Customer Reviews

Witch Wood

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A good, engaging read. Well developed characters and an excellent insight into a peculiar time of history. Also, a healthy examination of the religious doctrines and culture that define the Scottish Presbyterian presence in what is now referred to as the Reformed Faith.

Buchan is best known today as the author of the espionage thriller, The 39 Steps, though more people have probably seen the Hitchcock movie version than read the book. Readers expecting something similar to 39 Steps or Buchan's other thrillers will be disappointed by Witch Wood. This is, however, a better book than the thrillers. Buchan patterned Witch Wood after Robert Louis Stevenson historical novels like Kidnapped or The Master of Ballantrae, books which take a human issue and the historical setting seriously. Set in 17th century lowland Scotland, the hero of Witch Wood is a young and idealistic Presbyterian minister. This book, which has adventure elements, is essentially a story of conflicts of conscience faced by the hero. Buchan was the son of a Presbyterian minister, had a strong interest in church history, and at one point in his public career, was directly involved in the affairs of the Church of Scotland. I suspect as well that elements are based on his own boyhood. While aspects of the plot are a bit contrived and some parts anachronistic, Buchan really does well in making something human and interesting out of the doctrinal politics and theology of Presbyterianism at this time.

C. S. Lewis liked this novel so much that he sent the author a fan letter, stating his appreciation for Buchan's novels but speaking especially of his gratitude for Witch Wood. Lewis commended the skilful buildup of atmosphere. You can find this Lewisian nugget in Janet Adam Smith's John Buchan and His World.

As for myself - - I suppose I have read this novel three times, with much enjoyment.

Strange things haunt the woods. Stranger things haunt the human heart. Rev. David Semphill does battle with both.

Feint-hearted professions are commonplace. The blindness is willful. Preoccupied with the English Civil Wars and upholding the Solemn League and Covenant, Semphill's Scottish Presbytery ignores his pleas for help. Eventually, they turn against him, leaving the young minister alone in his battle with the Paganism that grips his parish.

In its attempt to destroy both, Hypocrisy masquerades as truth and beauty. Buchan's novel pulls away the veil, revealing, especially through Semphill's personal struggles, the ugliness of hypocrisy and the beauty of unreserved, sacrificial love.

some really really great descriptions here, of forest and sabbaths. the greatest i have read in fact. a priest tries to persuade his congregation to become good christians. some worship ancient religions. there is a coven performing rituals in the woods. if only Buchan would have sticked to that. but no. intrigues, a love story, doubts, and worst of all: another story completely different than this is formed, and this story is boring. for political reasons the priest needs to defend an action. and that destroys the previous story. in the end it all becomes a mediocre blur.

Not one of Buchan's more rewarding works, this novel finds the author in a mournful and disappointed mood. Largely concerned with the doings of a Scots minister in an impoverished lowlands town in the mid seventeenth century, we are tortuously given a social history in microcosm. David Sempill is involved in plots of witchcraft, rural poverty and a bizarre epidemic, Anglo-Scottish border wars and ultimately flight over the seas.In no sense are we swept up into the life or adventures of the hero, as we are say with Richard Hannay in 'Greenmantle' or Dickson McCunn in 'Huntingtower'; both very different classes of hero but both extremely engaging. David Sempill fails the test of engagement and we remain sharply on the side lines, slightly uninterested observers of a time we can hardly credit occured