Drawing on real historical documents but infused with the intensity of imagination, sly humor, and intellectual fire for which award-winning author Rivka Galchen’s writing is known, Everyone Knows Your Mother Is a Witch is a tale for our time ...

NUBClub generally liked this work of historical fiction set in the time of Johannes Kepler. What we discovered in that the story really centered on a single relationship: Katherina, the elderly woman accused of being a witch by her neighbors, and Simon, her widower neighbor who acts as her advocate for a time. What Galchen does excellently in this novel is depict these small relationships: how it's really petty greed on the part of another neighbor that kicks of the accusations in the first place, that Katherina shaming the local official on acting incorrect expands her problem rather than ending it, that people take sides and switch them over very personal and idiosyncratic views of morality and honestly and risk. The relationship with Simon is particularly well-rendered as both his friendship with Katherina and his own concerns over the well-being of his children put him in a very small but very believable and empathetic quandary. Katherina is also a very compelling character; you can see how her refusal to live up to the expectations of old women and her inability to keep her mouth shut and stay out of people's business leads to an opening to defamation. We all found the world and its petty politics compelling, and we liked the Galchen kept her view pretty narrow and stayed in a set of very local stories. Belief and science also weave through the book in interesting and historically accurate ways, as questions about whether witches even exist are raised while almost anyone will take a horoscope from Johannes if they can get it. Overall, we really liked this novel. It's not a blockbuster in terms of plot or themes, but it's a very well constructed and told story about how humans treat each other and what politics and gossip do to people's lives, and on those terms, we recommend it.