Worth Revisiting – A Spooky Book From 1959

***

ON OUR BOOKSHELVES

***

NOVEL: The Haunting of Hill House

AUTHOR: Shirley Jackson

YEAR OF PUBLICATION: 1959

REVIEW:

There’s a chill in the air and the kids are planning their Halloween costumes. It’s time for spooky books. The Haunting of Hill House is a classic.

***

I was familiar with Shirley Jackson through her short stories, especially the most famous one, “The Lottery,” from 1948. That one was introduced to me in, I think, eighth grade (what on earth were they thinking at my school?) and if you haven’t read it, do seek it out. I was quizzed on the assignment and got one question wrong, when my teacher asked if it were set in the past or the future. I went with future, not having the right vocabulary at that point for what were my true guesses: a post-apocalyptic time, or at present in an alternative history. She insisted that it took place in the past, but I knew quite well that the characters were Americans and that the particulars of the action were certainly not covered in our history lessons, so it was at the time, a bit of a puzzle for me. Eighth grade me was not alone in my puzzlement…when the story was first published in the New Yorker, the author received hundreds of letters in response, consisting, as she later described them, mainly of “bewilderment, speculation, and plain old-fashioned abuse.”

Since then, I’ve read many of Jackson’s stories, but until this week, had not read any of her longer works. I’m glad I finally did. Here’s how The Haunting of Hill House begins:

No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against the hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.

***

Shirley Jackson’s writing is terrifying, and the supernatural plays a part in this…but only a small part. Poltergeists, and stones falling like rain, and mysterious noises, and even insane houses are eerie and alarming. But the true horror in all of her fiction is simple: pointless violence, and general inhumanity. In particular, the domestic sphere is represented in utter hideousness: unloving families, the tedium and servitude of care-taking, mountains of dirty laundry, quiet desperation, and stifled rage.

***

Our protagonist, Eleanor, a lonely and unstable young woman, hasn’t got a chance, and Shirley Jackson gives us both a haunted house story and an astute psychological study of a mind increasingly unhinged. It’s not entirely clear what is a manifestation of the paranormal and what is mental illness, here…just don’t read it when you’re home alone.

***

RATING (one to five whistles, with five being the best): 3 ½ Whistles

***

HOW TO PURCHASE: Amazon

***

Laura LaVelle is an attorney and writer who lives in Connecticut, in a not quite 100-year-old house, along with her husband, two daughters, and a cockatiel.

Laura can be contacted at laura@newswhistle.com.

***

Lead-In Image Courtesy of Tetiana Volkonska / Shutterstock.com

***

ALSO ON OUR BOOKSHELVES:

A Countess Below Stairs, Eva Ibbotson

A Man Called Ove, Fredrik Backman

A Patchwork Planet, Anne Tyler

A Room With a View, E.M. Forster

An English Murder, Cyril Hare

An Infamous Army, Georgette Heyer

Americanah, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Anne Of Green Gables, L.M. Montgomery

Before the Fall, Noah Hawley

Bleak House, Charles Dickens

Blue Highways, William Least Heat-Moon

Bonjour Tristesse, Francoise Sagan

Books for Living, Will Schwalbe

Bunker Hill, Nathan Philbrick

Burmese Days, George Orwell

Cannery Row, John Steinbeck

Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?, Roz Chast

Charlotte’s Web, E.B. White

Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell

Cloudstreet, Tim Winton

Cockpit Confidential, Patrick Smith

Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons

Diary of a Provincial Lady, E.M. Delafield

Doctor Jazz, Hayden Carruth

Ed Emberly’s Drawing Book of Animals, Ed Emberly

Endangered Pleasures, Barbara Holland

Envious Casca, Georgette Heyer

Fever Dream, Samanta Schweblin

Foreign Affairs, Alison Lurie

From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, E.L. Konigsburg

Gaudy Night, Dorothy L. Sayers

Go Set a Watchman, Harper Lee

Good Poems, Garrison Keillor

Gowanus Waters, Steven Hirsch

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, J.K. Rowling, John Tiffany, & Jack Thorne

Heads in Beds, Jacob Tomsky

Here is New York, E.B. White

Hide My Eyes, Margery Allingham

Home Cooking: A Writer in the Kitchen, Laurie Colwin

Hyperbole and a Half, Allie Brosh

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou

If on a winter’s night a traveler, Italo Calvino

Letters to a Young Poet, Rainer Maria Rilke

Lexicon, Max Barry

Longbourn, Jo Baker

Madeleine’s Ghost, Robert Girardi

Malice Aforethought, Frances Iles

Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand, Helen Simonson

Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town, Jon Krakauer

Mother Night, Kurt Vonnegut

My Life in France, Julia Child with Alex Prud’homme

Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro

Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell

Notorious RBG, Irin Carmon & Shana Knizhnik

One Summer: America 1927, Bill Bryson

Out of the Blackout, Robert Bernard

Parnassus on Wheels & The Haunted Bookshop, Christopher Morley

Plotted: A Literary Atlas, Andrew DeGraff

Possession, A.S. Byatt

Reflections on a Gift of Watermelon Pickle…and Other Modern Verse, Stephen Dunning, Edward Lueders, and Hugh Smith

Ringworld, Larry Niven

Rose Madder, Stephen King

Sanditon, Jane Austen and Another Lady

Selected Poems of Langston Hughes

Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, Carlo Rivelli

Straying from the Flock: Travels in New Zealand, Alexander Elder

Super Sad True Love Story, Gary Shteyngart

The Annotated Alice: The Definitive Ed., Lewis Carroll & Martin Gardner (with original illustrations by John Tenniel)

The Cuckoo’s Calling, Robert Galbraith

The Dancer of Izu, Kawabata Yasunari

The House with a Clock in Its Walls, John Bellairs

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot

The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P., Adelle Waldman

The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat, Oliver Sacks

The Martian, Andy Weir

The Missing Piece, Shel Silverstein

The Modern Kids, Jona Frank

The Monogram Murders, Sophie Hannah

The Mother & Child Project, Hope Through Healing Hands (ed.)

The Phantom Tollbooth, Norton Juster

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Muriel Spark

The Secret Art of Dr. Seuss, Theodor Geisel (illustrator), Maurice Sendak (introduction)

The Snowy Day, Ezra Jack Keats

The Swans of Fifth Avenue, Melanie Benjamin

The Tender Bar, J.R. Moehringer

The Translator, Nina Schuyler

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, Rachel Joyce

The Unrest-Cure and Other Stories, Saki

The Weird World of Wes Beattie, John Norman Harris

The Westing Game, Ellen Raskin

The Women in Black, Madeleine St John

They Call Me Naughty Lola, David Rose

Thing Explainer, Randall Munroe

Ways of Seeing, John Berger

What If?, Randall Munroe

When Breath Becomes Air, Paul Kalanithi

You Learn by Living: Eleven Keys for a More Fulfilling Life, Eleanor Roosevelt

Up At the Villa, W. Somerset Maugham

84, Charing Cross Road, Helene Hanff