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mattyvreads's review
dark
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.75
I’m obsessed with this book. Shirley Jackson’s writing is impeccable. I love that the book feels so modern, despite being written in the late 50s. It is an impressive and utterly horrifying piece of literature.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child death, Death, Confinement, Death of parent, and Mental illness
Moderate: Violence, Gaslighting, Murder, and Suicide
sunn_bleach's review against another edition
dark
emotional
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
Rereading "The Haunting of Hill House" after my initial foray in 2018 showed how important rereads can be. Six years is a long time, and I've grown as person and artist (dichotomy intended). I love Shirley Jackson, but I thought this book was hella boring. Nothing's scary and nothing happens! Whats-her-face just drives into a tree! How is this the "scariest horror novel" or whatever?
... but this time, I've realized a mastery of Jackson's prose: your imagination is what makes it scary, just as the characters' imaginations bring forth the House. Jackson doesn't outright describe the pathway through the forest that Eleanor and Theo take, because she knows anything your mind uses to fill in the gaps makes it far creepier. You might read about the room in the center of the house that the characters' sing and dance and hang out in, and as we all know merriment dispels ghosts... but what if you expand outward and consider the whole house? What if you imagine this island of ostensible happiness as a silent, dark, house leans over them in what is its absolute focal point? Jackson's stark prose came off as beige in 2018, but that couldn't be further from the truth; what she did was provide me the outline, knowing what whatever I sketched in would be far more terrifying and bring me closer to Eleanor than anything else. And *that* is the horror of Hill House within the book... and without.
... but this time, I've realized a mastery of Jackson's prose: your imagination is what makes it scary, just as the characters' imaginations bring forth the House. Jackson doesn't outright describe the pathway through the forest that Eleanor and Theo take, because she knows anything your mind uses to fill in the gaps makes it far creepier. You might read about the room in the center of the house that the characters' sing and dance and hang out in, and as we all know merriment dispels ghosts... but what if you expand outward and consider the whole house? What if you imagine this island of ostensible happiness as a silent, dark, house leans over them in what is its absolute focal point? Jackson's stark prose came off as beige in 2018, but that couldn't be further from the truth; what she did was provide me the outline, knowing what whatever I sketched in would be far more terrifying and bring me closer to Eleanor than anything else. And *that* is the horror of Hill House within the book... and without.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Mental illness and Death of parent
Moderate: Suicide
Minor: Blood and Violence
alexisgarcia's review
dark
mysterious
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
this is such a good book!!! definitely deserves all of the hype and the classic title, shirley jackson is a phenomenal writer
Content Warnings
Graphic: Blood, Grief, Mental illness, Suicide, Violence, and Death
louiepotterbook's review against another edition
challenging
dark
mysterious
sad
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
1.0
Content Warnings
Moderate: Car accident, Death of parent, Dysphoria, Gaslighting, Sexism, Medical trauma, Alcohol, Blood, Body horror, Body shaming, Death, Mental illness, Misogyny, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Suicide, Suicide attempt, Terminal illness, Toxic friendship, and Violence
tita_loves_literature's review
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.75
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child abuse
Moderate: Child death and Violence
starlit_pathways's review against another edition
dark
mysterious
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.75
Content Warnings
Graphic: Violence, Death, Suicide attempt, Suicidal thoughts, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Confinement, Car accident, Suicide, Death of parent, and Alcohol
Moderate: Religious bigotry, Gaslighting, and Grief
toffishay's review against another edition
dark
emotional
mysterious
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.75
I read this book in a two days and I really enjoyed it. I am not normally a horror person, but I love Shirley Jackson and her tense, more psychological thrillers. The only drawback for this book I would say is that it does lag at some points, which is strange for such a short book. But when it is on, it's very tense and suspenseful and you really get into Eleanor's head. I think that if you liked this book, you would like O, Caledonia by Elspeth Barker.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Death, Suicide, Car accident, and Violence
Minor: Blood, Sexism, and Misogyny
kyrstin_p1989's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
2.5
I think perhaps it was intentional, but this book was so disjointed that I had a hard time enjoying it. There were bits and pieces that I found enjoyable but overall it was confusing and strange. I think the possession of one of the characters affected their interactions with the others but I can’t be sure because it’s never clearly stated. If I hadn’t seen the show first, I think my expectations would’ve been different or less and I may have enjoyed this more.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Suicidal thoughts, Death, Grief, Toxic friendship, Classism, Gaslighting, Violence, Abandonment, Child death, Car accident, and Confinement
stubbornjerk's review
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
I watched every bit of media I could find about this book that wasn't the Liam Neeson adaptation (and I'd like for it to remain that way). I've watched video essays about the differences in adaptations and about haunted houses, read the review at the beginning of my copy full to the brim with spoilers and someone else's thoughts on the matter.
