Tag Archives: Haunted Houses

A Surreal Estate Book Tag!

by in Book Reviews, Horror and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Though we’ve still got more or less a full week left in October, the next time I post will technically be November 1st (assuming I finish another book by then). Since this will be our last spooky post in the lead up to Halloween — any other spooky posts will from here on out will just be AFTER Halloween lol — I believe I owe anyone who has been following along a haunted house book tag.

Back in 2021, I was mildly obsessed with a show called Surreal Estate, in which a real estate agent specializes in selling haunted houses, and often must appease whatever supernatural entity is haunting the place before he can make the sale (John Wiswell’s Open House on Haunted Hill feels related and came out around the same time).

I was pretty much devastated because I thought the show had been cancelled, but when I was starting to google and pull together some ideas for this post, I realized it actually got renewed, and there are a total of three seasons(!) so far, with no news yet on whether or not there will be a season four.

There simply wasn’t enough time to do a re-watch of season one, and watch seasons two and three (and I’d have to get Hulu or Disney+), and come up with fun and interesting quotes myself. Also, I think that may have been quite a long post.

So I took to the internet, and found a great website which had tons of quotes from every episode . . . which was taken down sometime between the first week of September and now.

All of that to say, everything about my relationship with this poor show seems to be doomed from the start and I only managed to get a few quotes so this will be a relatively short (5 questions) list of recommendations.

I’ve mostly made it to amuse myself but would of course love it if you answered the questions yourself on your own blog and linked back to me. Or even just dropping into the comments with a couple Haunted House recs would be excellent. Perhaps I can revisit this after rewatching the series, once I’ve added a few more books to my haunted house resume.

So, without further ado, I present the SurrealEstate book tag!

“And one last thing. Don’t rule out the rational explanation. Ever.”

From Season 1 Episode 1

A haunted house book that just won’t quite suspend your disbelief. In which a logical, empirical explanation is as likely as anything supernatural . . . but still just as creepy.

The Grownup by Gillian Flynn

This one should feel familiar to any who have been reading along this month. It’s how we kicked off October this year. I enjoyed this short (short!) book for several reasons, the first being Flynn’s ability to hook the reader with an unexpected opening line, and continuous little subversions of our expectations throughout.

However, it’s not a book that leans heavily into the supernatural, if anything the opposite. The main character’s positioning as a fraud and grifter makes us doubt from the very beginning, and by the time we get to the end, it certainly feels like there’s a reasonable explanation for everything that occurred.

However I’ll let you decide when you read it. Give The Grownup by Gillian Flynn a read!

“No, it’s just sometimes these properties can act a little differently when your back is turned.”

From Season 1 Episode 2

A haunted house book with a twist. This is an old and well mined genre of horror. Which book surprised you by still having a few tricks up its sleeve?

Just Like Home by Sarah Gailey

This book could probably could have taken the spot for the last question too, though I think there actually is a supernatural element to this one, it’s only that the non-supernatural elements are also horrifying in their own right.

With Just Like Home, Gailey shows they can really write in whatever genre they want, and still have something unique and interesting to say. This book in particular seemed to give me the impression that there is still plenty more to be mined from this beloved genre!

“You must be careful. If this is what I think it is, it is old, it is cunning. It also has an ego and is easily distracted. But remember it only exists to inflict pain and sorrow. And it sees you coming.”

From Season 1 Episode 2

An irrefutable classic. The older the better. A book which is like homework for the genre. A must read, otherwise you just don’t get it.

(Side note: I usually ignore recs of this type because . . . well lets just say I have a less than favorable relationship with ‘The Classics’)

The Haunting of Hillhouse by Shirley Jackson

There’s a way in which it feels like all roads lead back to The Haunting of Hillhouse. Stephen King has reviewed it as one of the finest horror novels of the late 20th century, and the Writing Excuses Podcast did an entire episode just on the first few sentences. THoHH is such a staple of the genre, that books like the aforementioned The Grownup reference this classic in order to give themselves more clout in the genre.

I can hardly imagine a book with a bigger ego.

Ironically, I didn’t care for this one much. I’ll agree that the prose in the beginning are indeed some of the most fluid and poetic writing I’ve ever read. However, there are so many equally clunky and uninspired lines throughout the rest that it almost feels as if the gorgeous opening was some kind of fluke. In any case, at least for me, I could not tell why this book is such a staple of the Haunted House genre. I guess I’ll have to finish Stephen King’s full review . . .

“I have a story that needs to flow out of me. And that cannot happen unless the environment I am in lets that flow remain uninterrupted.”

From Season 1 Episode 3

A story you just couldn’t put down. A book which you couldn’t bother with real life while reading. Uninterrupted reading or GTFO!

