Customer Reviews

The Witch Doctor's Wife

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Loved this book! Well for one I love reading about different countries and cultures.
The setting is in the Belgian Congo. The characters are Amanda, who is a missionary who has come to take the place of the missionary's who are running the missionary guest house. She finds herself in culture shock, so many differences between the American and the Belgians.
The witch doctor who goes by the name of Their Death. He has 2 wives, Cripple and Second Wife. Their Deaths son, Baby Boy is sucking on a rock. The rock is a diamond. The diamond mine in the Belgian is owned by the Consortium and anyone caught with a diamond faces stiff fines and the whip. Their Death cannot smuggle the diamond for fear of getting caught so he decides he will confront his boss, the Postmaster to sell him the diamond. Many events happen after this meeting that makes you want to keep reading to find out what happens! The end was unexpected and surprising. The only part that I would say didn't need to be in the book was about the Nigerian man but maybe it was to make a point on the seriousness of the diamonds.
I give this one 5 stars because it is an excellent read!

"The Witch Doctor's Wife" by Tama Meyers tells the story of the diamond industry in The Congo in the late `50's. What makes this story interesting is that the author was born and raised in The Congo so this fictional story takes on an even greater meaning. What detracts from this story is the multitude of characters - some underdeveloped, some appearing to be just place holders and others serving a distinct purpose. I put the down about half way through and had a hard time trying to remember who was who and where the story was going.

While the first third of the book was very interesting - setting the story up, giving great background and detail of The Congo (you feel you can hear the water falls!) and introducing the plucky main character. From there the story dissolves with the introduction of too many supporting characters, the mystery and ultimately the climax at the ending. There was too much going on at the end of the story and too many of the plots resolved too quickly.

While I enjoyed this book, I felt that it needed a good editing and a decrease in supporting characters. If Ms. Meyers intends to have a sequel, my suggestion would be to stick to the main character in the story - the location. I was ready to book a trip to the dark continent while reading the book!

Tamar Myers' The Witch Doctor's Wife is set in the Belgian Congo in 1958. There are increasing demands at this time for Congolese independence from Belgian rule. But before they are compelled to cede power to the natives, the Belgians mean to extract as much profit as possible from the country's diamond mines. The town of Belle Vue, situated near a waterfall in the Kasai River, is largely under the authority of the mining consortium that owns the mineral rights to much of the surrounding area. The social divide between the white colonialists and the black natives is enormous, almost unbridgeable, and most of the Belgians in the country are racist and dictatorial in their relationships with the natives.

Against this backdrop Myers introduces a handful of characters: a witch doctor/post office groundskeeper and his two wives, the witch doctor's Belgian boss, a young American missionary, a Portuguese store owner. There is also a mysterious Nigerian who flies into the country with the missionary and then makes himself scarce for reasons that are not at once divulged. Myers explores what happens to this cast when one of them discovers an impossibly large gem, a diamond larger than anything that's ever been found in the area. It's worth a fortune, but profiting from it, given the iron grip of the Consortium on the country's resources, may not be possible.

The Witch Doctor's Wife is an unusual and unusually interesting read. It offers fascinating information about the culture of the Belgian Congo--the author was born and raised there--both within the story proper and in the explanatory paragraphs with which each chapter opens. The book defies the reader's expectations, in part because some of the story's threads end quite abruptly. One could argue that this is bad storytelling: to an extent it feels like the author is cheating, cutting out complications with, say, a death that comes out of nowhere. But I didn't feel cheated myself, just intrigued by the author's strange decisions. The one thing I did have trouble with is a decision made by one of the characters, a brave bit of selflessness that motivates much of what happens at the end of the book. But the decision that character made was an irrational one, I think, the sacrifice offered unnecessary under the circumstances (as far as I can see), so that to my mind much of the book's plot rests on an unacceptable premise. (This complaint is very vague I understand, but I don't want to give anything away.)

Despite this one difficulty, I enjoyed this book very much, and I highly recommend it.

-- Debra Hamel

This novel was amazing! I absolutely loved the interactions between Amanda, the American missionary, and First Wife (I cannot reveal First Wife's name because it's key to the hilarious interactions and cultural confusion between First Wife and Amanda). Seeing the Americans and Europeans through the eyes of the Congolese was both fascinating and humorous.

Although this novel is set up as a mystery with greed corrupting all involved, the heart of the novel is the relationships and the characters. Tamar Myers did an excellent job developing her characters, particularly The Witch Doctor, First Wife, Second Wife, and Amanda, the American missionary. The novel was intriguing, fascinating, and humorous and is not to be missed. Another aspect of the novel I enjoyed was that each chapter begins with a fascinating blurb about the people, animals, and environment of the Congo. I felt that I learned a great deal about the Belgian Congo while enjoying an entertaining novel.

I couldn't wait to pick this book up every chance I got and cannot emphasize this enough. I carried this book with me everywhere I went until I finished because I couldn't bear to not have it by my side. I would actually rate it 4.5 stars if I could. The only thing that keeps it from being five stars is that the ending wasn't quite satisfying because I would have liked the mystery to be wrapped up with a little more information and detail.

I am a very selective reader and I highly recommend this book to everyone!

