Synopsis
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, the 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.
Review
I don’t read a lot of classics but a nonfiction book from a few weeks ago made me really curious about this one. While it didn’t turn out as exciting as I had anticipated, I’m still glad I gave it a try.
Despite being a pretty short book, it took me longer than expected to finish it. Most days, I didn’t manage to read more than one chapter, both because the writing style wasn’t quite for me and because I was thinking so much about each page as I was annotating it. I really liked some of the characters in the beginning and found the group as a whole really interesting. Sadly, that took a turn for me though as the book progressed. I dreaded their interactions because of how everyone was treating the MC. Though I do wonder how much of that was dependent on the MC being an unreliable narrator, that still didn’t make reading those conversations any more enjoyable for me.
My favorite part of the book was – by far – Hill House. It was definitely a character in itself and I liked seeing how it affected the story and characters residing within it. I don’t understand how everyone managed more than two nights in it, but it was interesting to read about its descriptions and effects. The MC already felt very dreamy and unreliable at the beginning of the story but trying to figure out how Hill House affected all the people, but the narrator especially, was really neat. The ending, while not surprising, did feel like a good fit for the story.
Despite my rating though, it was still a pretty cool experience because it was a buddy read with a few others and there were discussions all along the way. It was great to hear about everyone’s insights and definitely made me think twice about some of the stuff happening. I also annotated the whole book, which was really fun and got me to analyze it a bit more as well. I’m now reading another book with a haunted house and it’s fun to draw parallels between the two stories. I think it’s helping me figure out what direction my horror preferences might go.
I do have to say though that I find it weird that my edition had such an extensive intro before the actual story. I didn’t realize it was going to be an in-depth exploration of the entire book, which meant a big part of it was spoiled for me before I decided to stop reading the intro. Why isn’t this at the back of the book?
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