Norman and Tansy are a stereotypical 1940s young couple.
Now imagine all the "rationalistic" men in the world haven't got a clue (I know some will say this part is easy). Imagine that all the women in the world were witches, some good (white), some bad (black), and there was a constant battle between these good and bad forces and in this way a sort of balance is maintained. Winner of the 1944 Retrospective Hugo Award, Conjure Wife is widely celebrated as a modern classic of horror-fantasy and has been adapted for film three times: Burn, Witch Burn (1962), Weird Woman (1944), and Witch's Brew (1980). Now, in order to save his wife, Norman must overcome his disbelief and embrace the dark magic he disdains. But the worst is yet to come-when Tansy takes his curse upon herself. At his wit's end, he begins to worry that a dark presence is exploiting his fear of trucks. Plus he's become exceedingly accident prone: from shaving to carpet tacks to letter openers, hazards are suddenly everywhere. He's even passed over for a promotion that had been certain. Then his student secretary accuses him of seducing her. First, Norman has a disastrous run-in with a former protégé. But Norman, as a man of science, demands she put an end to it. She only wants to protect him from the other spell-casting faculty wives who would stop at nothing to advance their husbands' careers. Ethnology professor Norman Saylor is shocked to discover that his wife, Tansy, has been putting his research on "Conjure Magic" into practice. Including variants and translations: 6.A professor discourages his wife's witchcraft to disastrous ends in this Hugo Award-winning novel-that inspired three films-by the Grand Master of Fantasy. which perhaps is all that needed to be said." Damon Knight, Science Fiction Adventures" User Rating: Leiber has never written anything better. From that point onward the story anticlimax so skillfully managed that I am not really certain I touched the slipcover again until after the last page.
Leiber develops this theme with the utmost dexterity, piling up alternate layers of the mundane and outre, until at the story's real climax, the shocker at the end of chapter 14, I am not ashamed to say that I jumped an inch out of my seat. Under the rational overlay of 20th-century civilization this sickly growth, uncultivated, unsuspected, still manages to propagate itself. Its premise is that witchcraft still flourishes, or at any rate survives, an open secret among women, a closed book to men. is easily the most frightening (and necessarily) the most thoroughly convincing of all modern horror stories. and a witch in his bed."įrom the back cover of the Lion first paperback: ""Conjure Wife.
Synopsis: From the front cover of the Lion first paperback: "Potions in the house.
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