2023 REREAD: Sure, after a while its slow pacing and nothing happening (much) become more apparent and at times grating, but I still could not get enough of 'The Haunting of Hill House' and its writing. It is oddly delightful, weird, addictive, hypnotic, and subconsciously creepy and unsettling. The moments and characters that don't make sense and are inconsistent were surely done intentionally.
I think I have more of an understanding and appreciation of Shirley Jackson and her work than I did before.
'The Haunting of Hill House' isn't outwardly or obviously scary. It is the quiet, subtle, atmospheric, psychological, hinging-on-madness, human kind of ghost story.
Read my original review below for more of my thoughts.
Final Score: 4.5/5
Original Review:
How I love this small haunted house tale.
I can't say what thousands have already analysed and discussed about 'The Haunting of Hill House' and its themes and metaphors. I will say, however, that it is delightfully creepy and imaginative. I don't get scared by books often, and this one didn't frighten me or make me nervous about things going bump in the night, but I found it to be thrilling and creative storytelling.
It is very psychological, slow in pace, yet simple and effortless both in writing and in narrative structure. Shirley Jackson's writing is delicious, addictive, innovative, stimulating, fluid and flowing - the haunted house and ghost story can be read in at least two days.
I adore the characters and their banter and thoughts discussed in Hill House. There's the lonely and socially-awkward Eleanor Vance, the colourful, playful, funny and daring Theodora (a woman ahead of her time, to be sure), the jack-the-lad and future inheritor of Hill House, Luke Sanderson, and Doctor John Montague, who has brought these people to this old, supposedly evil, disjointed, and "wrong" house hidden on top of a hill, surrounded by trees, for a paranormal experiment. Mrs Dudley, the caretaker's wife, is stiff and creepy as heck too.
Eleanor. Oh wispy, capricious Eleanor. Yearning to belong somewhere and have a home to call her own, unconscionably craving attention, and friends she'll end up despising at a drop of a hat; she might become the most susceptible to Hill House's terrible power. Before she even sees the house, the reader knows her mind; that she is lonely, yet hateful towards anyone she doesn't fully agree with and connect to, and that she is prone to flights of fancy and wish-fulfilment imaginings.
By the house's morbid influence, or her own fragile, frail mind fighting for or against it, she might even become a part of the house itself.
Eleanor IS the house.
That is all I'll say.
Except that Eleanor and Theodora are totally in love with each other. It's barely subtext, and it creates an interesting dynamic between the two as they explore the house and its surroundings together. Hill House peels back the surface and forces the truth out of its inhabitants eventually.
Sexual awakening and freedom in isolation from repression and inhibitions in 1950s American society, especially for women - now there is a metaphor out of a myriad of interpretations to sink your teeth into.
'The Haunting of Hill House' is such a good story. The writing is lovely and clever, the characters are great and three-dimensional, and the set pieces are masterfully crafted. Nothing is forgotten about or wasted.
Ethereal, beautiful, eerie and tragic, this haunted house story, that delves deep into the troubled human psychosis, is a wonderful treat.
It's healthy to have flights of fancy and childlike ideas. But one can drink from the cup full of stars too deeply, for too long. Sinking into self-importance, and the dark void of madness where there are no longer any bright stars to be seen...
Now I just need to see the sixties' film adaptation.
Final Score: 5/5
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