We Used To Live Here by Marcus Kliewer

We Used To Live Here might be the scariest book I’ve read period. And Kliewer’s writing is superb. The perfect mix of need-know-what-happens and I-can’t-watch. I mention in my review his ability to write descriptions which are novel, yet completely understandable and often quite beautiful. He’s also a master of misdirection and suspense, constantly laying down little bread crumbs for the reader to follow. Some may go somewhere, others may not but they keep you eating up the story night after night (or maybe day after day since this can be a scary one to read after dark).

Definitely give this one a read!

“I lived in the past. But one can’t turn back time. And so, with that lovely melody playing in my head I said goodbye to this world. And it was only in the next that I learned the awful truth of what I’d done. That none of us who love this place or slept in its water could move on until that melody was turned back.”

From Season 1 Episode 3

A scary book featuring music.

The Fall Of The House of Usher

This one also could have gone in the classic section of this post, but I think I enjoyed it a little more than Hill House. Plus The Fall of The House of Usher has at least one element which I don’t feel like I see very often in any genre: Music!

The House of Usher’s last remaining occupant and caretaker, Roderick Usher, has become reclusive in the extreme while taking care of his sister, Madeline Usher, and music is one of the many tools Poe uses to show just how far he’s descended into madness. The narrator comments on the long and improvised dirges Roderick plays, and his obsessive practicing of mourning songs and funeral tunes, all played on the acoustic guitar.

The song we ‘hear’ (or is referenced) in The Fall of the House of Usher, is Carl Gottlieb Reißiger’s Last Waltz, but it is misattributed in the text to Carl Maria von Weber. Also the tune was written for — and probably played on — the piano during Poe’s time so it’s interesting that Roderick plays it on the guitar instead.

In T. Kingfisher’s What Moves The Dead, the Roderick character is a pianist, just one of the many ways that author seeks to ‘fix’ the original story by Poe.

Tag You’re It!

Well that’s it folks. Five spooky haunted house books you can (probably) still finish before Halloween next week. Let me know what you thought of this list. Is there any recommendations you’d have added? Have you read any of the ones I suggested?

Please let me know in the comments! And if you decide to do the tag, a link back here is always appreciated! Looking forward to talking about this one!

Until next time!

An October Treat: Christina Henry’s ‘The House that Horror Built’

by in Book Reviews, Horror and tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Another week in October, another spooky book reviewed on the blog. For this post, I finished Christina Henry’s The House that Horror Built.

A quick google search reveals that this author has already written a ton (19) of books, mostly in the genres of Dark Fantasy and fairy tale retellings. She’ been nominated for many Goodreads Choice awards (in the Horror Genre), and seems to have just generally been on the scene for quite some time (first published in 2010).

So, I’m a bit embarrassed to say that The House That Horror Built is my first exposure to Henry’s work, and that it wasn’t through some ‘best of’ list, or ‘must read’ promo material that I discovered the book, but by the increasingly rare yet perhaps most gratifying way to discover a book: I saw it on the shelf.

Or rather I kept seeing it on the shelf.

The bookends for the shelves at my local library are really just a bit of metal tubing, and so the cover of whichever book is on the end of the row is visible. It’s not really on display as we might think of library displays, but you’re not gonna miss it. You may not register you’re even seeing it but you are, each and every day until it’s a bit like a part of the landscape. And then one day, you wake up and decide you want to focus your reading on Haunted Houses during the month of October, and it’s the first thing that comes to mind, and it makes you wonder if you’re even in control of your life at all, or just some unwitting victim of your environment . . . or ya know, “Hey this looks good!”

And The House That Horror Built IS GOOD, with perhaps only some (IMHO) minor pacing issues towards the end. It’s not a story you’ll be afraid to read when the sun goes down — not like We Used To Live Here or even last week’s Mapping the Interior — but it is still a compelling story with interesting characters and something of a mystery to be solved by the end of the book. All this is sort of wrapped in the trappings of a haunted house story, with the added element of the main character being a horror aficionado whose job it is to clean a famous (and famously reclusive) horror director’s house filled with props and artifacts from his films.

In this way, Henry is able to pay homage to — and tap into nostalgia for — early horror films and genre staples. Interestingly, I think the inclusion of these films also manages to serve as a kind of shorthand for the author, who no longer has to spend a lot of time building suspense or backstory, but can instead reference a relevant movie or book in the genre and get the reader into the right frame of mind even sooner. Gillian Flynn’s The Grownup sort of did something similar with references to The Haunting of Hillhouse, The Woman in White etc.

Of course, no book is simply about one thing, and The House that Horror Built contains more than just spooky costumes, and the occasional twist (one near the middle I though particularly good). The book’s main character, Harry Adams, is not only a horror film aficionado, but also a single mother, and a runaway from an abusively Christian family, poor, and was at one point homeless. So lots to unpack there. And of course as she becomes more entangled in the life of the reclusive film director (Javier Castillo), there is also the complications of fame to navigate, with reporters, paparazzi harassment and stalking.

