The Haunting of Hill House (1959)

Shirley Jackson’s haunted house novel has been so wildly oversold to me (chiefly, recently, on so-called booktube) that it could not possibly live up to the hype. But it’s pretty dang good anyway, even effectively scary in parts. It may be too late now for going into it the best way possible, which is with no knowledge at all of it. I mean, there’s only two movies, one play, and one TV series. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were video games too. Jackson hits you with a lot of tropes and cunning tricks. The layout of the mansion in question is very peculiar. The main character, Eleanor, has a troubling background. Now in her early 30s, she has spent the previous 11 years caring for her demanding ailing mother. Jackson even injects farcical and very funny humor with the appearance of a character in the last third. We laugh but by that point we are a little sickened by developments. There’s no gore, I don’t mean that—it’s just the constant unease by that point has done its work. One of Jackson’s best effects is phenomena that are experienced by more than one character but not all, as if the terrible spirit can choose who experiences these things—stuff like very loud pounding and other unusual noises, or strange smells. As you have likely heard, the four people are there as part of research into psychic or supernatural phenomena. Like a character out of The X Files, the scientist heading up the project wants to believe, but he approaches it cautiously. Eleanor is there because she has a history of psychic phenomena associated with her. Theodora feels a little like Jackson’s stand-in here. She is fashionable and witty and somehow had a lesbian vibe to me. Luke is related to the family that owns the haunted mansion—putting a member of the family there for the project is one of their conditions. There are also a couple of caretakers who refuse to spend the night there but provide services during the day. Mrs. Dudley particularly is funny. The Haunting of Hill House is really well conceived and executed. It lives up to its outsize reputation as one of the best horror novels ever written.

In case the library is closed due to pandemic, which is over. (Library of America)