Customer Reviews

The Sub A Study in Witchcraft

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Tom Disch is an incredibly accomplished writer in numerous genres: science fiction, horror, short story, poetry, children's, essays, etc. Not only is his work page-turning entertainment, his style never fails. He throws off sentences like virtuoso jazz riffs. The Sub relates the story of a teacher in her 30's discovering her gift for witchcraft, venting her evil and that of her father's ghost by transforming family and acquaintances into beasts. This is being marketed as horror, and it may disappoint some conventional horror readers, as some other reviews suggest, because it differs in tone from more conventional fare. Disch is a comic writer, in the best cruel and distant tradition, with a deep knowledge of both classical mythology and Christianity. All of his fiction is both ironic and moral at the same time. If you like The Sub, check out The Businessman and On Wings of Song.

Some previous reviewers seem to be missing the point when they call Disch a misogynist. Yes, he pokes fun at certain feminist and New Age shibboleths, but please note that he also targets religious fundamentalism as well, and the slimiest character in the book is not Diana but the incestuous reverend.

In any event, the novel is satire, which explains its sharp edge and unflinching eye. This is not Disch's best work, but it's mighty entertaining, funny, and, yes, frightening (the scene where Diana transforms her potential lover into a stag is particularly adept and scary).

Disch remains a consistently interesting writer worthy of much wider attention.

This is one of Disch's horror novels and - although stand-alone - is a companion novel to The MD, The Businessman and The Priest (the last of which I have not read). As with his other horror novels, Disch breaks away from normal conventions; no one would confuse his work with Stephen King in either content or tone.

This story follows the descent into evil of a woman as she becomes infected with the malignant spirit of her father. With her change in character come new and nasty powers.

The main flaw with this story is its general air of unpleasantness. There are few appealing characters and the book often has the feel of a rural soap opera. Nonetheless, this is a well-written book and for horror fans, it is a nice change-of-pace story.

True to his form, Disch brings to the table another hideous horror treat of macabre events wrapped around freakish and unlikable characters. Disch has a true talent for disturbing situations and images, always leading his readers into unexpected places that are dark with shadows and cause us to shiver in frozen dread.

'The Sub' is about Diana Turney, a substitute teacher who returns to her family home at Leech Lake to watch after her sister Janet's family while Janet completes her prison sentence for shooting her husband Carl in the arm. Carl Kellog and Diana's niece Kelly do not get along, and Diana is reminded of her abusive father Wesley while staying at the family home, and the horrors that happened to her in the old smokehouse out back. Diana has always believed in witchcraft, and something about staying at her childhood home where her father lived and died brings out the powers inside her.

Alan Johnson, recently turned eighteen, son of Judy Johnson and grandson of the unbendable Reverend Martin Johnson, visits Jim Cottonwood in prison, where Jim has already served eighteen years for the crime of raping Judy. Alan desperately wants Jim to be his father, but Jim assures him he is innocent of the crime and convinces Alan to agree to new DNA testing to prove it. Not only does Alan discover that Jim is indeed innocent and wrongfully imprisoned, but that his real father is none other than his own grandfather, the Reverend.

Diana and Janet's mother, Margaret (Madge) Turney, lives in an old house she turned into an old folks home called Navaho House (intentionally misspelled). Madge makes her living by cashing her patient's Medicare checks and caring for them along with Louise Cottonwood, Jim Cottonwood's mother. It is at Navaho House that Diana meets Alan, and though she is more than twice his age the two fall in love...sort of.

In a strange scenario, Diana finds herself at the home of Tommy W., one of Carl's fellow associates as a prison guard from the New Ravensburg prison where Jim Cottonwood is incarcerated. Just before her consummation of a passionate tryst, discovers that her lust can transform men into their 'totems', or animal counterparts. While Tommy turns into a stag, Diana notices that most men are pigs. Literally. Diana lures Carl into a romantic position and turns him into a pig, keeping him in the sty that Alan recently built for her. Diana quickly decides she needs more pigs.

Diana's fledgling witchcraft meets it match when she runs across Merle Two-Moons, an Indian shaman, and though Diana is already married to Alan she brings Merle into their home. Merle has met Jim Cottonwood at the prison during his out-of-body experiences as a crow.

All of these lives mix and mingle together, entwining into a convoluted web of deceit, magic, lust, greed, incest, cannibalism, and what I like to call `ingenious stupidity'. Disch's tales are so rich, teeming with people that you get to know intimately enough to realize how horrible they are, and rife with some stunningly imaginative and gross situations. Truly, some of the best scenes come from Disch's twisted vision as he walks us through the lives of the transformed victims. Carl's wanderings as a pig, the Reverend's hateful intent as a spider, Judy's thoughts as a cat; each viewpoint is brilliantly written and so vivid you will feel it just as you would a bruise on your pale flesh.

One of the things I love about Disch is his ability to write of people and actions that spiral dangerously out of control. You will shudder with revulsion and laugh with delight at Janet's homecoming dinner.

The life Disch breathes into his characters, whether good or evil, will never leave your curiosity unfulfilled. Disch is also the master of the unpredicted ending, its never quite obvious who will be left around at the end of the story.

