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A review by fluffysaurasrex
The Broken Hours by Jacqueline Baker
4.0
Building on the reality of the last year of H.P. Lovecraft's life, author Jacqueline Baker crafts a classic ghost story about Arthor Crandle, a man sent to help H.P. Lovecraft with household duties and typing his handwritten letters and work. Crandle is drawn in to the strange world that Lovecraft lives in, digging up family secrets while also crafting a few secrets himself.
As I've never actually read anything by Lovecraft, I couldn't say whether it would fit his style, but I've seen and read enough ghost stories to know when someone is doing it just right. Baker serves up a number of mysterious questions without fully delivering the answers, leaving it up to us to decide between what is real and what may be madness.
It's a story filled with grief and regret, deception and dread, and it's written very poetically. Buildings take on lives of their own, and the world around the characters becomes its own pained figure, desperate to release its secrets, but unable to find the right person to reveal them to. I feel this would be the written equivalent of the film The Changeling, which should give fans of the film a good idea of what they may enjoy here.
As I've never actually read anything by Lovecraft, I couldn't say whether it would fit his style, but I've seen and read enough ghost stories to know when someone is doing it just right. Baker serves up a number of mysterious questions without fully delivering the answers, leaving it up to us to decide between what is real and what may be madness.
It's a story filled with grief and regret, deception and dread, and it's written very poetically. Buildings take on lives of their own, and the world around the characters becomes its own pained figure, desperate to release its secrets, but unable to find the right person to reveal them to. I feel this would be the written equivalent of the film The Changeling, which should give fans of the film a good idea of what they may enjoy here.