And to put a little cherry on the top, the story takes place in that sort of limbo period at the tail end of the Covid shutdown when masks and social distancing are still being strictly observed, but some things are starting to reopen. The main character’s son, Gabe, goes to school remotely some days of the week, and in-person other days. Folks are beginning to return to restaurants but not yet with enough frequency to hire a full staff.

These little details are not only some more small challenges for our hero to overcome, but I liked how their inclusion documents that period, and shines a light on the very real challenges that very real people faced during that time, without those struggles taking over the story completely. I’m not sure what the author’s intent in setting the story during that time period was, but I found it a nice addition to a story which was already doing so much so well.

My only real critique of the story, which I mentioned up above, was a bit of the pacing. Early in the book, there were many chapters with strong hooks pulling me into the next chapter, and often I’d wish for just five more minutes with the book to see what happened next (alas the irrefutable bounds of a lunch break bend for no one). However, as the we neared the end of the book, that pull did not feel as strong. Perhaps because so many more elements had been introduced, the main thrust of the story got a bit lost. When the end finally did arrive, it felt a bit abrupt. Like perhaps there should have been another chapter or something just to wrap things up. However, this might just be personal taste.

Give ‘The House that Horror Built’ a Read?

Yes! Despite a somewhat abrupt feeling to the ending, I really did enjoy this one. This author has a talent for writing interesting characters with A LOT going on in their lives and real ability for incorporating many disparate elements into the story. Before reading The House that Horror Built I would not have thought a novel about a Horror film director’s haunted mansion could also be about single-motherhood at the end of a pandemic, AND a lesson in setting a proper work-life balance with boundaries AND about so many other things.

Anyway, that’s all I have for this week! Has anyone already read this one? What was your favorite room in the house? What’s your favorite horror movie?

Please leave your thoughts in the comments! Looking forward to chatting about this one!

Outside My Normal Haunts: Exploring Rez Gothic With ‘Mapping The Interior’

by in Book Reviews, Horror and tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Well we’re in the second week of our spooky era here on A&A and the shivers are starting to (ahem) creep down the spine. Excellent.

I have to admit, this is not my first Stephen Graham Jones story, and actually not even the first time I’ve read Mapping the Interior. According to Goodreads, I originally read this novella back in October of 2021 but never posted a review about it. Looking back at the archive from that time, it’s not particularly hard to see why. I was BUSY.

I had finally released Narmer and The God Beast on Amazon and was trying to talk a little bit about that. I was still deep in my Hugo Era and trying to keep up with everything going on there (I posted reviews of Tracy Deon’s Legendborn, Tochi Onyebuchi’s Riot Baby, and Jordan Ifueko’s Raybearer). And finally, I was trying to push out my own haunted house story for folks subscribing to my newsletter. It ended up being a kind of Steampunk version of Smarthouse which I named Boutilier House.

I’m honestly astonished I had the time to do all of that lol. In any case, I was probably reading a bunch of haunted house stories around that time, trying to get a sense of what had and hadn’t been done before in that space, not unlike the main character of Mapping the Interior, cataloguing the genre from the inside, mapping it out so that I could search it systematically, not for the ghost of my dead father, but for my muse!

Anyway, we’re here to review a novella, not get cute about marketing an old story, so lets get started with that!

Mapping the Interior feels notable for a few reasons. Similar to The Grownup, the story does not open with a description of the house, but with the main character sleep walking. We learn about the house a few pages later, and it also bucks our expectations. It’s modular. At only 1140 square feet (avg in 2025 is 2,200 square feet), it is a far cry from the mansions we’re used to reading about in early Gothic literature, or even the abandoned suburban haunts we see in more modern horror. Also, Jones is Blackfeet Native American and depicts Native American characters within the story.

All of these choices, from the size and character of the house, to the backgrounds of the people living in it, build a picture we’re not used to reading in Haunted House stories. An example of what Wikipedia describes as “. . . Native American Gothic, or Rez Gothic: a niche publishing genre characterized as using fantasy, science fiction, and horror to shed light on racial inequalities . . .” (from the wiki for Stephen Graham Jones)

Mapping the Interior is certainly not the first book to do this, not even in Stephen Graham Jones’ catalog, but it felt representative to me of the power this kind of fiction can have and an important deviation from the classic trappings of a Haunted House story.

But for all the tropes and expectations this novella subverts, it stays true to form in one major element, managing to be both deep and meaningful and a supremely unsettling read (which is what we come to horror for right!).

Part of that feeling of awe and dread the reader experiences — I feel — comes from the perspective the story is told. Our narrator, Junior, is only twelve years old at the time the main part of the story takes place, and there is a type of sureness and certainty in the supernatural that adults just don’t have any longer. And through this perspective we are made to believe what happens is real, we are made to believe in ghosts.

