Wednesday's Review: The Old Witches Home by Avian Swansong
July 3, 2024
The summer festival is practically on top of the witches in Upstate New York and everything that could go wrong does. But this festival is not just a party. This is their major fundraising event and do they have expenses!! Repairs, lawyers, challenges to their ownership of the land. There is dissension among them. Beyond disagreeable, why are so many witches acting delusional? People in leadership and those who provide muscle are dropping like flies. And then it rains. Something is happening and it isn’t good.
If there was a refrain for this book it would be Birdie saying “I’ll take care of it.” Hey Birdie! You can’t do everything yourself. You aren’t 35 anymore. None of them are. But it is hard to let go so Maple and the others can do their jobs. What if they screw up?
Have you ever wondered what it will be like when you are old, maybe broke, likely hurting in your joints, maybe sick? As the Billy Joel songs asks, “Who’s gonna love you when your looks are gone?” Do you have a plan? Is living with your kids or brother a good idea? Can you create financial security against the inevitable? Will you be alone? What do you think about assisted living or senior citizen housing?
The old witches in this book didn’t like any of those options. Instead, they think they have a solution. They inherited some land, built a senior citizen’s commune of pagans, and committed to running it by the communal values of another age. Everybody works together for the common good and decisions are unanimous. Except there are two men from a norse pagan background that is sexist and likely racist. Consensus is hard to come by. It works out because magic works. Because there is love. Because Birdie just keeps insisting.
Having been part of a large group that ran fundraisers like this, I can relate. We were much younger than these people and it still wore us out. We didn’t have all these complications, thank the Goddess. And we couldn’t hold it together. I loved this book. It was a walk down memory lane in many ways. Most algorithms might call it speculative fiction because of the magic. I’m going to laugh at that. The willing suspension of disbelief encourages the reader to agree with the doctor when he says about their magic “I don’t know. They certainly didn’t have a course on magic in med school.” You don’t need a college course. Magic is everywhere if you but look.
The Old Witches Home gives us all a thought or two about what to do instead of trusting to dumb luck. It also is a cautionary tale about the sort of people, both friends and enemies, who block our best ideas. We need to anticipate them. Keeping our wits about us is essential. Watching a bunch of old witches deal with them is fascinating. Highly recommended.