Conjure Wife
By Fritz Leiber
4/5
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About this ebook
Ethnology professor Norman Saylor is shocked to discover that his wife, Tansy, has been putting his research on “Conjure Magic” into practice. She only wants to protect him from the other spell-casting faculty wives who would stop at nothing to advance their husbands’ careers. But Norman, as a man of science, demands she put an end to it. And when Tansy’s last charm is burned . . . Norman’s life starts falling apart.
First, Norman has a disastrous run-in with a former protégé. Then his student secretary accuses him of seducing her. He’s even passed over for a promotion that had been certain. Plus he’s become exceedingly accident prone: from shaving to carpet tacks to letter openers, hazards are suddenly everywhere. At his wit’s end, he begins to worry that a dark presence is exploiting his fear of trucks. But the worst is yet to come—when Tansy takes his curse upon herself. Now, in order to save his wife, Norman must overcome his disbelief and embrace the dark magic he disdains.
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).
Fritz Leiber
Fritz Leiber (1910–1992) was the highly acclaimed author of numerous science fiction stories and novels, many of which were made into films. He is best known as creator of the classic Lankhmar fantasy series. Leiber has won many awards, including the coveted Hugo and Nebula, and was honored as a lifetime Grand Master by the Science Fiction Writers of America.
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Reviews for Conjure Wife
14 ratings4 reviews
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5I can't help but read the magic as a metaphor for all the labour women do and have done for men. I don't know if this was his intention but if it was he was way ahead of his time. I wish it wasn't used to pit the women against each other but I guess you can be ahead of your time on one aspect and not another.
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Our narrator is a bit of male pig, but Leiber's gift is in achieving great economy with instilling fear of the unknown.
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This book lingered on my bookshelf for a year or two. I bought it in desperation to use up some book credits, and had little hope for it. Once I started reading it, I couldn't put it down. Lieber is a clever writer, and I loved his quote of Galileo regarding the stone dragon. He sprinkles in some other respectable literary references also. He keeps the story moving along, and explains the witchcraft portions of the story line.I also had some philosophical moments when he entered deep discussion regarding the human soul. Overall I think the book has aged quite well, and I plan on looking at a few other Lieber books.
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Published in 1943, this doesn't read as dated as much as true to it's period, but with delicious hints of subversion here and there. The conceit of the story is that all women are witches--men just don't know it--and are constantly engaged in covert sorcerous warfare to protect or promote their men. And it has perhaps the perfect setting and point of view for this pre-Feminist Mystique horror tale. Norman Saylor, smug, self-satisfied Norman, professor of anthropology and sociology at Hempnell College, a thoroughgoing rationalist who congratulates himself on having this very modern rational wife--for a woman. Until he finds out that she's woven spells all about their home--benign spells of protection. But of course, Norman being a man of science and reason, all this superstitious nonsense must go. And when it does...And the subversive part? Well, Fritz Leiber really can write. I remember this particular novel vividly several years after first read. And just as a good yarn, a nifty Halloween read it delivers, but it has an almost Stepford Wives allegory about what lurks between the supposedly normal surface, even of academia. And it ends on just the perfect note that completely reverses that note of complacence hit in the beginning.
1 person found this helpful