And we’re able to bridge the gap between our own age and a child’s because Junior is simply incredibly well written. Indigo Xix writes:

“. . . this is the kind of child I adore: he is innocent and precocious, noble and self-involved all a the same time. He is, in other words, a real human child, full of the complexities and contradictions that all children have.” – Stephen Graham Jones’s ‘Mapping the Interior – A Review

I could not agree more, or put it any better (hence the quote hahah).

Of course there is also the ghost itself, which walks a perfect tight rope between violent benevolence, and indisputable evil. Through most of the story, the reader is never quite sure just what kind of ghost this is. A helpful spirit? Or a hateful devil?

Also, incredibly (ahem) fleshed out, this ghost just feels like something Jones pulled from a Native American myth or legend. Normally, I know half the fun of a read like this would be tracking down just which legend it came from and just what connections that myth has to the larger culture. Unfortunately, I have a rather shallow knowledge of Native American mythology and am not even sure quite where to start. Even Jones himself isn’t quite sure exactly where this haunt originated from. He tells Paul Semel (of paulsemel.com) that:

“Try as I might, I can’t remember what ghost-stories I might have had in mind when I wrote this. I was watching a lot of Westerns, I recall . . .” – Exclusive Interview: Mapping The Interior Author Stephen Graham Jones

If this is the case, I am perhaps more impressed, since it means that the horrors written on the page are just whatever horrors Jones came up with himself.

Finally, we have the end, which I won’t spoil, but which I would consider a true coda (like in a musical composition). At first, it feels a bit tacked-on, but after some consideration, I feel it is actually perfect because it makes the story NOT perfect. We have a nicely finished story, and then a bit extra which just leaves us a little bit unsettled. I don’t think every story could, or should do this, but I did enjoy this technique here. It just felt right for Mapping the Interior.

Give ‘Mapping The Interior’ a Read?

Absolutely! As a quick but meaningful diversion from the ‘typical’ haunted house story, Mapping the Interior fulfills that need exceedingly well, and as an intro to Native American Gothic, or Rez Gothic, it brings you up to speed in just a short 100-ish pages. I really enjoyed reading from Junior’s perspective, and was able to appreciate just how well this kid is written that his viewpoint alone enables us to really BELIEVE in ghosts, and increasingly fear and dread them as Junior learns to do as the story progresses.

While I couldn’t pick up exactly which myth or legend our haunt comes from, I found myself more impressed as it meant that the author did not have a template from which to draw, but really had to rely on his own creativity and knowledge to keep the reader scared (which I was!). And finally, I enjoyed the ‘coda-like’ nature of the end which left us feeling as unsettled as ever despite getting the ‘good ending’.

That’s all I have for this week! Has anyone read this novella before? Or any other Stephen Graham Jones stories? Which are your favorite? Did you recognize the ghost here from a native myth or legend? Where might we start our search?

Leave your thoughts and feelings in the comments section! I’m looking forward to talking about this one!

See you next time for some more Haunted House adventures! Stay spooky everyone hahah.

More Palahniuk Than Poltergeist: A Look at Gillian Flynn’s ‘The Grownup’

by in Book Reviews, Horror and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

It’s October again, which means I’m officially back in my Haunted House Era until we hit November. Looking back at last October (2024), it seems we were a bit light with only my review of What Moves The Dead scratching this particular itch. Marcus Kliewer’s We Used To Live Here seems like what I should have been reading, but apparently I didn’t get around to it until November. Weird. In any case, it’s probably the last haunted house story I’ve read, and honestly my current favorite.

The plan for THIS October is to read Gillian Flynn’s The Grownup (check), and two more haunted house stories before finishing out the month with a book tag!

Will I actually manage to get all of that reading done? Will I get the reviews written? And will I have a new favorite by the end of this month? Only time will tell.

Let’s get to it!

To my knowledge, this is the first piece of fiction from Gillian Flynn that I’ve actually read. I really enjoyed HBO’s Sharp Objects (though I only got around to watching it within the last year or two), and I knew Gone Girl by reputation though I had never seen the movie or read the book (I am now about 20% through the book).

But somewhere in the back of my mind, I had remembered that Flynn had written a “fantasy story”, which was in one of the George R.R. Martin anthologies (Rogues). I was surprised and honestly kind of curious, but had yet to pursue it. This info was far from my mind when I set out to build my list for this October, but as I was scrolling through my library’s catalog, and came across The Grownup I was again surprised that Flynn had worked on something with a supernatural bent. Finally it clicked that THIS was the fantasy story from Rogues, originally titled What Do You Do?

It’s hard to discuss this short story fully without spoiling most of the twists — I’m learning that Gillian Flynn loves a good twist! — but a few things stand out about it right from the start.

The first thing is the opening. It starts: “I didn’t stop giving hand jobs because I wasn’t good at it.”

Excuse me what?

