The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson [Book Review] 19

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Summary

“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.”

-From Amazon.com

Review

As it’s spooky season, I had to give some of the classics for this season a read. I’ve read all the basics like Dracula , Stephen King books, Clive Barker books, and many others. But this one, I hadn’t read. 

I recently started a small book club with my mum, so we read books together, and as we were going to be quite busy this month, this was the perfect book – it’s not too long and not exactly a difficult read.

Spooky without being scary.
As the book is quite old, their idea of scary is not our idea of scary, which was kind of nice. I wasn’t reading this book and absolutely terrified or questioning if I could read it at night. It was just a classic kind of scary read, like Dracula. So as an autumnal read, this one fits the bill perfect. I’d say 15 and older could give this one ago, if they can get around some of the strange writing styles.

A little slow but picked up suddenly.
Now, since it’s an older book, I have to be careful with this comment. Books now are written at a much faster pace to appease the reader. This one had a very slow beginning that had you questioning exactly when something was going to happen. You were nearly halfway through the book before you even made it to Hill House and 3/4 of the way through before the strange stuff started happening. It made the read a little slow in a sense, but you also wanted to get through it faster to find out what was going to happen and when.

Nothing like the modern movie The Haunting.
In early 2000’s, a movie with Liam Neeson and other famous actors came out called The Haunting which is based off of this book. I went into this book thinking it was going to be like the movie. This movie is a common one many have seen, so I’m going to say now that if you think it’ll be like the movie, then you’re wrong. It definitely had some parallels and the overall idea was similar, but it wasn’t the same for the most part. The ending especially.

Eleanor is a little odd, just naturally.
What adds to the book is the fact that the main character is quite…out there. She’s odd so even from the beginning you just seem to be thrown off from the way she speaks and thinks. It actually puts you off balance as a reader. The speaking patterns are all over the place, which seems to confuse you. While you were reading it can be a little confusing, as her thought processes is like a roller-coaster, but afterwards you realize that it adds to the whole story!

Kind of shocking the ending.
You had this idea of how it was going to end and it didn’t end that way at all. Don’t worry, I’m not going to spoil anything, but just be prepared to not be ready for what happens. You think you can figure it out and then boom.

Overall, I absolutely loved the book. Even though it was a little slower, it’s a classic and such a good read. It’s not needed around Halloween but it’s great for autumn in general. It’s bite sized, so no need to worry about it being a massive reading commitment.

I easily give this book a 5 our of 5 teacups!

Spooky Reading!