The Sub: A Study in Witchcraft

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 hor

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.

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?

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.

Willowville Elementary School in Leech lake, Minnesota hires Diana Turney as a second grade teacher when the police arrested two of its staff for using satanic practices on students. At about the same time, she begins working at the school, a repressed memory of sexual molestation by her father surfaces. Angered by the recollection, Diana begins to show magic-like abilities to transform people into the animal that most matches their personality. Soon she converts humans into pigs, spiders, and cats, etc. Adding to Diana's revenge is an obsessive need to go to the location where Wes died. Shockingly, Wes still controls much of Diana's mind. Only a Native American convict has the ability to stop the glowingly malevolent Diana and that individual has more reasons to join her than oppose her. What King has done to Maine, Thomas M. Disch has done to central Minnesota. SUB: A STUDY IN WITCHCRAFT is a cleverly crafted satirical look at our morality and values. Diana is an interesting character, whose eccentric nature turns vengeful and evil. Subplots and mini "sermons" abound that brilliantly tie back to the story line due to the talent of Mr. Disch. The author knows how to dish out an ironic horror tale that hilariously performs a lobotomy on American ethics.Harriet Klausner