I’ll refrain from making an ex-squeeze me joke (ok I guess I still made it) but talk about an attention grabbing first line. And about setting the tone hahah. I felt this opening notable for more than just raunchy nature of its content however. First, it’s (ahem) dripping with characterization and hopelessly compelling from that lens. Who is the type of person that introduces themselves this way?

Second, it sets The Grownups apart from other haunted house stories, in that it doesn’t begin with describing THE HOUSE. Perhaps the prime example of what I’m talking about is the quintessential Sherley Jackson classic The Haunting of Hillhouse which manages to give the reader a sense of unease and dread about Hillhouse within the first paragraph.

The Grownups doesn’t bother, it positions its narrator as its most interesting character, gives us her story right away, and then finally talks about the house somewhere around the halfway-point (pg 28 of only 62). In this way, it almost reads more like a Chuck Palahniuk novel than a true horror story (now I want to re-read Haunted). It’s hard to think of this choice as anything but deliberate, especially since Flynn’s narrator — something of a bookworm despite her profession — mentions Haunting of Hillhouse as a favorite read of one of her Johns.

In any case, when the house finally does get introduced, it is sufficiently creepy from the outside, and even more horrific once we meet the people living there. I sort of have to stop here as we begin getting into spoiler territory but just know that once we finally get to Carterhook Manor, the twists start coming and Flynn does a wonderful job destabilizing the story, giving us the illusion of knowing what’s going on and then finding out, time after time, we actually had no idea.

I will admit, my only complaint about the book, is that Flynn does not spend much time attempting to ‘scare’ the reader. It’s just not that type of story. So while I did enjoy this one a lot, I’m not really sure it quite hit the threshold of the ‘spooky’ vibe I was aiming for with my selection this month.

So, Give “The Grownup” a Read?

I liked this one. Flynn knows her craft well, and is able to hook the reader with something unexpected from literally the first sentence of this story. And because I’m a nerd, I enjoyed how this book situates itself within the genre, or I guess how it kind of removes itself from the genre while still managing to incorporate some of its sign posts.

All of that meta commentary happening with mentions of The Haunting of Hillhouse, and Dracula; Rebecca and The Woman In White (I still need to read those last two classics), make it extra fascinating that the story was originally published in what is ostensibly a fantasy anthology (GRRM’s Rogues).

Also, it’s a short one, so there’s little downside here that I can see except that it’s generally not really a spooky book in the way we want in the lead up to Halloween.

That’s all I have for this week! Has anyone read this one before? What parts were your favorite? Would you try ‘cleanse’ Carterhook Manor. By what point would you have nope’d out of there?

That’s all I have for this week! See you next time!

A Gothic Feast with a Side of Humor: A Review of What Feasts at Night by T. Kingfisher

by in Book Reviews, Fantasy and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Another long drive; another audiobook from T. Kingfisher (narrated by Avi Roque). This one was What Feasts At Night, sequel to What Moves The Dead.

I dare say I think I actually liked this one a little better than the first book (I think).

If it is a ‘cover’ version of another short story, as What Moves The Dead was for The Fall Of The House of Usher, I didn’t recognize the original. To my mind this lent the story some authority, as it had to stand on its own merit.

But that does not mean that there was nothing borrowed (every story borrows something). This tale would show receipts to the folklore of a wide array of cultures, but its deepest debt resides in its primary antagonist, the Moroi, which hails from Romanian legend. Western audiences are probably more familiar with the Germanic iterations of this myth, involving the ‘mare’ which is thought to sit on one’s chest while they sleep, causing all sorts of problems (it is from this lore that we have the term ‘nightmare’).

However, while listening, I could not help but think of the Bruxa from Netflix’s The Witcher (S2 E1) “A Grain of Truth“. I had originally misremembered this creature as the Russian Kikimora (slain in the very first episode of that series), but after some googling I confirmed my mistake. Talk about a confluence of cultures, Bruxa appear originally in Portuguese folklore, and then apparently nowadays in this American television show about a Slavic hero originally penned by a Polish author.

Aside: For any interested in the history of Bruxa, I highly recommend reading Anthony Hogg’s Bats Before Bram post on The Vampirologist which details references to Bruxa as examples of the link between bats and vampires before Bram Stoker’s Dracula made such things popular. Fascinating.

Ok. We’ve gone pretty far afield by now (sorry), so let’s get back to What Feasts at Night.

This book still feels firmly in the gothic horror genre, but I loved that Kingfisher manages to weave quite a bit of humor into the story as well. The Terry Pratchett influence I found so prominent in Jackalope Wives is undeniably present, but has shifted from the level of character to that of individual prose with wit delivered by unusual or awkward situations, or sardonic lines from members of the cast.

Also, I enjoyed that Kingfisher chose to return Easton to Galacia for this novella, as it proved to have a wealth of interesting culture to examine, some of which was quirky and humorous, while other parts more serious and subversive.

