William Hope Hodgson (1877–1918)

I can see why this was taken up by the psychotropic vanguards/bores but don't let that put you off. This is a borderland experience that dismisses any self-conscious aggrandising notions of bursting though those doors of perception. Indeed, any doors are, as someone else said about this, representations in allegiance with Platonic Form.

The plot bookends the central bulk of the narrative; a manuscript relayed through a mystery editor. The manuscript is found by two Victorian guys on a fishing show more trip, in the ruins of a house that are placed on a craggy outcrop, overseeing an abyss. One reads the manuscript to the other. Then the transreal fun begins.

Things happen, many of them spooky and beholden to classic horror, some swine flavoured and raging with terror and absurdity, but mostly the preternaturally cosmological drifting of the senses which is a pleasure to fathom and glide alongside. For those willing to invest their space and time in a ride through pure imagery as the outpourings of a recluse's soul, this is it. The vistas on offer, if you wish to surrender, transcend the surreal, pulling this away from its horror roots and into the realm of slipstream fiction.

This is the first book in a long time that I've wanted to turn back to Chapter One and start all over again as soon as I'd finished.

Grand. show less

*very slight spoilers ahead*

If Edgar Allan Poe and George Romero had a child in whom they were both slightly disappointed because he had fallen in with Stanley Kubrick and lots of psychedelic substances, it would be this book. A fever dream populated with possibly time-travelling pig men, a house that seems to be a portal through time and space, and the sad death of not one but TWO dogs. Weird in a definitely not good way. So yeah, that's a big NOPE from me.

This is the most problematic and the most "flawed" (if you wish) of Hodgson's novels, and yet there are things about it ... the imaginative sweep of the main set up/setting/idea ... it's hard for me to talk about this book in an objective way, because it changed my life. As I read it, I felt Hodgson reaching out and touching things that had haunted me (without my being to name them) and naming them in a way that had unbelievable power.

Yes, it's told in a weird pastiche of 18th century (or show more thereabouts) English. Yes, the book almost excruciatingly goes over the same ground (backwards) in the second half. Yes, the picture of sexual relationships is troubling to say the least. But that backdrop ... that world ...

There are works of imagination that force me to wonder of the author "what happened to you? what did you see? where have you been?" and this is surely one of them. show less

The House on the Borderland is a strange tale about an abandoned house somewhere in rural Ireland, told in flashback via an abandoned journal. The occupant of the house encounters strange visitations from savage creatures, experiences accelerated time and undertakes (psychic?) voyages to other realms and distant planets. Hodgson appears minimal on explanation but his scene-setting and imagery is powerful. There is an impressive sense of place, but as for plot? Denouement? Answers? Questions, show more even? The protagonist is horrified by the attacks he suffers and the things he sees, but the creeping horrors that keep occurring have no apparent origin and the protagonist never seeks an explanation for these events. The story never gets to the bottom of them (or, indeed, shows any sign of wanting to get to the bottom of them).

If nothing else, The House on the Borderland has acquired an iconic reputation as the stylistic progenitor of a lot of fantasy and horror writing. I found the imagery striking. show less