The Book of Shadows

Alone among the young girls taught by nuns at a convent school in nineteenth-century France, orphaned Herculine has neither wealth nor social connections. When she's accused of being a witch, the shy student is locked up with no hope of escape ... until her rescue by a real witch, the beautiful, mysterious Sebastiana. Swept away to the witch's manor, Herculine will enter a fantastic, erotic world to discover her true nature -- and her destiny -- in this breathtaking, darkly sensual first novel.

From Publishers Weekly

A sinuous plot studded with uncanny surprises snakes through this nontraditional period gothic. Its first-person narrator, Herculine, seems cut from the same cloth as the heroines of classic sensationalist fiction: vulnerable, tragically orphaned and, at the tale's outset, immured in the tedious routines of early 19th-century French convent life. But Herculine's self-consciousness about unnamed physical endowments suggests an unusual heritage whose dimensions become known when a schoolgirl prank leads to shocking revelations of the "unnatural" and accusations of witchcraft. Before she can be tried, she is spirited to safety by witch Sebastiana d'Azur, a "Soror Mystica" who tutors her in the enchantments necessary for Herculine to fulfill her destiny: to liberate Father Louis and his lover, Madeleine de la Mettrie, two elemental spirits chained to earth. Herculine's instruction proves a pretext for relating elaborate 18th-century chronicles of Louis's trumped-up trial for witchcraft and Sebastiana's tutelage in the mysteries of the Craft, and it is through these tales that the novel comes into its own. Reese loosens restraints, making the novel more than a mere historical pastiche and jarring the reader with vivid accounts of Louis's cruel torture, the passion of Sebastiana's education and the revolting inhumanity of the French Revolution's reign of terror. Overlong and distractingly plotless, these interludes nevertheless impress, levering out in deceptively simple language the eroticism and violence smoldering beneath traditional gothic fustian. Though loosely episodic, the novel achieves a historical sweep that distinguishes Reese as a star pupil in the Anne Rice school of dark sensuality. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

In this debut novel, Reese explores the dark world of obsession and magic in 18th-century Brittany. Orphaned Herculine has grown up in the narrow confines of a French convent. She knows that she is different and is both ashamed and afraid of these differences. Shocking events at the convent cause her to reevaluate her identity, as she is drawn into a web of sorcery and betrayal. Befriended by witches, ghosts, and other supernatural creatures, Herculine struggles to find a place for herself in the world. Should she help these new friends or run away as fast as she can? This novel shows potential that is, alas, unrealized. A confusing setting and plot are complicated by Reese's insistence on developing minor characters at the expense of his protagonist. Lengthy tangential chapters serve only to muddy the waters further. Not recommended.- Laurel Bliss, Yale Arts Lib. Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

With witches, sorcerers, a bewitched nunnery, and all of this in post-revolutionary France, Reese turns out a gothic novel in the true sense--dark, mysterious, sumptuous, lusty, and otherworldly. Heracline is an orphan whose mother bled to death before her eyes. Sent to a convent school, she remains there until her life becomes endangered. She is eventually mystically rescued by a strange, beautiful group of people who introduce her to her true nature, something she has been fearful of for some time. Her rescue, it turns out, is all part of a pre-determined plan, bringing Heracline into contact with all sorts of demons and otherworldly types and illuminating for her things that used to go on, undetected, before her very eyes. She sets off on a journey across France, learning the secret of herself, of witchcraft, historical events, and the part played by the spirit world. Reese paints a portrait rich in style and allusion, both literary and historical, of a gory, lush underworld where the flesh takes precedence over the spirit. Michael SpinellaCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

About the Author

James Reese was born on eastern Long Island. He attended the University of Notre Dame and the State University of NY at Stony Brook, where he received an MA in Theatre. As an undergraduate, he had a play staged off-Broadway at the Actors Repertory Theatre. While living in New York, New Orleans and Key West, Reese held various jobs in the non-profit sector, working on behalf of the arts and the environment. He has also lived and traveled extensively in France. Presently, he lives in South Florida, where he is working full-time on the sequel to The Book of Shadows.

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