On the more serious/subversive side of the continuum, we’re presented with another new set of pronouns, this time specifically for priests. Perhaps after being introduced to soldier-specific pronouns in WMTD, the effect is somewhat lessened, but I thought it deepened the world and made the story more interesting overall.

On the quirky/humorous side: all of the cultural concessions and asides centered around Galacia’s liquor being complete shit.

All of this was managed with deft skill, somehow managing to get presented in a way that is instructive and fun for the reader, but not POV breaking for Easton who grew up in Galacia and ostensibly knows it all already.

Finally, I think there is some interesting character work going on here with Easton’s history in the war, and all the ways in which it effects him throughout the story. What commentary is being given I’m still unsure, but it seems intriguing and certainly rounds out an already loaded sequel.

Give ‘What Feasts at Night‘ a Read?

Yup! While assumedly not a retelling like WMTD (or even Thornhedge), What Feasts at Night still brings plenty of myth and history to the table with the inclusion of the Moroi, a firmly gothic storyline, accompanied by an almost Pratchettesque humor, which softens the characteristic creeping dread of a horror novella, but never extinguishes it.

And this is only just the foundation of what’s on offer in WFaN, with much more to perceive and enjoy surrounding gender, and post traumatic stress. Despite all that I’ve written above, I keep wondering if there is some important piece of this story that I missed, or forgot to mention. Which to me is always the sign of a great story.

That’s all I’ve got for this week. Has anyone read this one yet? What were your thoughts? Your favorite part? Anything thematic I forgot to mention? As always please leave your thoughts in the comments. I’m excited to talk about this one!

Until next time . . .

Marcus Kliewer’s “We Used to Live Here”: The Scariest Book I’ve Read, Period.

by in Book Reviews, Horror and tagged , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

One hundred percent, THIS was the book I should have been reading back in October instead of Unholy Child. This book is SPOOKY! Part haunted-house book, part . . . psychological thriller? We Used to Live Here is subtle in its genre definition, and even more subtle in its genre subversions.

Really its subtle in everything it does. You think you know what is going on, and even when you pick up on inconsistencies, you never really know what they mean. Part of me wants to spend the time reading this book over and over again trying to understand Kliewer’s methods a writer, but the bigger part of me doesn’t want to ruin the effect.

I did copy down a few sentences from We Used to Live Here as examples of interesting and novel descriptions. A creepy ghost does not simply move across the living room too quickly, it does so with “arachnid speed”. As someone who has had to kill a lot of spiders since moving into my house (I probably need to get that looked at), this really resonated with me. Now imagine how much trouble you’d be in if something human sized moved that quickly (feels like cheating honestly lol).

I’m just gonna drop the full line, cause I feel it really shows the level of craftsmanship that Kliewer brings to his writing:

“It sat there, pin-straight frozen, for one, two, three seconds, and then, with arachnid speed, it darted rightward, vanishing into the distant shadows.” – pg 241.

Yup, time to GTFO!

Other readers who are more experienced with the horror genre might think differently, but I didn’t find much in the way of cliche or common tropes in Kliewer’s work. Most of the situations the main character — Eve — finds herself in felt fresh and genuinely creepy in their own unique way. I’ve never really had a problem with ants . . . I might now. I never really think much about reading or watching scary stories right before bed. This book made me reconsider that position (ultimately I probably still will).

My only gripe with the book, was unfortunately how it ended. Without spoiling it, I’ll just say I think I wanted something with a little more catharsis. But ultimately, the ending that was written is still a “good” ending, well written and because of everything we’ve read before, not wholly unexpected though I might still say it’s a twist. However, I think I just wanted something different.

Give We Used to Live Here a Read?

Absolutely. This is probably one of the scariest books I’ve read, period. I loved the kind of creeping dread prevalent throughout the entirety. And I especially appreciated Kliewer’s mastery of craft on the sentence level, as well his ability to keep the reader hooked chapter after chapter.

I may have written a different ending myself, but ultimately I think the ending that we get is what is right for the book.

That’s all I have for this week. Has anyone read this book yet? What was the scariest part? Please leave your thoughts in the comments! Looking forward to talking about this one!

Until next time . . .

Improving Upon a Classic: A Review of ‘What Moves the Dead’

by in Book Reviews, Horror and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

T. Kingfisher is starting to become something of a familiar face on this blog with a review of Thornhedge last week and Jackalope Wives before that.

What Moves The Dead perhaps shares some kinship with Thornhedge in that it is also a kind of retelling, but not of a fairytale or myth like we might expect, but of a horror classic, Edgar Allan Poe’s The Fall Of The House of Usher.

I’ll admit that although the review of that story appeared before this one did on the blog, I had read most of this story before starting on Poe. In reality, I was a solid 25% of the way through before it occurred to me that the two were related, and about 70% through before I decided I’d better stop and read Poe first.

