Listed by some as young adult…but it doesn’t really read like it, for all that it’s about teens coming of age. Listed by others as historical fiction…but I refuse the idea that a book set when I would’ve been in Grade 10 belongs in such a category. Fantastical, certainly, and of a witchy bent, but also shot through with quirky humour. In any case, I really enjoyed it. It focuses on a high school field hockey team in a small town in New England. The young women on the team have never really won very much, and they want to, so they tap into some more-than-conventional resources through the Salem-witch-trials heritage of their town, without having any idea what they’re doing or even really if they’re doing anything beyond-the-natural at all. Both earnest and ridiculous, in the way that high school is both earnest and ridiculous, it follows them through their final season, and through their reckless growing-up plunge into doing what they will in hopes of getting what they want. You get to know the characters surprisingly well, considering how many there are, and they are obviously crafted with great care and attention (but also plenty of cheek) by the author. I won’t lie, the era in which it is set is part of the appeal for me – like I said, I would’ve been a couple of years younger than the characters in 1989, and small town New England isn’t quite the same as small town southern Ontario, but there is still a great deal that felt amusingly familiar to me. I also enjoyed the author’s clever and reasonably subtle meandering through the everyday race-class-gender-sexuality weave of late ’80s high school. As well, I took pleasure in the unabashed weirdness of the book – it’s not a trying-to-be-fancy-and-literary, high-concept weirdness, but a small-town, big-hair, awkward-phase, is-this-for-real weirdness that characters and reader alike just sort of have to take in stride because, well, what else are you going to do. Not for everyone, but I liked it.
Originally posted by Scott on Goodreads.