Published: 28. November . 2014 ( First published in 1959)
Genre: Mystery | Horror
Pages: 208
Publisher: Penguin Classics
What is it about?
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, the 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
This is going to be an unpopular opinion but I did not enjoy this book as much as I thought I will. I am highly disappointed. To be fair, I was expecting this to be my new favorite, since I really loved We have always Lived in the Castle and The Lottery by the same author. Since, everybody always suggested this book by the author, this really had me hyping the book too much.
Somehow, I felt this book wasn’t for me at all. It is a slow burner supposedly horror –mystery novel. Not everything in the book sucked though.
I liked the theme of analyzing the “haunted” element of the house. I also liked how it implies on how your mind can drive you crazy in such situations. It wasn’t spooky or did not have that “scientific approach” that delivered the message clearly.
This is supposed to be a classic , so I might most definitely be missing the whole point here. :p
I managed to not DNF this book for the sole reason of it being an Audio book.
If I was you, I’d rather watch the series on Netflix. 😛 I probably might only recommend to read this book if you only speak English and are stuck in a library full of foreign languages and there is just one shelf of English books in the whole library, and you really need to kill time.
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