Is turning into an obsessive git'erdone read. As this old NYT review said:
"What begins as a story of domestic upheaval and run-of-the-mill violence soon morphs into something much stranger, eventually encompassing witchcraft, shamanism and incest. The unquiet soul of Diana's dead father haunts the Turney homestead, and his malignant presence prompts Diana to realize she's a witch with the power to transform people into the animals that best suit their personalities. Her father's vengeful spirit promises her she'll kill everyone she ever loved, a threat Diana brushes off. Soon, though, she's off on a spree of mayhem and violence that seems destined to fulfill her dead father's prophecy, but not before she uses her Circe-like powers to turn a number of locals into pigs."
The reviewer thought it was all too much, but the humor is at the right pitch and it helps if you've lived in Minnesota or the Northland. We read about this sort of cabin fever family saga mayhem in the Strib every day...
This quote from a Guardian (UK) obituary makes me think of the Queer Art of Failure, the Judith Halberstam book I am also reading:
Disch's novel Camp Concentration... "won some plaudits but no honours from the science-fiction community, which from the first could not tolerate Disch's corrosive disdain for the technocentric uplift typical of "normal" science fiction, and for anything that seemed to him to pander to the immaturity of most genre fiction." Except for that last part - Halberstam's book is intersting in part because it takes children's animated films quite (but not too) seriously. Spongebob!
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