Don't forget to pick up copies of 'The Genocides', 'The M.D.', 'The Priest', and 'Camp Concentration', at least for starters. If you read one of Disch's books, you will soon be asking for a second helping. Enjoy!

At a time when most contemporary novelists reserve their "villain" slots for men--usually that stock character of the slobby, crude, wife-beating white man--Thomas M. Disch has
written a book that actually features a female antagonist. For this he gets slapped with the label "misogynist," a label which is just too narrow, as nearly every character in The Sub--male or female--is evil, misguided, moronic, or just plain pathetic. Witch, priest, or shaman, all are corrupt. That's supposed to be the point of "dark comedy," but unfortunately this story is not terribly funny, and it grows tiresome because there is not a single character worth pulling for--until near the end, if you can stick with it that long.

Diana, the novel's antagonist, is a substitute schoolteacher, molestation victim, and typically evil witch who, like Homer's Circe, can turn men into pigs. Unlike Circe, becoming evil makes her lose weight and look pretty. Is this the best Disch could do with the potential of a modernized version of this delicious, classic character? Diana's exploits are inexcuseably dull, and so are her victims. She could turn all of Minnesota into pigs, or not; there isn't much reason for the reader to care.

For Disch at his best, "The Businessman" is a much better read; the dark humor is there, and some of the characters are actually likable. (For those certain readers who demand that the bad guy always have an office job, white skin, and a penis, they'll get that too.)

This book was a grave disappointment. Mr. Disch is a great writer, full of good turns of phrase and well described settings, but the characters in this book were made of wood, the plot jumped around to no effect, and I spent the last 100 pages waiting for it to end.

On a more global level, the only explanation ever given for the main characters actions are that she was abused as a child, which perpetuates the harmful stereotype that the victem inevitably becomes the victemizer. It's also way too pat and explanation, and never gets fleshed out. The book kind of resembles a work by the Marquis deSade, a repetitious catalog of horrors without a real plot or characters. Unfortunately, it lacks the sex.

After The Businessman, The MD, and The Priest, I couldn't wait to read Disch's latest entry into his "supernatural Minnesota" series. Unfortunately, this book is not as enjoyable as the previous three. The usual dark humor and assorted characters are there, but things just don't gel like they do in his author books. Part of the quirky charm of Disch is how far his stories will go: major characters die bizarre deaths, coincidence is heaped upon coincidence, the supernatural tends to have a wry sense of humor. In this book though, there seems to be too much unexplained by the end. And the main character, the sub herself, is a rather unsympathetic character from the beginning. Even the Priest allowed one have some level of sympathy for the character, even though we were well aware that his crimes were an abomination, and he did deserve punishment. One doesn't feel that here. Indeed, we never get to the root of the tale exactly, and by the time we are done, there is still too much left in our minds. Disch often does this but again this time, it doesn't work. It's too bad, I came to this book with a high off of "The Priest" and could not wait to read his latest. Why two stars? Because Disch himself is so talented, and has such a wonderful way of writing that to only reward him one or no stars would ignore the fact that the man can write.

Those who have accused this book of mysoginy and/or chauvinism have entirely missed the point. And they have probably missed the under-title of the novel, that is "A Study in Witchcraft". Had they considered the place this novel occupies in Disch's tetralogy (which includes The Businessman, The M.D. and The Priest) probably they wouldn't have issued such a harsh (and superficial) judgement. This is too good a book to be sacrificed on the altar of Political Correctness (another name for good ol' Bigotry, somethink Disch had alread attacked in The Priest)! And I think it is very difficult to write something so clever, so breath-taking in such a classical form. Tom Disch did it. Congratulations!

And know that after reading with an open mind, you'll want to buy also the other volumes of the Minnesota tetralogy. A case of (literary) wizardry?

What a strange story--I guess that's what you expect from horror fantasy! Still it grabbed me and kept me interested from beginning to end. Disch is a good writer, creates interesting characters and has a funny and unusual take on life. He envisions witchcraft and shamanism in an entirely different way than I have read before!

In Native American belief everyone has an animal representaive on the totem pole that reflects their personality. Being a witch, Diana Turney can transform people into that animal. Using the powers that she draws from her deceased, sexually abusive father, Diana uses witchcraft to make her advisaries "disappear".

When her sister gets sent to jail, Diana moves in her childhood home as a temporary mother to her niece Kelly and maid for brother-in-law Carl. While manipulating the family so that she can get the deed to the home she becomes involved with the innocent Alan. The product of a rape which sent wrongly accused shaman Jim Cottonwood to prison, Alan falls in love with Diana and unknowingly helps and hinders her efforts to destroy her sister and family by turning them and others into pigs. Only Cottonwood in his supernatural state as a crow can help Alan before he is rendered to the deadly fate of the others.

When looking at the cover, with its Nazi-like writing in fire, a pig, and an underscore of "A Study In Witchcraft", I didn't know whether to expect a WWII submarine novel or a pig that has black magic abilities. I got neither. What I did get was a very unique, clever, and suspenseful read.