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darkelf105Clare bought me a copy of Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House for my birthday. I asked her for it because I remember it scaring the bejeebus out of me in eighth grade and was curious to see if it held up over the years.
It has. I am twitchy and very, very glad Clare-bear is coming over because it's going to storm and I don't know how to deal with that* other than re-watching Soul Eater and trying not to jump. Not that my apartment is sinister...but the genius of Hill House is that you are TOLD the house is evil...and things happen that are scary and horrible, but you actually don't KNOW how the house is wrong. All the characters say it is wrong. The house itself is treated like a character. There are details that make the reader think that the house is wrong, but then there are scenes from Eleanor's perspective that are so cozy that you begin to doubt the wrongness of the house...but then, the key to the whole story, and the success of the psychological horror of the story, is all tangled up with the jarring wrongness of poor Eleanor's point of view. It really is a great book and a very, very good psychological ghost story.
The nice thing about reading The Haunting of Hill House now that I'm older is I can appreciate all of the shit Jackson is doing. She is a very, very impressive writer and now I want to go to Borders and buy everything by her.
*last week I managed to speak like Excalibur for a full forty minutes before someone threatened to kill me. I think I will try Crona next.
It has. I am twitchy and very, very glad Clare-bear is coming over because it's going to storm and I don't know how to deal with that* other than re-watching Soul Eater and trying not to jump. Not that my apartment is sinister...but the genius of Hill House is that you are TOLD the house is evil...and things happen that are scary and horrible, but you actually don't KNOW how the house is wrong. All the characters say it is wrong. The house itself is treated like a character. There are details that make the reader think that the house is wrong, but then there are scenes from Eleanor's perspective that are so cozy that you begin to doubt the wrongness of the house...but then, the key to the whole story, and the success of the psychological horror of the story, is all tangled up with the jarring wrongness of poor Eleanor's point of view. It really is a great book and a very, very good psychological ghost story.
The nice thing about reading The Haunting of Hill House now that I'm older is I can appreciate all of the shit Jackson is doing. She is a very, very impressive writer and now I want to go to Borders and buy everything by her.
*last week I managed to speak like Excalibur for a full forty minutes before someone threatened to kill me. I think I will try Crona next.