The Uninvited

An old-fashioned ghost story originally published in 1942, The Uninvited for me was not particularly scary, but rather strangely charming. It was quite talky--no surprise that the narrator is a playwright--and I could easily imagine the spirited, oh-so-British young people at the center of the story. The setting of an abandoned house on a cliff overlooking the sea with its maze of rooms and windswept garden comes alive wonderfully through Macardle's prose. I have not seen the movie, but it's obvious how well this book would translate to film.

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The narrator is a young but upper-class Irishman living in London, who decides to move to Cornwall with his sister after a relationship break-up; they buy an empty house from the nearby retired military chap and his cute if troubled grand-daughter. The house turns out not to be quite as empty as they had been led to believe...

It's a ghost story, but a ghost story with a couple of interesting wrinkles. The book casually treats ghosts as a scientifically proven phenomenon operating according to implicitly well-understood laws, with the Irish protagonists (and a Dublin lawyer who is dragged in to help near the end) naturally better equipped to deal with the problem of the haunted house than their show more English neighbours on the coast of Cornwall. This makes it all a bit less scary - though the moments of terror are still well conveyed - but also more comprehensible. There is a jolly good twist at the end, which I should have seen coming but didn't, linking to interesting issues of sex and gender. I'm not surprised that it made a decent film, and am a bit surprised that I hadn't heard of it before. show less

The Uninvited by Dorothy Macardle is a classic haunted house story that was originally published in 1942 and was adapted to film in 1944. Looking to escape the stress and demands of life in London, brother and sister, Roderick and Pamela Fitzgerald, find the perfect house on the Devon coast. The house had been empty for some time and the price was right so they snapped it up not knowing that they were soon to be plagued by paranormal events.

The house was the site of the deaths of two women fifteen years ago. A young wife and mother, Mary, and her artist husband’s model and mistress, Carmel. Events surrounding the deaths of these women are murky but it appears that neither one actually died a natural death. Mary’s young daughter, show more Stella, still lives nearby and is happy and excited to be able to visit the house she was born in. Unfortunately, Stella seems to be the trigger for the apparitions, with one wanting to guard her while the other seems intent on driving Stella to her death.

The Uninvited is one of my favourite ghostly movies and I wasn’t disappointed with the book either. All the classic events of a haunting, from extreme coldness, sounds of sobbing in the night, particular rooms where no one dares to spend much time, and visual sightings that root one to the spot are all scattered throughout the book. The story has a timeless quality and, at first, the disturbances are subtle and easy to dismiss, but as the book goes on, the atmosphere gets darker and darker and extreme danger comes to the forefront. If you enjoy a good but not over-done ghost story that is well written and solidly plotted, I recommend giving The Uninvited a try. show less

This is a wonderful timeless story by Dorothy Macardle. Published as "Uneasy Freehold" in the early 1940's, it was renamed for the classic film it spawned in 1943 starring Ray Milland and the ethereal Gail Russell. I've owned a hardback copy of this fabulous book for decades and try to read it at least once every couple of years. There is a light and breezy feel to this narrative which makes it the perfect summer read if you are tired of the run-of-the-mill.

Roderick and his sister Pamela leave the hustle and bustle of modern London looking for that perfect house on the English coast. What they find is the beautiful Cliff End overlooking the sea. From their first meeting with the sweet and lovely young Stella Meredith, whose grandfather show more owns the house, we know there is a larger mystery here. This is a good novel that slowly unfolds as we learn of Stella's mother Mary, and the beautiful Spanish girl, Carmel, who was seduced by Stella's father.

There are more questions than answers for the brother and sister the longer they remain at Cliff End. Who is the apparition at the top of the stairway and why does a sickening cold always precede its appearance? Why are there moans of anguish coming from the room that used to be the nursery? What is the real mystery surrounding Mary's death? What about that Mimosa scent that coincides with the moaning? And why do things get more stirred up every time young Stella is there? Roderick has fallen for the sweet Stella just as the reader has and both must discover the answers.

What makes this such an excellent read is that it treats this as a straightforward story of ordinary people thrown into extraordinary circumstances. It unfolds slowly as Roderick and Pamela attempt to solve this maddening riddle to an otherwise wonderful house they don't want to leave. Both the mystery and ghost story are presented in an entertaining day-to-day chronicle of life in the English countryside. Ever so gradually, the growing romance between Roderick and Stella inches its way to the center at the same time the danger to young Stella heightens.

It's fantastic that this long-out-of-print classic is now available on Kindle. The forward in the Kindle version contains a wealth of information about Macardle, her work and life. It's several pages in the Kindle and is well worth reading. The Uninvited inspired the finest film of its kind ever made, starring Ray Milland and the lovely Gail Russell. You don't want to miss either the book or the film, and now that Macardle's fine novel is back in print, you don't have to. show less

A brother and sister weary of the London scene buy an outwardly charming fixer-upper on the Devonshire coast, only to find that they have paranormal tenants. They elect to stick it out and figure out why they're haunted. Well before the end of the book, I figured out what the "issue" was that caused the haunting, but it still made for an enjoyable, creepy read. The author's voice was remarkable: lush prose full of British-isms. I got up and made myself a cuppa Darjeeling tea at one point. Had to do it. There's no gore in this book, just oodles of atmosphere. What I found most satisfying was that the brother and sister approached the haunting like a pair of sleuths solving a mystery, so they were active instead of passive. I had to show more obtain the book via ILL because it's now out of print. What a pity. show less

I might have enjoyed this novel more if I hadn't previously read something that gave away the specific nature of this particular haunting. That could very well be what made the characters seem to me to be really slow on the uptake. But even without the spoiler I would've been annoyed by the dated if not downright pseudo psychology bandied about, and by all the time the narrator spends ignoring his haunted house in order to go on and on in a terribly precious way about his arty/intellectual vocation and friends. Still, I feel like it deserves 3 stars, so I must've liked the book more than I didn't like it.

would probably be different today but not much. I'd say there would be more or less supernatural elements to the story and the end was a little flat, I didn't really feal a real relationship build, but overall this stands up well against the test of time. Siblings Roderick and Pamela Fitzgerald leave London for the Devon Coastline and fall in love with Cliff End, a house with a disturbed history, the unravelling of that history brings them face to face with ghosts, and the aftermath of things that people did that left echoes.

Originally published in 1942 this is more psychological than paranormal and the troubles are believable. It's an interesting look at how some people create their own ghosts and troubles by trying to make things fit show more into their own moulds.

Worth a read. show less