Five of five Goodreads stars.
I know that other reviewers have already done this, but I’m going to do it anyway. So, there.
“Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.”
Decades before Stephen King began and ended his Dark Tower epic, Shirly Jackson both began and ended her epic horror story with the same words.
I seriously thought I had read this book before. Goodness knows I’ve known about it. But I can’t find it anywhere on my reading list, which extends back to the Spring of 1974, and I honestly did not remember any of the story, so this is my first time to read this classic example of the all-familiar haunted house genre.
The premise of the story is that John Montague, a doctor of philosophy, plans a “scientific” experiment on the psychic phenomenon of house haunting. He purposes to spend some nights in this house, Hill House, of which he has heard about. He enlists the help of several younger people, one of whom is a distant relative of the last owners of the house, because they insisted on having someone connected with the family be present. This person would be Luke Sanderson.
The other two are Eleanor Vance, known as Nell or Nellie, and another young lady who is only known as Theodora, or Theo. We are not provided with a last name.
The only other characters are the long-time caretakers of the property, known only as Mr. and Mrs. Dudley. Oh, oops. And Mrs. Montague, who shows up toward the end, along with a friend known as Arthur, who is a teacher/headmaster with whom she is acquainted. I suspect there might be some romantic involvement, there, but we are never explicitly told that.
Ms. Jackson’s writing is gripping and engaging, at least for me. The “horror” in this story is not constant. In fact, out of the 235 pages in this edition, a small percentage of them could even be called “scary.” But that small percentage is oh, so very frightening. The majority of the rest of the story consists of interactions and conversations among the small group of people.
Some of this interaction and conversation is humorous, some sarcastic. Much of it seems like coping strategies to keep from going completely bonkers during their stay at the house.
The thing that really makes this story effective is that we are never given any kind of explanation about what, exactly, is haunting this house. Or if it is truly “haunted,” as opposed to simply being outright evil.
In other words, was the house haunted by ghosts, or was the house simply an evil entity in its own right?
I, personally, am leaning toward the latter of the two.
And, it seems, the house wants Eleanor. Why? Jolly good question, that. And maybe what this book is all really about is the fact that Eleanor feels guilt over her mother’s death.
Ms. Jackson’s descriptions are so good. That is another thing that really makes this book come alive. Here is the description of Eleanor’s first sighting of the house: “The house was vile. She shivered and thought, the words coming freely into her mind. Hill House is vile, it is diseased; get away from here at once.” But of course, she did not do so.
Almost immediately, at the beginning of the next chapter, we get this: “This house, which seemed somehow to have formed itself, flying together into its own powerful pattern under the hands of its builders, fitting itself into its own construction of lines and angels, reared its great head back against the sky without concession to humanity. It was a house without kindness, never meant to be lived in, not a fit place for people or for love or for hope. Exorcism cannot alter the countenance of a house; Hill House would stay as it was until it was destroyed.”
I may be sleeping with the lights on, tonight.
The edition that I read included two introductions. One by director Guillermo del Toro, added in 2013, and another by Laura Miller, from 2006. Del Toro’s intro seems to be an intro designed for several editions of these Penguin Horror classics, and I got some good fuel for my To Be Read list.
I want to give a very brief comparison to Netflix’s series of the same name. It is vaguely based on the book. There are characters with the same names. However, the story is drastically changed. In the Netflix series, two different actors play Hugh Crain, who was in the book, but was the original owner/builder of the house, who had only two daughters. Nell, Theo, and Luke were all presented by the Netflix series as children of Hugh Crain, along with Steven and Shirley, who are not characters in the book.
Nell/Eleanor’s name did not became Vance in the series until she married a sleep tech named, oddly enough, Arthur. Mr. and Mrs. Dudley are both in the series, as caretakers of the house. The Netflix series seems to be more about family drama than it is about house haunting, although the haunting of the house seems to be the cause of much of the drama. I have not, at this point, however, completed the series, so I have yet to see where it winds up. The outcome of the Nell/Eleanor character is remotely similar, however, and that is all I will say about that, as I try not to include spoilers in my reviews.
I will be on the lookout for an opportunity to see the 1963 film, The Haunting, as it seems to be regarded as the best film adaptation of this book.
I consider it quite appropriate that I finished this book on Halloween.
TTFN, y’all!
The Constant Reader 