Whenever I come across these types of retellings, the kind which so obviously share their roots in a previous piece of literature, I cannot help but compare the two and look for deeper meanings. The correlation between H.G. Wells’ Island of Dr. Moreau and Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s The Daughter of Dr. Moreau seems fairly obvious, and Moreno-Garcia’s intent for the revision more so (similar subversions can be found in the realm of Greek Mythology in Madeline Miller’s Song of Achilles and Galatea).

Kingfisher seems to approach Poe’s work more from a place of curiosity and wanting to clarify much of the ambiguity in the original. She explains it on the Tor Presents: Voyage Into Genre podcast (S2E1 @ 27:27min):

“And I happened on Usher and I was like, I haven’t reread any Poe in a while. And I read Fall of the House of Usher and it’s obsessed with rotting vegetation and fungus. And it’s really short. And they don’t explain hardly anything. And the narrator is frankly kind of a lousy friend because – or bad in a crisis, one of the two, because when Madeline Usher rises from the dead, her brother screams falls down and the narrator just runs out of the house, which then collapses. Okay: running out of the house was a good thing cause the house was collapsing, but it, you stop check for a pulse on his friend who, you know, might have just had a bad shock and fainted. He’s like, Nope, dude, is definitely dead and Madeline Usher is, you know, wandering around, obviously having been buried alive and was clearly not dead but no, he’s just gonna run out of the house and not check anybody for a pulse or call a doctor. And I’m like, this guy is terrible at a crisis. And also I wanted to know what was wrong with, Madeline Usher because you get buried alive, that is a problem. And so I started reading about catalepsy which is what it was diagnosed as at the time and also fungus, there was just so much about fungus and I’m like, okay, obviously these two must be linked somehow.”

I would say ‘obsessed’ (with fungus) is perhaps overstating slightly. The word fungus is only mentioned twice in Poe’s work (same as the word opium) but one of those times is in italics and fairly close to the word ‘sentience’, so it isn’t hard to see how Kingfisher may have sparked upon that and wanted to see where it went.

A small thing, but one which stood out to me as interesting which ties back pretty directly to the original was Roderic’s musicianship. In the original, he plays the guitar, and its discussed that he improvises over a particular tune, ‘Von Weber’s Last Waltz’ (actually written by Carl Gottlieb Reißiger not Carl Maria von Weber). This piece was originally written for the piano, and apparently only started to be performed on the guitar AFTER the success of Poe’s short story.

Kingfisher doesn’t mention a particular tune (that I can recall), but does put Roderic on the piano and in a way, kind of ‘fixes’ the original work.

All of these interactions with Poe’s original story are kind of fun, and interesting to consider while reading, but I felt that the parts of What Moves the Dead that shined the brightest, were the parts that were unique to this retelling. Kingfisher mentioned (above) how short the original is, and while I wouldn’t say WMtD is long by any means, the added work pays off immensely in the areas of Character, and Worldbuilding.

We hardly get to know anyone in Poe’s original. The narrator is just a vehicle and Madeline isn’t even given any lines. Roderic is the character we understand best, with the actual house itself being a kind of quasi second.

Kingfisher’s version workers wonders in changing this, fleshing out a whole backstory for the narrator along with an invented country, Galacia, for them to hail from, unique in the quirks of its language which allow for many more pronouns than English. Madeline plays a larger role as well and so does the house physician. The house itself actually manages a kind of speech (through Madeline) and presents something of a moral dilemma towards the end.

And despite all of these added elements, Kingfisher still manages to continue — or really improve upon — the kind of creeping dread prevalent in the original.

One final thing to consider is this novella’s contention as a 2023 Hugo finalist in the novella category. I haven’t yet read any of the other finalists aside from Where the Drowned Girls Go (sadly unreviewed here on A&A), which ended up winning the award. For what it’s worth, having only read two so far, I think I enjoyed What Moves the Dead a bit more as I may have hit some kind of saturation limit on Wayward Children books.

Give What Moves the Dead a Read?

Yes! I would say certainly give this one a shot. If you’re worried about not having read The Fall of the House of Usher (or not having read it recently), don’t worry. I almost think the story is more enjoyable on its own without the comparisons. Certainly the parts which I liked most about the tale were those not included in the original, mostly the worldbuilding surrounding Galacia, and the narrator’s backstory and use of invented pronouns.

I’m seeing the that there is already a sequel out: What Feasts at Night. I’m looking forward to it already and wondering if it will be another retelling, and if so, of what?

That’s all I have this week. How do we feel about retellings like this? Leave your thoughts in the comment section!

See you next time.

Stick With Horror: “The Fall of the House of Usher” Restores (my) Faith in Poe’s Prowess

by in Short Fiction! and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

After some disappointment with The Purloined Letter a few weeks ago, I was wary of reading more of Edgar Allan Poe’s detective stories. He is highly regarded as a poet, but I don’t have a strong inclination towards poetry and I thought I might again be setting myself up for failure.

So I picked the third thing Poe is well known for: Horror.

