Goodreads Monday is a weekly meme started by @Lauren’s Page Turners but is currently hosted by Emily @ Budget Tales Book Blog. This meme is quite easy to follow – just randomly pick a book from your to-be-read list and explain why you want to read it. It is that simple.

This week’s book:

The Witch by Marie NDiaye

Blurb from Goodreads

Translated by Jordan Stump. In a small town, a mediocre witch, in a mediocre marriage, tries to pass on her gifts to her twin daughters, who, it becomes immediately apparent, have skills far beyond her own.

“What was it about me, I asked myself, that kept me from being a good witch? Did I lack the will, the intensity, the rage?”

Lucie comes from a long line of witches, ​powers passed down from mother to daughter. Her own mother was formidable in her gifts, but ashamed of her magic. Perhaps as a result, Lucie’s own talent is she can see into the future, sometimes—but more often, she can only see the present of some other location. Most frustrating is that all she can ever see are insignificant details, snippets—a scrap of outfit, the color of the sky. Against the wishes of her malicious, salesman husband, Lucie initiates her hesitant twin daughters into their family’s peculiar womanhood—a sort of wisdom kept sacred and hated—when they reach twelve years of age. In a few short months, Maud and Lise are crying the curious tears of blood that denote their magical powers. Having learned, they take off quickly and fly the nest—literally—leaving Lucie more unmoored than she was before. 

Witty, dreamlike, disquieting, and utterly enchanting (pun intended), The Witch brings the mysteries of womanhood and motherhood, precarity and class, into sharp relief and leaves us teetering on the edge, unbalanced. Like a William Faulkner novel set in modern France, the book conjures a vivid and enclosed place with no easy escape, as seemingly unbreakable relationships falter left and right. Fighting the entropy her husband and father bring in to her life, Lucie is a classic NDiaye a woman standing on the lip of a situation about to spin out of control. Ultimately, her life raises questions that we all have to How can home be a place that nurtures, when mother-blood has manifold to rescue, to capture, to entrap, or abandon? What does it mean to provide for the ones you love? And how can you—can you?—build a nest that no one wants to fly from?

Why I Want To Read It

Happy Monday, everyone! Just like that, we are already on the second Monday of the sixth month of the year. How time flies! As always, time takes its natural course, ever flowing forward, sans regard for any of us. It does not wait for anyone. As such, I hope the year is going—and will continue to go—well for everyone. I hope the year will be kind to you all. Things are still erratic, whether at work or geopolitics. I sure hope the tension in the Middle East will start to de-escalate. I hope that peace will gradually be restored. Meanwhile, the southern region of the Philippines has been hit with yet another powerful earthquake. It registered a magnitude of 7.8. Please pray for my countrymen. On another note, I hope everyone has had a good start to the workweek. I hope everyone is in a place of comfort. The new week beckons with hope and fresh starts. I hope it flows in everyone’s favor. Wishing you continued success and happiness.

I know—not many people get excited about Mondays (though I’m sure a few are out there). I, too, am not exactly a fan. I hope that as the week moves forward, you slowly gain a semblance of momentum. I hope everyone’s workweek goes smoothly. More importantly, I hope everyone is doing well—mentally, emotionally, and physically. After spending the first two months of the year reading works of Latin American and Caribbean writers, I have been immersing myself in the works of European writers. It took me some time to decide where to land next, but in the end, I chose to read European writers, since most of the books on my 2026 reading challenge list are by European authors. Still, I have several works by European writers on my reading challenges, hence the inevitable extension of this literary journey into June. I find it ironic that the books in my reading challenges remain unread, even though I began this venture into European literature specifically to complete them earlier than usual.

My venture into European literature, interestingly, has been dominated by French and British writers. As such, I am featuring a work of French literatur ein this week’s Goodreads Monday update. It is also aligned with my ongoing reading motif. It was the International Booker Prize that introduced me to Marie NDiaye, whose novel The Witch was nominated for the Prize this year. Apparently, NDiaye has Senegalese heritage; her father was from the former French colony. David Diop, the winner of the 2021 Prize with At Night All Blood is Black, is also of Senegalese blood. It seems like a good omen for NDiaye, who started writing when she was twelve. She published her first novel, Quant au riche avenir, in 1985, when she was just seventeen. That is quite an achievement for someone so young. In 2016, Ladivine was longlisted for the International Booker Prize, making it her first novel to be nominated for the Prize.

NDiaye is obviously no stranger to the International Booker Prize. Her body of work was also nominated for the 2013 International Booker Prize, back when it recognized a body of work rather than a single work. Unfortunately, The Witch, did not win the 2026 Prize, although it did make the shortlist. Apparently, The Witch was originally published in 1996 as La sorcière. It took three decades before it was finally translated into English. At the heart of the story is Lucie, a witch who is described to be of mediocre skill. The response to the novel, however, was rather lukewarm. Regardless, I am interested to know what the book has in store. Besides, it is the primer to an oeuvre I have yet to explore. The novel’s premise is quite intriguing. I just have to secure myself a copy of it.

How about you, fellow readers? How was your Monday? What books have you recently added to your reading list? Drop your thoughts in the comments. For now—happy Monday, and as always, happy reading!