The Haunting Of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

 

Rating 4⭐ 

206 pages

You can buy The Haunting Of Hill House...here

• The Blurb...

First published in 1959, Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House has been hailed as a perfect work of unnerving terror. It is the story of four seekers who arrive at a notoriously unfriendly pile called Hill House: Dr. Montague, an occult scholar looking for solid evidence of a 'haunting'; Theodora, his lighthearted assistant; Eleanor, a friendless, fragile young woman well acquainted with poltergeists; and Luke, the future heir of Hill House. At first, their stay seems destined to be merely a spooky encounter with inexplicable phenomena. But Hill House is gathering its powers - and soon it will choose one of them to make its own.

• Our Review...

THOHH is considered to be one of the cornerstones or horror writing and you can see why. Seen through the eyes of Eleanor a young, vulnerable, innocent soul. The story shows how such a naïve, blank canvas of a person can be targeted by more powerful and dark influences. If this scenario is true with people in life, perhaps it can be true with otherwordly spirits interacting with the human world.

While reading this novel you may think to yourself that the tropes here are well worn and have become a bit of a cliché. That may be true but this is the tale that began a lot of the tropes as this was written in the 1950s, way before the Overlook hotel drove Jack Torrence bonkers in The Shining. As the novel was written in the 50s some of the interaction between the characters, especially Eleanor and Theodora, must seem a little dated to our ears.

The four guests settle in to the house and initially Eleanor and Theodora hit it ,off right away becoming firm friends. I have seen other reviews suggest there is an air of lesbian romance between the two. Personally I didn't pick that up but I'm a grumpy old man so not my area really. As the house sets its sights on Eleanor their friendship unravels under the intensity.

Despite being given the history of the house we are never quite sure whether the house is haunted by dead spirits or if the house itself is an evil entity. Eleanor herself drawn to the only place she has felt wanted. At the shocking conclusion we are left wondering whether the things that occur are the result of paranormal activity or mental illness. Or in the thin line between the two, could paranormal activity induce mental illness. Indeed which is more terrifying is a question the reader will inadvertently ask themselves subconsciously. It will certainly make you think.   

• Selected Quotes...

the gate was so clearly locked—locked and double-locked and chained and barred; who, she wondered, wants so badly to get in?—she made no attempt to get out of her car, but pressed the horn, and the trees and the gate shuddered and withdrew slightly from the sound.

I am like a small creature swallowed whole by a monster, she thought, and the monster feels my tiny little movements inside.

She watched them, seeing their apprehensive faces, wondering at the uneasiness which lay so close below the surface in all of them, so that each of them seemed always waiting for a cry for help from one of the others; intelligence and understanding are really no protection at all,

‘Nothing in this house moves,’ Eleanor said, ‘until you look away, and then you just catch something from the corner of your eye.

• If You Liked This Then You May Like...

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The Turn Of The Screw by Henry James

The Shining by Steven King

• About The Author

Shirley Jackson was an influential American author. A popular writer in her time, her work has received increasing attention from literary critics in recent years. She has influenced such writers as Stephen King, Nigel Kneale, and Richard Matheson.

She is best known for her dystopian short story, "The Lottery" (1948), which suggests there is a deeply unsettling underside to bucolic, smalltown America. In her critical biography of Shirley Jackson, Lenemaja Friedman notes that when Shirley Jackson's story "The Lottery" was published in the June 28, 1948, issue of The New Yorker, it received a response that "no New Yorker story had ever received." Hundreds of letters poured in that were characterized by, as Jackson put it, "bewilderment, speculation and old-fashioned abuse."

Jackson's husband, the literary critic Stanley Edgar Hyman, wrote in his preface to a posthumous anthology of her work that "she consistently refused to be interviewed, to explain or promote her work in any fashion, or to take public stands and be the pundit of the Sunday supplements. She believed that her books would speak for her clearly enough over the years." Hyman insisted the darker aspects of Jackson's works were not, as some critics claimed, the product of "personal, even neurotic, fantasies", but that Jackson intended, as "a sensitive and faithful anatomy of our times, fitting symbols for our distressing world of the concentration camp and the Bomb", to mirror humanity's Cold War-era fears. Jackson may even have taken pleasure in the subversive impact of her work, as revealed by Hyman's statement that she "was always proud that the Union of South Africa banned The Lottery', and she felt that they at least understood the story".

In 1965, Jackson died of heart failure in her sleep, at her home in North Bennington Vermont, at the age of 48.