The Haunting of Hill House (Penguin Classics)
by Shirley Jackson
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Book Summary Information
Author: Shirley JacksonIntroduction: Laura Miller
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2006-11-28
ISBN: 0143039989
Number of pages: 208
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Product features:
- ISBN13: 9780143039983
- Condition: New
- Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!
Book Reviews of The Haunting of Hill House (Penguin Classics)
Book Review: Set the horror standard for me!
Summary: 5 Stars
I first read "The Haunting of Hill House" as a lonely, unpretty, extremely bookish 13-year-old girl, at that time a purchase from the Scholastic Book Club for Teens. The only way I can describe the book's effect on me is to say that it was enormously jolting, and that I have used it as the standard by which I judge the entire horror genre ever since. Needless to say, many, many other works fall far short. I reread "The Haunting" about every other summer, just to recall to myself how that first reading shocked and scared me, but moreover, to climb back inside Eleanor's head for a few hours and truly frighten myself with her enormous loneliness, her mind-bending self-alienation, and her disastrous sense that if she DID belong anywhere in her poor life, if she had any place to call home, or to call her own, it was among the diseased, deceased inhabitants of Hill House.
It wasn't until I read, recently, in the Shirley Jackson biography "Private Demons", her youngest son Barry's comments on "The Haunting of Hill House" that I think I really understood the essence of the book, even after what seems like a hundred readings of it. He says, imagine you see a ghost walk across a room. Now, did you see a ghost, or did you hallucinate the experience? It's totally subjective either way - and to his mother, he says, it made absolutely no difference whatsoever. Seeing a ghost, or imagining seeing a ghost, were equally REAL to Shirley Jackson. When you think about this, you see that to Eleanor, the events which happened to her inside (and outside on the grounds of) Hill House were as REAL to her as they would be to any of us experiencing the same things. Were the hauntings real, then? I say yes, based on Shirley's definition. Did Eleanor herself act as some kind of amplifier of the events, or even engender some of them herself? Well - personally, I think she did. "Maybe you did it yourself", huffs Theodora, after the cozy group finds chalk and then blood writings on the walls, and Eleanor begs one of the others to own up to the "joke". I think Shirley Jackson is saying, "Exactly".
The plot has been covered endlessly in these reviews, so I won't dwell on it. Either, as a reader, you can understand that what you are seeing in Hill House is skewed by the tortured/prejudiced view of Eleanor's stinted mind, and that all events are part of HER reality, since you are basically inside her mind for the whole book--or you aren't interested in her twisted reality, and if not, this book WILL bore you. I think if you were ever, even for a day, an outsider in any way - the last one chosen on a sports team, the child who has most "disappointed" your parents, the "ugly" one, the "dumb" one, the one who hears an inner dialog no one else can hear or understand...you cannot help but identify with Eleanor. You cannot help but be both enchanted by the essences that rule Hill House, and seem to speak directly to YOU, and be shockingly, horrifyingly repelled at the same time.
Exactly how MUCH horror, Shirley Jackson seems to be asking us, comes from inside ourselves? How much of it can we project upon the rest of the world? How about if a little REAL evil helps us along with the task of projecting? Hmmmm....
I will always feel that this book is well worth the reading, and the rereading. There are no big chunks of bloody, gory horror going on, and if that's your bag, there are about a billion "horror" novels you can grab to satisfy that particular fearlust. But if you want your skin to crawl, from ankle to scalp, in a nasty, cold, SMALL way that'll cause you to wake up in the night with palpitations at its memory, here's the read for you. Don't miss this exquisite book.
Summary of The Haunting of Hill House (Penguin Classics)
The classic supernatural thriller by an author who helped define the genre
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.
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.
Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House has unnerved readers since its original publication in 1959. A tale of subtle, psychological terror, it has earned its place as one of the significant haunted house stories of the ages.
Eleanor Vance has always been a loner--shy, vulnerable, and bitterly resentful of the 11 years she lost while nursing her dying mother. "She had spent so long alone, with no one to love, that it was difficult for her to talk, even casually, to another person without self-consciousness and an awkward inability to find words." Eleanor has always sensed that one day something big would happen, and one day it does. She receives an unusual invitation from Dr. John Montague, a man fascinated by "supernatural manifestations." He organizes a ghost watch, inviting people who have been touched by otherworldly events. A paranormal incident from Eleanor's childhood qualifies her to be a part of Montague's bizarre study--along with headstrong Theodora, his assistant, and Luke, a well-to-do aristocrat. They meet at Hill House--a notorious estate in New England.
Hill House is a foreboding structure of towers, buttresses, Gothic spires, gargoyles, strange angles, and rooms within rooms--a place "without kindness, never meant to be lived in...."
Although Eleanor's initial reaction is to flee, the house has a mesmerizing effect, and she begins to feel a strange kind of bliss that entices her to stay. Eleanor is a magnet for the supernatural--she hears deathly wails, feels terrible chills, and sees ghostly apparitions. Once again she feels isolated and alone--neither Theo nor Luke attract so much eerie company. But the physical horror of Hill House is always subtle; more disturbing is the emotional torment Eleanor endures. Intense, literary, and harrowing, The Haunting of Hill House belongs in the same dark league as Henry James's classic ghost story, The Turn of the Screw. --Naomi Gesinger
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