Lives of the Mayfair Witches
Lives of the Mayfair Witches is a trilogy of Gothic supernatural horror fantasy novels by American author Anne Rice. It centers on a family of witches whose fortunes have been guided for generations by a spirit named Lasher. The series began in 1990 with The Witching Hour, which was followed by the sequels Lasher and Taltos. All three novels debuted at No. 2 on The New York Times Best Seller list.
Some characters from the trilogy cross over to Rice's The Vampire Chronicles, a series of gothic horror novels featuring the vampire Lestat de Lioncourt, specifically in Merrick, Blackwood Farm, and Blood Canticle.
A television series adaptation, Mayfair Witches, debuted on AMC in 2023.
Overview
Susan Ferraro of The New York Times described The Witching Hour as "a ghost story about an evil spirit called Lasher who is so permeated with foreboding and evil that themes like abortion and incest are merely secondary. There is Christian symbolism straight and skewed, rough sex and necrophilia." Publishers Weekly wrote that "Rice plumbs a rich vein of witchcraft lore, conjuring... the decayed antebellum mansion where incest rules, dolls are made of human bone and hair, and violent storms sweep the skies each time a witch dies and the power passes on." The publication called Lasher "another vast, transcontinental saga of witchcraft and demonism in the tradition of Gothic melodrama." The Mary Sue described the series as "half narrative, half exposition of the entire family tree". The website also noted the "overuse of incest" and casual treatment of horror and violence, which "permeates the Gothic atmosphere." Publishers Weekly wrote that "cutting-edge gene mapping intertwines with ancient mysteries" in Taltos. Alexander Theroux of the Chicago Tribune called Taltos "a dark and intimidating mystery" and wrote that Rice "continues the dark epic of the Mayfair witches, her saga of the occult... that takes us on temporal and spatial journeys back through the centuries, probing plots of corruption and innocence, mortality and immortality, good and evil. The genre goes back to the Gothic novels of Ann Radcliffe and Horace Walpole, the kind of books, with their creaking armor, salivating monks and thunderstorms, satirized by Thomas Love Peacock in his Crotchet Castle."Characters
Upon the death of her estranged biological mother Deirdre, California neurosurgeon Rowan Mayfair is shocked to find herself named the new designee of the Mayfair family fortune. Rowan revives drowned contractor Michael Curry, who finds that the near-death experience grants him unwanted extrasensory powers.Michael is also one of very few people who has seen the mysterious Lasher, a ghost who haunts the Mayfairs. Lasher is described as "a slim, pale, elegant figure with dark eyes and dark hair and a hypnotically seductive power over any reckless enough to entertain him." Lasher, whom Publishers Weekly describes as "devil, seducer, spirit", is a demon linked to the Mayfairs for generations. Summoned by Scottish witch Suzanne Mayfair in the 1600s, Lasher "goes on to bedevil her descendants down to the present day, seeing in them the means of fulfilling his ghastly and unnatural ambitions." Under Lasher's influence, the Mayfairs become an enormously wealthy family of witches, able to "attract and manipulate unseen forces." The demon seduces each new designee and orchestrates incestuous unions among the family, with ulterior motives. Rowan is the 13th such Mayfair designee, who Lasher believes will give him his chance to rejoin the living. Publishers Weekly called Lasher "both child and man at the same time", and Patrick McGrath suggested that Lasher is actually the protagonist of The Witching Hour.
Lasher's plan comes to fruition at the end of The Witching Hour when he invades Rowan's unborn fetus and is reborn. The baby is genetically a non-human, ancient species called the Taltos, which is "the superhuman result of the crossbreeding of two human witches who possess an extra chromosome". The infant Lasher immediately grows to adulthood, and Publishers Weekly describes the creature as "almost a monster... capable of beastly behavior fueled by an extraordinary sex drive." He rapes Rowan repeatedly in Lasher to create more Taltos, but the attempts end in violent miscarriages. Rowan finally conceives and gives birth to a Taltos daughter, Emaleth, but ultimately kills her. Michael fathers another Taltos with Rowan's cousin Mona Mayfair, a daughter she names Morrigan, in Taltos.
