Shirley Jackson’s thriller is one of the scarier books I’ve ever read. I read it back in October, as a Halloween “I should read something scary” book.

Originally, I was leaning towards something Stephen King, or rereading Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves (which scared me like no other book ever), but I wanted to read something new. My mom had recommended this one to me ages ago, and I happened to find it in our library.

 I was hooked after one paragraph.

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 its 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.

I also like the book’s tagline (as stated on Amazon):

The Haunting of Hill House tells the story of a woman named Eleanor, who is living a very claustrophobic  life. She answers the ad of a Dr. Montague, who studying paranormal phenomena and is looking for companions/test subjects to stay in the haunted “Hill House” with him. Those who end up in the house are Dr. Montague, Eleanor, Theodora, and Luke (the nephew of the house’s owner, who doesn’t live in or near the house).

Nobody in the village where Hill House is located will go near the house, except for the caretakers, Mr. and Mrs. Dudley, who make sure to clear out well before dark.

Almost immediately, the group starts experiencing supernatural happenings within the house, which intensify and grow over the following few days.

Jackson relies on terror, rather than horror, to elicit reaction from the reader. Terror is fear what you don’t see, and horror is fear of what you do see. There’s lots of terror going on in this book – the main character, Eleanor, rarely actually sees anything going awry in the house.

There is one episode where Eleanor and Theodora are being chased, and Theodora looks back and screams for Eleanor to run, but the book never explains what Theodora saw. In fact, at the end of the book, the reader is left wondering if the house is actually haunted or if everything that actually occurred was in the imaginations of its occupants. Each explanation is reasonable – while Eleanor, Theodora, Dr. Montague, and Luke all experience supernatural phenomena, Mrs. Montague and Arthur (her…butler? Friend? Assistant?) come into the house and don’t experience anything even close to supernatural.

I can’t get hugely into this book without spoiling it, but I really don’t want to spoil it because it was just so good. If you have read it, I recommend reading this bit commentary on it, which provides some good insight. There are spoilers.

The best part about this book is that it leaves you with more questions than answers. Was the haunting of Hill House real, or was it all inside the occupants’ heads?

Of all the books I’ve read/reviewed/not reviewed on this blog, this is the one I’d recommend most highly. It’s pretty short, guys, seriously, read it.

Tagged: authors: shirley jackson, books: the haunting of hill house, genre: horror/terror