But I still can't wrap my head around it.
I suppose that was the intention, wasn't it.
In all regards, The Haunting of Hill House was a character study– as I'm sure most things are– but this one is specifically is about Eleanor Vance and how her fear of loneliness drove her to toxic dependency on an amoral concept of a house that wants nothing but to possess her. Literally and figuratively.
Despite this, The Haunting of Hill House is a poem. It contains poetry and songs, sure– The Grattan Murders, the verses from Twelfth Night that Eleanor sings again and again as a reassurance, a sort of mantra or prayer– but its events rely on these repetitions as well. Its prose is deceptively simple and builds up and up until the climax of Eleanor's stay in the house. It states that a house, Hill House– a structure made by Hugh Crain about a century prior to the book's events– has intent and emotion.
Jackson telling me that, through the bookended narrations opening and ending this novel, doesn't convince me of its reality anymore than the characters' insistence of it. How likely is a house built by someone else to be malicious towards people who it was not made for? How much of these views belong to the characters themselves or were impressed upon them to soothe their skepticisms? Dr. Montague said it best after their first event:
But I still can't wrap my head around it.
I suppose that was the intention, wasn't it.
In all regards, The Haunting of Hill House was a character study– as I'm sure most things are– but this one is specifically is about Eleanor Vance and how her fear of loneliness drove her to toxic dependency on an amoral concept of a house that wants nothing but to possess her. Literally and figuratively.
Despite this, The Haunting of Hill House is a poem. It contains poetry and songs, sure– The Grattan Murders, the verses from Twelfth Night that Eleanor sings again and again as a reassurance, a sort of mantra or prayer– but its events rely on these repetitions as well. Its prose is deceptively simple and builds up and up until the climax of Eleanor's stay in the house. It states that a house, Hill House– a structure made by Hugh Crain about a century prior to the book's events– has intent and emotion.
Jackson telling me that, through the bookended narrations opening and ending this novel, doesn't convince me of its reality anymore than the characters' insistence of it. How likely is a house built by someone else to be malicious towards people who it was not made for? How much of these views belong to the characters themselves or were impressed upon them to soothe their skepticisms? Dr. Montague said it best after their first event:
“No, the menace of the supernatural is that it attacks where modern minds are weakest, where we have abandoned our protective armor of superstition and have no substitute defense. ”
Because they do believe that the house is doing these unexplainable things, these experiences that only four of them can experience. And collectively, they believe that because the house is doing it, the house must be malicious. But is it? “No ghost in all the long histories of ghosts has ever hurt anyone physically. The only damage done is by the victim to himself," the doctor said.
But, suppose we take Jackson's statements bookending the novel another way. “No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality,” it says, and Hill House is, decidedly, not sane, inferring that the house itself is alive.
That doesn't denote malice either. And throughout the book, you see it reflected on Eleanor because, again, this book is about her. In fleshing out Eleanor's social anxiety and deep insecurity and inferiority complex and fear of alienation, and the ambiguity of that being the house's influence on her versus how she generally just is, you can see that nothing Eleanor thinks, she thinks out of malice. And nothing she does is either. It's out of an urgent need to belong, to grieve, to become. She dreams often in order to escape her own absolute reality, of being solitary but not lonely (nestled in an orchard of oleander), of having her creativity (her cup of stars), of having protection (her stone lions), and of being loved and taken care of (her wanting to come home with Theodora).
The night after she surrenders to the house, the night before she comes home, she enters the library she says smelled of death and decay. Every time the door to it opens, she calls out to her mother, who she found dead after passing in the night, so she would know, wouldn't she? And the house(?) beckons her. She runs up and up and up to the top of the tower, running away (she was good at that, Theo had said) in a fit of warmth and elation, embodying the hauntings the four of them had been experiencing, feeling like the mornings after a haunting, and the narration takes up like the reverse of a bad dream, as Luke says.
Like the narration is telling it back over and over to ensure us that it did happen, that it was happening. Only, all of them were witnessing it, experiencing it too, so it must be real.
The Haunting of Hill House is a study on Eleanor Vance's view of her own self. Someone unfit to house children, someone whose valuables are quarreled over by sisters, someone nestled apart from everyone else. Altogether unwelcoming upon first glance– abandoned and only barely hospitable– but so very, desperately, lonely to belong to someone.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Car accident, Death, Suicide, and Violence
Moderate: Emotional abuse
jojo_'s review
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
1.5
Content Warnings
Moderate: Blood, Death, Death of parent, and Mental illness
Minor: Car accident, Murder, Suicide, and Violence