Rebecca H. (amichai) reviewed on 12/12/2007 + 368 more book reviews

Helpful Score: 5

A disappointment. The historically-based events kept me turning pages, but the prose has no charm, the characters' development is not nuanced and their motivations sometimes completely nonsensical. The author's depiction of Jewish life at the time is extremely weak, a huge drawback, since the main character is a Jewish woman who finds "the love of her life" in a Catholic canon. The main characters are anachronisms; modern people plunked into the 17th Century setting. Although the time periods are different, if you compare this book to Philippa Gregory's "The Queen's Fool" which follows a Jewish woman at the Elizabethan court (also something of a "bodice ripper" with an unusually modern Jewish woman heroine) you can see the difference it makes to follow a well-developed character. Jewish life described in the Witch of Cologne is so stereotyped and incomplete it really amazed me. Elements of this book I would have thought would make it good: kabbala, the demon Lilith, midwifery, era in history, iconoclastic main characters, sex - but, despite these...cannot recommend.

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