October Books 6) Conjure Wife, by Fritz Leiber
Norman Saylor was not the sort of man to go prying into his wife's dressing room. That was partly the reason why he did it.
Oh dear.
Oh dear.
There are things that Conjure Wife does tolerably well. Set in a New England college in the 1930s, it can be seen as in some ways a taproot text for future campus horror stories; the climax where Saylor attempts to rescue his wife's soul is well-paced and gripping; there are some very effective descriptive passages. But these cannot excuse the fact of the central premise of the book: all women are, in fact, clandestine witches, and keeping it secret from us men (and from each other to an extent). The mind boggles; I guess the kindest thing to say is that the genre has come some way since 1943.
Oh dear.
Oh dear.
There are things that Conjure Wife does tolerably well. Set in a New England college in the 1930s, it can be seen as in some ways a taproot text for future campus horror stories; the climax where Saylor attempts to rescue his wife's soul is well-paced and gripping; there are some very effective descriptive passages. But these cannot excuse the fact of the central premise of the book: all women are, in fact, clandestine witches, and keeping it secret from us men (and from each other to an extent). The mind boggles; I guess the kindest thing to say is that the genre has come some way since 1943.