Theroux wrote, "The Mayfair witches are easily the largest dysfunctional family on earth, and yet, perhaps not surprisingly, face the same soap-opera problems of any other extended family—jealousy, sex, drink, rape, revenge, inexplicable pregnancy, sudden death, crazed children and occasional murder." Of the extended Mayfair family, McGrath noted, "Mayfairs often come to bad ends, generally either burning to death or falling from high places, and we meet many members of many generations of them". Notable Mayfairs include: Julien, "the genial dandy who can be in two places at once and start fires with his mind" and who "movingly recalls his male lovers"; Stella, "the flapper, wildly dancing the Charleston, the witch who just wants to have fun"; her granddaughter Deirdre, "whose sexual passion for Lasher is so intense that terrible old Aunt Carlotta keeps her doped to the eyeballs on Thorazine all her adult life"; and Mona, the "young feminist witch with sharklike business instincts" who has also been described as Rowan's "13-year-old sexpot niece... who is herself the most powerful witch of the Mayfair clan." Red haired, green eyed Mona is the "ascendant character" of Taltos. The novel also introduces Ashlar, an ancient Taltos living in New York, whom Theroux described as a "mild seven-foot mysterioso who... fears flying, has no soul and has a white streak of hair coming from his left temple, has a brain twice the size of that of a human." Having not seen another of his kind in centuries, Ashlar is "driven essentially to the job of revealing the riddle of not only who and what he is but what he wants."
Works
''The Witching Hour'' (1990)
The Witching Hour is the first novel in Rice's Lives of the Mayfair Witches trilogy. It was published by Knopf in 1990. The Mayfairs' First Street house is based on Rice's own antebellum mansion in New Orleans, with fictional events written as if taking place in specific locations in the real-world house. Rice bought the mansion with the advance for The Witching Hour. She called The Witching Hour "a Gothic epic", and said, "The Turn of the Screw is a wonderful haunting novel just the beginning. I want The Witching Hour to be as great or greater than Henry James."Plot
Dr. Rowan Mayfair is a gifted neurosurgeon in San Francisco, California. When her estranged birth mother Deirdre Mayfair dies in New Orleans, she begins to learn about the old Southern family to which she belongs. Michael Curry is a contractor who specializes in the restoration of old homes while dreaming of his childhood in New Orleans and yearning to return there. Rowan gradually realizes that she has the psychic power to either save or take lives. Michael drowns but she revives him, the near-death experience triggering a new and unwanted clairvoyant ability within him. Michael and Rowan fall in love, and when he decides to return to New Orleans, she follows him to learn the secrets of her past.Aaron Lightner, a psychic scholar and member of the Talamasca, has studied the Mayfairs from afar for decades. The matriarchal family—known to the Talamasca as the "Mayfair Witches"—have a long and sordid history. Among the supernatural events surrounding them is a mysterious man, seen by Michael in his childhood and by other members of the family over time. Michael is revealed to be a Mayfair cousin, he and Rowan sharing lines of descent from the male witch Julien Mayfair. Rowan and Michael marry and conceive a child. As the designee of the Mayfair legacy, Rowan assumes control of the family's affairs. Soon the mysterious man reveals himself to her: he is Lasher, a spirit with wicked motives who has plagued the Mayfairs for centuries. His wish is to be made flesh so that he may walk the earth again in the permanent physical form of a human being, and he sets about slowly seducing Rowan.
Secretly thinking that she can outwit Lasher, Rowan sends Michael away from the house on Christmas Eve. Her plan is to bind Lasher to "weak matter" which she can destroy with her mental killing power, but this backfires. Lasher enters her womb and makes himself at home in the fetus. Rowan immediately goes into labor, which is violent and bloody, and Lasher enters the world as a human infant. But the hybrid baby immediately grows into a full-sized, intelligent man. Michael returns and tries to kill the creature, but Lasher is too strong and nearly drowns Michael in the pool. During this second near-death experience, Michael ends up losing the unwanted psychic sensitivity in his hands. Fearing for Michael's life, Rowan flees to Europe with Lasher.