of previous novels and especially Home’s trademark socio-political verbal pyrotechnics (both of which I relish).
However, having said that, when I started retelling the story to my wife I found myself laughing out loud as I related how once again Maira 'takes his meat out' and gives him a good handjob while the waiters look on doubtfully.
Despite the fact that for chapter after chapter practically nothing happens, the story grew on me.
Home references a wide range of his music interests which are well worth following up. This is something Haruki Murakam does in his books. Home's choices are less safe/predictable than Murakam's if my memory serve me right.
I wouldn’t recommend this book as an introduction to Home’s fiction. But, if like me you are a fan then there will definitely be something in it for you and you will probable leave with a long list of books, muisc and films to investigate.
In terms of plot not much really happens until the end. Each chapter follows a fairly predictable pattern: couple meet in a pub/cinema (she is late); she reveals something about her past and/or sexual fantasies; they discucss one of her seemingly limitless sets of tarot cards; she tosses him off under a coat (conscientiously wiping him with a Kleenex afterwards); he walks her home and they have sex in the stairwell.
The earlier books I have read by Stewart Home had fantastically absurd plots. Because they didn’t attempt to be credible, I was easily able to suspend my disbelief . Although (because?) this one attempts to be less farce-like (story of a developing relationship) I found it difficult to ignore what I felt to be weaknesses in the narrative.
It also lacked some of the humour of previous novels and especially Home’s trademark socio-political verbal pyrotechnics (both of which I relish).
However, having said that, when I started retelling the story to my wife I found myself laughing out loud as I related how once again Maira 'takes his meat out' and gives him a good handjob while the waiters look on doubtfully.
Despite the fact that for chapter after chapter practically nothing happens, the story grew on me.
Home references a wide range of his music interests which are well worth following up. This is something Haruki Murakam does in his books. Home's choices are less safe/predictable than Murakam's if my memory serve me right.
I wouldn’t recommend this book as an introduction to Home’s fiction. But, if like me you are a fan then there will definitely be something in it for you and you will probable leave with a long list of books, muisc and films to investigate.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 4, 2020
Short novel about a PE teacher who falls in love with a vapid fucking cunt. Not bad.
November 14, 2020
2.4 infruatingly cyclical , atleast three years of coffee, cinema, tarot and handjobs ????
still I was sympathetic to the plight of the lovers, will check out the old film's and books so thanks for the references?
still I was sympathetic to the plight of the lovers, will check out the old film's and books so thanks for the references?
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 24, 2020
Stewart Home is one of those rare authors – a total original.
She’s My Witch is a repetitive beat of a book that includes detailed digressions into magic, the tarot and S&M. With Home's finger firmly on the digital pulse, the love story that sits at the core of this mad, avant garde novel is played out as much in the parallel dimension of text messaging as the Wetherspoons pubs of north London.
In his repetitions rest the genius of Home; his hypnotic humour blending sweet dreams of reincarnation and eternal devotion with the crack of a dominatrix’s whip.
A clever, funny, experimental gem laced with a deeper sense of sadness and loss.
She’s My Witch is a repetitive beat of a book that includes detailed digressions into magic, the tarot and S&M. With Home's finger firmly on the digital pulse, the love story that sits at the core of this mad, avant garde novel is played out as much in the parallel dimension of text messaging as the Wetherspoons pubs of north London.
In his repetitions rest the genius of Home; his hypnotic humour blending sweet dreams of reincarnation and eternal devotion with the crack of a dominatrix’s whip.
A clever, funny, experimental gem laced with a deeper sense of sadness and loss.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews