The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
Release: Original 1959, November 28th 2006 by Penguin Classics
Format: Ebook
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Source: Amazon
The Haunting of Hill House Synopsis:
The greatest haunted house story ever written, the inspiration for a 10-part Netflix series directed by Mike Flanagan and starring Michiel Huisman, Carla Gugino, and Timothy Hutton
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.
Review:
Watch my video review of The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson!
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_yArbWnfPQ[/embedyt]
Basically, I had mixed reactions upon reading this book. There are some aspects which I thoroughly enjoyed and some aspects which I really found annoying. Firstly, I loved that this book focuses does not rely on any gore or blood splatter, and the author makes the story very atmospheric and spooky just on the presence of the unknown. Another thing that I liked about this story was that it focused more on the imbalance of the human psyche rather than the supernatural.
But there are a few reasons why I disliked this book. Although I found the characters to be distinctive and unique, none of them were very likable. There is also a lot of sarcastic humor in the dialogue that is exchanged between the four characters after they encounter something supernatural. Moreover, considering that this was written in 1959, I can imagine how terrifying this tale would have been to readers at that time. I did enjoy reading this book in terms of a classic horror literature and overall I would give it a rating of 3.5 out of 5 stars.
