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Loading... The House Next Doorby Anne Rivers Siddons
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. More disturbing than scary, the story of Colquit and Walter will stay with me for a while. Siddons writing is similiar to Kings in the way that she leaves much to your imagination.  lowriderwitch | Jul 30, 2009 |  Colquitt and her husband, Walter, are disappointed when the wooded lot next to them is sold. They have enjoyed the privacy it provided. But as the remarkable house starts to rise, they are charmed by the original design and the architect who designed it. But as the house comes closer to completion, disturbing events start to happen there. After, three occupancies of increasingly violent outcomes, Colquitt and Walter decide that something must be done about the force in the house that feeds on the people in and around it. I had no idea that Anne Rivers Siddons had written a supernatural story. This one is very good with her excellent writing. She has a way of drawing the reader in and her understanding of southern culture makes her stories all that more rich.This is not a super scary book. I would describe it more as supenseful. Remember that it was originally published in the 70's but the characterizations still ring true to me. (  ) TheLibraryhag | Mar 6, 2009 | Haunted new house - intriguing, but disappointed with final outcome. (  ) brsquilt | Aug 31, 2008 | A good book for a fast read. It left me a little creeped out about inadament things, for example houses. If you like a ghost story this may be a good twist on the traditional stories you have read. I understand why it's in King's Horror Library. (  ) beckylynn | Jul 5, 2008 | This is another book Stephen King has recommended to his readers and I'm so glad I managed to track it down. It's a haunted house story with a twist in that the house is a new build rather than a spooky old one and there is no one ghost doing the haunting. The ending is inevitable but no less creepy for that and Anne Rivers Siddons leaves the worst to your imagination. Having read some of the other reviews for this book I have to agree that Colquitt and Walter do seem to live in a world that doesn't exist anymore and they and their friends do seem to have led sheltered and charmed lives. I think though that this is a device the author uses to fully exploit the unfolding horror. These people have good jobs and nice homes, healthy families and expectations for the future. They have the opinions and attitudes of the reasonably wealthy middle class in the seventies but what they don't know is that they also have everything to lose. This is why the events in the house are so horrific, so catastrophic and so shocking. Alone, each event would be upsetting or awful but put together they are a disaster, exploding the lives of everyone on the street. And to really show that properly the author had to first show how safe and secure and priviledged these people were. I think this works really well and this book is one of the best horror books I have read. I agree with one of the other reviewers, it is a shame the author didn't write more of this style. (  )1  Jodyreadseverything | Jan 9, 2008 |  no reviews | add a review
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Stephen King was so impressed by The House Next Door that when he wrote Danse Macabre, his personal tour of the horror genre, he sought out Siddons for an interview. She told him, "The haunted house has always spoken specially and directly to me as the emblem of particular horror. Maybe it's because, to a woman, her house is so much more than that: it is kingdom, responsibility, comfort, total world to her.... It is an extension of ourselves; it tolls in answer to one of the most basic chords mankind will ever hear.... So basic is it that the desecration of it, the corruption, as it were, by something alien takes on a peculiar and bone-deep horror and disgust."
Siddons was also fascinated by how the supernatural has the power to disturb the complacent rich and their comfortable little world: "What has the unspeakable and the unbelievable got to do with second homes and tax shelters and private schools for the kids and a pâté in every terrine and a BMW in every garage? Primitive man might howl before his returning dead and point; his neighbor would see, and howl along with him.... The resident of Fox Run Chase who meets a ghoulie out by the hot tub is going to be frozen dead in his or her Nikes on the tennis courts the next day if he or she persists in gabbling about it. And there he is, alone with the horror and ostracized on all sides. It's a double turn of the screw."
One caveat: some people find the ending a false note that mars the effect. Even so, The House Next Door is an exquisite horror novel. --Fiona Webster
(retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:18 -0400)
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