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Loading... The Haunting of Hill House (original 1959; edition 2010)by Shirley Jackson, Bernadette Dunne (Narrator)
Work InformationThe Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson (1959)
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I've had this book forever and have heard multiple people brag about how great it is. It's a "classic" as far as I know. I'm not really into horror, but my wife is and we were looking for something we could finish before the end of the year (like to start the year with a new book). I'm not sure what the hell this is supposed to be? I guess it's a comedy? But if so, why have a scary cover with blurbs like "Makes your blood chill and your scalp prickle..." ? There were exactly 2 possibly scary parts that were also interspersed with comedy. It's a couple comedic characters, and about half of it is witty dialogue (the only thing that kept it from getting a 2nd star), that is often funny, then the other half is surreal ranting of a character who must be insane as far as I can tell, because much of it is indecipherable. At the end there is no resolution. Started skipping pages to get through it and almost gave up a couple times. Pure psychological horror from an absolute master. Shirley Jackson does not provide the reader with easy and comfortable answers to what happens in this novel which is partly why it such an effective story. Was Eleanor driven mad by Hill House or was she mentally ill? Is Hill House truly haunted or does fear cause group hallucinations? Does Hill House feed on those who are already disturbed? SO. MANY. QUESTIONS. This is a classic haunted house story published in 1959, where the house itself is really the main character, and the plot driven by the effect it has on its visitors, especially on young Eleanor Vance, with ultimately tragic consequences - in the words of Dr Montague "the menace of the supernatural is that it attacks where modern minds are weakest, where we have abandoned our protective armor of superstition and have no substitute defense." The story is very atmospheric and claustrophobic, and highly effective in its genre. What marred it slightly for me was some of the bizarre dialogue between the characters, even before the hauntings really took effect. A shocking ending. This is mostly me just thinking through how what I felt the book was saying rather than a quality review, I found it really interesting what I think was going on I was definitely surprised by this book in that for some reason I was expecting more obvious horror, with some sort of explosive horror conclusion. It's not quite like that. And then the second half is devoted to destroying her along with our perception of her as a capable human being (turning her into the subordinate character her sister and brother in law wanted her to be) and also the concept of the haunted house novel in the first place. Eleanor has a strangely negative reaction to Theodora painting her toenails and afterwards describes wanting to kill her for a very vague perceived slight. She regularly misses important parts of conversations that we as the reader can only guess at. She hears bizarrely hostile commentary on her from others, some of which is clearly not "real" by context although some is and appears to be a reaction to some private understanding of her behaviour (that we as the reader aren't privy to either, including us in her exclusion). There's a scene where something has written "Eleanor come home" in chalk across the hall where suddenly the other characters accuse her of faking it and wanting to be the centre of attention instead of them taking it as a sign of ghostly activity that they're looking for (again by context Eleanor's experience of events seems confused, but we don't have another account!) Despite everyone coming to the house to find ghosts, they suddenly seem uninterested or disbelieving in the person who the experiences seem centred around and become less friendly with her. The haunted house aspect is exploded with the arrival of the comedic Mrs Montague. From a serious "scientific" documentation of experiences and phenomena by Mr Montague, ghost hunting gets turned into a big joke as she insists the home has somehow got a walled up nun and a ghostly monk. A story that has so far avoided the most cliche of ghost concepts suddenly introduces them and attaches them to the house. And then Mrs Montague brings out "the planchette" and "talks" with the house... Which again brings up the same "come home Eleanor" message. And having this come from a comedic character whose approach to ghost hunting is ludicrous undermines the seriousness of what we're led to understand is a very real supernatural experience. And yet at the same time even she refuses to connect this to Eleanor itself. Eleanor's experiences, even when everyone can see them, can't be taken seriously or even acknowledged as comedy. She is apart from friends and the real parts of society even when she's crying out. By the end the "eleanor come home" message is explicitly connected to her mother and her anxiety that maybe she somehow deliberately killed her by not waking up when she needed her medicine. Eleanor says she wants to go home with Theodora who dismisses her as a "stray cat" and totally refuses. At which point Eleanor says she made up having an apartment and that she sleeps in a cot at her sister's. And then by the end Eleanor is basically saying Hill House is her home... And she's forced from it. There's a section where she appears to hear everything within the house and listens in on conversations but nobody mentions her. Several conversations seem to have forgotten she existed. And then in the climax in the night she climbs the stairs in the tower and again a scene unfolds which appears to be missing details but they're angry with her for unclear reasons (believing she'd kill herself, possibly) and again seemingly uninterested in the paranormal aspect. And they forceably send her home despite her protests. Where "home' is her sister's. Throughout the book Eleanor develops a sense of home for the house because it's the first place she's been able to be free. And then at the end it's taken away. And so she drives her car into a tree in the hope, seemingly, someone will care to intervene. In the desperate last attempt to find home she goes to the grave with her mother, where society was desperate to place her. And then in a shaggy dog story type ending coda we find that the paper the doctor wrote about the paranormal experiences there was basically ignored. I've read a few Shirley Jackson short stories with a similar sort of conceit, where she really really digs into the lives of vulnerable people and ruins them in every way in absurd circumstances where even the most basic aspects of reality get denied against them. The whole book feels like that, an evisceration of the concept that someone like Eleanor, a woman with a tough history who never got the chance to be herself, could ever really get to appear in a ghost story, that even when the ghost is happening because of her nobody would care and her existence in the story is wrong. It's such an intense and cruel and deeply clever style of story. Belongs to Publisher SeriesIs contained inHas the adaptationIs abridged inInspiredHas as a student's study guideAwardsNotable Lists
Fiction.
Horror.
HTML: The Haunting Four seekers have come to the ugly, abandoned old mansion: Dr. Montague, an occult scholar looking for solid evidence of the psychic phenomenon called haunting; Theodara, his lovely and lighthearted assistant; Eleanor, the lonely, homeless girl well acquainted with poltergeists; and Luke, the adventurous future heir of Hill House. At first, their stay seems destined to be merely a spooky encounter with inexplicable noises and self-closing doors, but Hill House is gathering its powers and will soon choose one of them to make its own. .No library descriptions found.
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.54Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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The story moves at a fast pace rich in dialog and attention to detail. Interesting eccentric characters, which I found all likable.
A bit of Gothic-psychological-suspense and paranormal undertones, I was hooked from the first page. Overall I really enjoyed The Haunting of Hill house. I highly recommend to all. ( )