3.5
Conjure Wife
ByPublisher Description
Tansy Saylor is the wife of an up-and-coming young sociology professor at a small, conservative American college. She is also a witch. Her husband, Norman, discovers this one day while rummaging through her dressing table: he finds vials of graveyard dirt, packets of hair and fingernail clippings from their acquaintances, and other evidence of her witchcraft. He confronts Tansy, and manages to convince her that her faith in magic is a result of superstition and neurosis. Tansy burns her charms; and Norman's luck immediately goes sour. He realizes that he had been protected, up till now, by Tansy's charms, and that as a result of his meddling, they are both now powerless to counteract the spells and charms of the other witches all around them.
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communitiesConjure Wife Reviews
3.5
Isabela GeekArts
Created 3 days agoShare
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MaenadMarti
Created 3 months agoShare
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Stregadigatti
Created 7 months agoShare
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“It’s been a rough week for Norman Saylor, a professor of Anthropology at a small private liberal arts college in the 1950s.
Stressed about departmental politics. Living under the threat of the atom bomb. Brilliance wasted on a classroom of unserious baby boomers. And now this … His wife is a witch!
No, she's worse than a witch. She’s superstitious! :(
No wonder he rids his house (and person) of ethnographically suspicious objects. Absolutely the sensible thing to do.
It’s just a coincidence that the terrifying gargoyle outside his office window appears to be creeping closer and closer…
Conjure Wife is a standout in the canon of “Dude messes with The Female Mysteries, experiences comeuppance” tales.
What a satisfying read! In particular, Norman's late stage reunion with his wife was genuinely scary. Sure, that little "surprise" at the end has been referenced in subsequent movies/tv shows, but can we credit Fritz Leiber, rather than Tales from the Crypt?”
Alice
Created 11 months agoShare
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Star C
Created over 1 year agoShare
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“I recently became acquainted with Fritz Leiber's works, first with his science fiction Change War novel The Big Time, and then with his fantasy Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser series. I was aware he also wrote horror, so chose Conjure Wife as my first foray into this genre from him, and I'm glad I did! I find Leiber's writing style very compelling, and once I get going I don't want to stop reading - I read this one across two days, but could have easily finished it in one afternoon.
Conjure Wife's initial premise is quite simple - a man (Norman) discovers his wife (Tansy) is a witch, and quite possibly so is every other woman! After this discovery he encourages his wife to stop practicing witchcraft, but then slowly things start to go wrong. Maybe her witchy ways weren't such a bad thing after all?
I don't want to spoil too much of the resulting story, but it does get very dark as the book progresses. The small town setting with the "perfect household" of the couple and their cat slowly becomes very claustrophobic, with seemingly no-one safe for the couple to turn to, and I enjoyed this a lot. Reminded me of the "one room" setting of The Big Time, although this story does have multiple locations. It does return to the college where Norman works quite frequently though, with its gothic architecture and a gargoyle that seems to move... Oh, and the cat... Leiber loved cats very much, so it's no surprise that a cat was included in the story! What happens to the cat was a surprise though. I'll leave that one for you to discover.
Great lead characters in Norman and Tansy, and the supporting characters are also well written.
The story whisks you along as things get worse and worse for the couple, and you wonder if they'll ever resolve the terrible things that have befallen them. I liked the ending of the story, even if I felt it was perhaps over too quickly, although from my experiences with Leiber, that's just how he writes - no drawn out endings! This is quite a short novel, but it did seem the perfect length. Again, could be easily read in one afternoon.
Another enjoyable novel from Leiber, and a great introduction to his horror writing.”
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