I'm starting to get a bit lazy with these posts. Instead of reviewing something I've seen or read recently, I'm covering something I read sometime in January. Now, the only other time I've heard of Shirely Jackson was in 7th grade when we read her short story, The Lottery. It came as a bit of shock to me, seeing how she decided to write a horror story sometime in her career. However, who am I to judge a book that is considered to be one of the best ghost stories of the 20th century and a finalist for the National Book Reward?
The Haunting of Hill House is known for incorporating terror rather then horror to ensure a unique reading experience. It's really your classic haunted house story, taking four outsiders and placing them into this house. We have Dr. Montague (paranormal investigator), Eleanor (the main focused character with mommy issues), Luke (the heir to the house), and Theodora (an artist). There are also Mr. and Mrs. Dudley (the caretakers of the house who always leave at nightfall) and later on they are joined my Mrs. Montague and Arthur (a headmaster of some school). All the characters are unique in their personalities and all seemed to be developed well. They're all staying in the house by the request of Dr. Montague to see if the rumors of Hill House really being haunted are true.
Throughout the book, they all encounter something paranormal but Eleanor is the only one who experiences it more with the others not knowing a whole lot. These events are your classic haunted house scenarios; shadowy figures roaming the halls, writing on the walls which no one claims to have done, and things moving on their own. Of course, the house's history is explored. Hill House had a past of deaths and suicides since the time of its construction in the late 1800s. Death related events within a facility usually point to reasons why it is haunted in most instances. Crimson Peak, coming out soon this month and I plan it to see, seems to have drawn a bit of influence from this book it seems.
For me, I don't think my reading experience of this book wasn't what it should've been. I felt that it moved at a slow pace, mostly lingering on the interactions between the characters rather then the hauntings at hand. In fact, I really can't recall a whole lot happening within the first one hundred twenty pages, and the book is only two hundred forty six. What really is the most elaborated on is Eleanor and Theodora's relationship, even more so then supernatural forces inhabiting the house. The book really amps up the terror factor by the end. It's not one of my favorite books, but I'm well aware of the place it holds in the history of horror. I may not have enough evidence to back this up, but could this be the book that started the trend of a group of people venturing into a haunted house? I'm not sure since some of the Vincent Price movies from the fifties explored the same territory. He was in a movie called "House on Haunted Hill" in 1959, the same year Shirely Jackson published The Haunting of Hill House, is there a connection? Probably not.
As for more media adaptions, two movie forms of The Haunting of Hill House were made. There was the 1963, which is the proclaimed "good one", being faithful to the book, and the 1999 one which was met with negative reception despite having big time actors like Liam Neeson, Catherine Zeta-Jones, and Owen Wilson.
So, The Haunting of Hill House, is it worth a read? Yes, but don't expect it cutting right to the chase. It's best to give it a little bit of time to let it wind up.
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