Suburban witching not easy, even with Moloney’s help

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This article was published 11/06/2011 (5591 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Thirteen

By Susie Moloney

Random House, 330 pages, $30

 

Put out trays of dainties, book a salon appointment, watch the kids’ soccer tryouts, round up a stray dog for ritual sacrifice. Wait, what?

It’s not easy being a suburban witch.

Winnipegger Susie Moloney, who became a pop-horror star in 1997 with a seven-figure payday for her book A Dry Spell, crosses Stephen King with The Real Housewives of New Salem for an uneven but readable witches’ brew of supernatural terror, frenemy drama and social satire.

The 49-year-old Moloney, who currently lives part of the time in New York with her partner playwright Vern Thiessen, introduces us to the Haven Woods coven as it deals with the death of a senior member in a rather unfortunate fire.

Haven Woods is a suburb of an unspecified American city. The coven’s leader, the razor-willed Izzy, fights to keep their membership at 13. She tries to lure home Paula, a young single mother who left town to raise her now 12-year-old daughter, Rowan. Izzy has nasty plans for Rowan, too.

Moloney likes to put a contemporary spin on old horror themes. A Dry Spell, with its tale of a rainmaker and a destitute town, was a sexy update of a Depression-era genre, while her 2003 novel The Dwelling merged the traditional haunted house story with the modern vibe of real-estate paranoia.

There is some graphic gothic spectacle in The Thirteen — demon rapes and mysterious mutilations — but Moloney also deals with the commonplace time and money pressures of modern middle-class life. She describes, sometimes too briefly, frayed mother-daughter relationships and a sinister version of sisterhood.

Also intriguing but undeveloped is the satirical juxtaposition of the depths of satanic evil with the bland surfaces of a suburban subdivision. Keeping the numbers up in the coven is like finding “a fourth for bridge,” remarks Izzy at one point.

While the women have sold their souls to Satan, most of them still have the comfy, nurturing impulses of the average Better Homes and Gardens reader. Their spell-casting ensures that their husbands are steady breadwinners, their children are attractive and athletic, their community a refuge of well-mowed lawns and low crime rates.

In a funny feminist comment on women’s roles, ritual animal sacrifice becomes just another household chore: “Necessary — like dishes, tidying, laundry. All odious in their own way.”

Moloney brings a comical matter-of-factness to witchcraft. At times, the writing might be too straightforward for effective horror. The existence of the coven, along with its hideous inner workings, is established clearly and early, with none of the creeping suspense of witchy classics like Rosemary’s Baby.

And the strain of some of the plot points — the secret of Rowan’s paternity, Paula’s 13-year estrangement from her hometown, the odd rules of practical magic — seems more obvious in the bright light of suburbia.

Paula can be too much of a stock character — the plucky single mom — and her romance with Sanderson, a dreamboat guy who looks good in work clothes, sometimes feels predictable.

Izzy, on the other hand, is a deliciously wicked piece of work, a genuinely scary über-housewife whose years of controlled rage and frustration can come crackling out of her fingertips to murderous effect.

The Thirteen is not the author’s best, but it has a page-turning energy, with bursts of vivid writing and dark humour. Moloney continues to stretch the horror genre.

 

Winnipeg journalist Alison Gillmor isn’t a witch, but she has her moments.