A Witching Tale

What I’m Reading

A sculpture of Katharina Kepler in Eltingen, Germany. (Wiener Zeitung Online)

Everyone Knows Your Mother is a Witch

By Rivka Galchen

HarperCollins Canada

An unusual and entertaining novel set in medieval Germany. Katharina Kepler is an old woman who has raised her three children without her husband, owns a bit of property, loves her cow Chamomile and is an expert on herbal remedies.

Then she is accused of witchcraft by a neighbour called Ursula. The neighbour is motivated by greed, spite, envy and a touch of lunacy. While this novel is often comic, it has an underlying layer of sadness.

Katharina sues Ursula for slander, and because she is illiterate, she relies on another neighbour, a quiet widower called Simon, to be her legal advisor. What follows is a tale of superstition, gossip and foolishness, as Katharina and Simon seek justice. It proves frustratingly difficult to get.

The story is based on an incident in the life of Johannes Kepler, the great astronomer, (1571-1630), who spent much of his career in Prague. His mother really was accused of witchcraft, and eventually, through desperate appeals to the Emperor, she was acquitted. Kepler was one of the founders of modern astronomy, and also of optics. He wrote what is sometimes seen as the first science fiction story, and this may have contributed to the idea of his mother being a witch.

Kepler himself was quite religious. He believed that God created the world according to a plan accessible through natural reason. He resisted attempts to make him convert to Catholicism, staying a Lutheran and calling for tolerance and moderation.

Note that Johannes Kepler was called both an astronomer and an astrologer; the two weren’t seen as antithetical. The same could be said of medicine and magic, which is the dangerous pit into which poor Katherina fell.

The author of this novel, Rivka Galchen, lives in Montreal and New York, and writes for the New Yorker magazine. She said she loved working on this book because of the rich research it required.

And, of course, it is a novel. While many of the characters are given their real names, their personalities are invented. What a lively menagerie of villagers — the guy with two thumbs, the small-minded schoolmaster, the rival bakers, the frail town clerk wafting his handkerchief, and many others.

Reading their testimony in court, we are reminded of how people drift off topic, how they use happenstance as proof, how quick they are to blame their misfortune on somebody else. We know that users of social media can turn on somebody, making them famous or ruining their life. We hear the phrase “my truth,” as if truth is relative or subjective. And we know that the law, in every country including our own, can do nothing about digital mischief that could influence our elections — that could, essentially, call someone a witch.

Rivka Galchen: She lives in New York and Montreal.