If you enjoy the No 1 Ladies' Detective Agency books, you will LOVE this book three times as much! The story is set in the Congo in 1958 before the territory gained independence from Portugal. The plot does not include a detective, but it is better without one! Myers is a great story teller who creates a colorful cast of characters, in a realistic and culturally rich setting, ties it all together with a plot that never lags, and seasons it with very entertaining dialog. And while you are enjoying a wonderful tale that you never want to stop reading, you are also learning about the people, culture, and country where it takes place.

Personally I would like Tamar Myers to write one of these tales for us every year. Since she was born and raised in the Belgian Congo, she has a wealth of experience and knowledge to draw from. I belong to two book groups and know lots of people who love a good story. I will rave about this one to everyone I know.

This novel does a great job of interweaving facts and fiction. The brief factual bits at the start of each chapter get one wondering, partucularly about how those facts relate to the story line. The characters are well drawn and the twists and turns of plot draw one in without seeming too contrived.

Cripple is First Wife (of two) of a witch doctor named Their Death. She is a smart woman who constantly gets discounted due to her appearance. When a huge diamond is introduced into their lives a web of unfortunate events set off a tidal wave of dangers fueled by greed.
Amanda Brown, a young missionary from South Carolina, travels to the Belgian Congo in 1958 in order to oversee a missionary guest house in the town of Belle Vue. Belle Vue is a diamond mining town in which the race by the Belgian occupiers to get as many riches as they can before the forces of independence takes over is a major concern.
When the lives of these two women cross, they and the people they interact with are tested in ways none of them ever imagined.

For me, the premise of the novel, nothing is what it seems; gets tested almost every chapter with the main characters as well as the fascinating individuals they encounter. Ms. Myers' makes that point several times during the story as well as the informative short paragraphs which introduce every chapter and tell the reader about the plants, animals and culture of the area.

The book is not told from one point of view, but from several points of view which is very interesting because the reader has an idea of how the several characters in the book see themselves (the natives, the Belgians, etc.)

I found this book easy to read and it kept up my interest both from a cultural perspective as well as an interesting storyline. The characters were fascinating and the author made an effort to keep them "gray", not all good and not all bad.

This was a really quick read. Tamar Myers knows how to keep the reader hooked from the beginning. I could not put this book down at all. I read it even in traffic. It gave you a feel of Africa and being part of the culture there. The author also shared some interesting information that went within the chapters. Now I wish I could go to Africa to see what it is like, but I have a good feeling that I went there already in this book. This was a really good read!

The Witch Doctor's Wife arrived in my hands, because it was put there by my good wife. Thereafter, I could not put it down. This comes from a busy chap that does not normally have time for literature outside of audiobooks consumed on the road. Tamar Myers uses her personal experiences growing up in the Belgian Congo to open for us a window into a unique and fascinating culture. The interactions between the indigenous people and the Europeans are also at times hilarious and had me laughing out loud. As other reviewers have mentioned, I also noticed a number of characters that did not seem to fit into the main story line, but did not find this a distraction from the pleasures of the book. I also suspect it will tie in with the next in what appears to be a series (I certainly hope there will be a follow-on).

I enjoyed the uniqueness and authenticity of the book so much that I have purchased another copy to put in the hands of a good friend. I was rather surprised to find The Witch Doctor's Wife in the Mystery section.

First Line: The dominant female danced along the edge of the manioc field, impatiently waiting the arrival of her pack.

The plane young missionary Amanda Brown is traveling on crash lands outside the village of Belle Vue in the Belgian Congo, which is too forceful a way of telling her that she is no longer in South Carolina. Amanda's housekeeper, an evil-tempered man named Protruding Navel, is highly incensed when she hires a village woman named Cripple to take his place. Profits at the mine are not as high as stockholders would like. Love affairs are being conducted. People relive old tragedies with each new dawn. When one of the villagers stumbles upon a huge uncut diamond, events are put into place that could lead to nothing less than murder.

When I began my long and willing descent into mystery reading, Tamar Myers' cosy "Den of Antiquity" series set in South Carolina was one of the first that I devoured. I enjoyed Myers' sense of humor and way with words. The author has a second long-running "Pennsylvania-Dutch" series as well. In deciding to use her own background as child of missionaries in the Congo of the late 1950s, Tamar Myers has broken new ground in what I hope will be a very fertile field.

Myers' knowledge of the land and people of the 1950s Congo permeates every page, even when it's a small detail such as villagers knowing they had to get home before they heard the first sounds of the hyenas. The customs of the native peoples, how the whites lived and behaved, the landscape, the weather, the architecture... all of these things brought such verisimilitude to the book that I would rank The Witch Doctor's Wife right up there with Alexander McCall Smith and Michael Stanley.

I did have one problem with the book however: there were too many characters, and several of them didn't seem to have anything to do. I didn't get any of them confused; I just read and wondered why they were there. Myers is possibly setting up future books in a series, but I did find the character bounty awkward.

Normally I tell people not to believe blurbs that say, "If you like McCall Smith's #1 Ladies Detective Agency" because most of the time that merely means that the book is set somewhere on the African continent. This time, I would say a blurb like that would be true. There's a gentleness, a humor, and a wisdom to The Witch Doctor's Wife that does remind me of Precious Ramotswe. If Myers does continue to write about Amanda Brown, I'll continue to read the books. They're that good.