The Fall of the House of Usher was most prominent in my mind (likely because of the popularity of Mike Flanagan’s Netflix adaptation which I have not yet seen), and I figured it as good of a place to start as any.

There’s little enough writing about horror on this blog (perhaps something I should change?), but TFotHoU fits in well with what’s here. It isn’t really a haunted-house story per say, but like many great HH stories, the house feels like a character all its own. Poe spends a lot of time on its atmosphere, and we get a strong sense that there is definitely something ‘wrong’ about the house though it’s impossible to say exactly what (assuredly as Poe intended).

One possibility which seems notable as potentially a piece of commentary by the author (though I don’t have the knowledge of history to prove it), is that Usher’s line does not seem to branch out. Incest is never mentioned, but it is said that there are no other Ushers aside from those living in the house, and that it has basically always been so. Roderic and Madeline live together, and it seems like they have for many years . . .

Incest is not uncommon in Gothic Literature with the trope presenting itself in the first Gothic novel ever written: Horace Walpole’s 1764 novel The Castle of Otranto. Whether correctly, or incorrectly, I’ve always read its inclusion in the genre as a kind of commentary on the aristocracy, and a condemnation of a system of governing that has more to do with marriage (and consummating marriages) than with actual ability to lead.

It seems a relevant topic for English writers (like Walpole) or any living ‘beneath the thumb’ of monarchy. However, as an American, I’m not sure what Poe’s interest in the subject would have been. Perhaps it was something a little more personal.

In The Fall of the House of Usher and Other Tales (Signet 2006) author Stephen Marlowe provides the following in his introduction to describe the resentment felt towards Poe by once-friend-now-enemy biographer Rufus Griswold:

“Poe, his executor wrote, was a vicious, unscrupulous type who, among other indecencies, slept with his aunt, who also happened to be his mother-in-law.” TFotHoUaOT pg. 15-16.

I haven’t yet read all the way through Griswold’s infamous “Memoir of the Author” in which such accusations (and apparently many others) were purported to have been written, but it is interesting nonetheless as it seems to be a divisive issue among scholars.

In Friend and Enemies: Women in the Life of Edgar Allan Poe, Richard P. Benton writes:

“I find it impossible, however, to “fear,” as the late, great Professor did, that the nasty barb Griswold and English directed at Mrs. Clemm might be “true” (Mabbott 1: 456)”

Of course Griswold’s ‘Memoir’ would not have come out until after Poe’s death, and The Fall of the House of Usher was written and published in 1839 during the author’s life. So what reason would Poe have for including incest within the story? Was The Castle of Otranto (already 75 years old) an influence on Poe, or perhaps some other gothic work which Poe mimicked without thought? Was slander about Poe and his aunt (Maria Poe Clemm) already being circulated even in 1839, and what could have caused such gossip to begin with? And was TFotHoU Poe’s response? Or perhaps he was working through something unrequited which Griswold seized upon to diminish Poe, and glorify himself after Poe’s death.

I’m sure I haven’t the slightest idea what it could mean, and ultimately it seems a question better left to scholars and historians than some rando on the internet (ahem me), but it is interesting to consider, and I’m hopeful that I’ll have time someday to track down a more “definitive” biography of Edgar Allan Poe, and perhaps get a more “definitive” answer.

If all of this was not enough to think on, one other aspect of The Fall of the House of Usher which I think bears consideration: music. Writer, poet, and musician John Horne has written about Poe’s use of Von Weber’s Last Waltz, noting:

“. . . Poe references music to help him paint a picture of Roderick Usher’s descent into madness. Roderick plays long improvised dirges, songs of mourning and death usually played at funerals, on his acoustic guitar. Roderick improvises over von Weber’s Last Waltz.”

The post goes on to describe how the tune is mistakenly attributed to Carl Maria von Weber, while it was actually written by Carl Gottlieb Reißiger and that Roderick plays the tune on the guitar, although it is traditionally a tune for the piano (links to piano and guitar performances are included!).

But I’m hung up on — and was while reading the story too — the improvisational aspect of Roderick’s playing. Did classical musicians improvise like this back in the day? Or could this somehow be related to (very) early jazz (which is something I’ve always associated with the emergence of big bands in the 1920s long after this short story was published)

Again I’m uncertain. More questions I don’t yet have answers to (but maybe should research for a later post!).

Give The Fall of the House of Usher a Read?

Yes! I’ll admit that I was hesitant to take on another Poe story after my disappointment with The Purloined Letter, but I found that my experience reading The Fall of the House of Usher was almost nothing like that previous attempt. In this story at least, Poe seems to live up to the hype surrounding his prowess as an author in the Horror genre.

There is plenty in TFotHoU to give one the creeps but the house itself stands out, as well as inferences of incest between those in the Usher family, made all the more haunting by divisive connections to Poe’s lived experience. Finally, I appreciated some of the more artistic inclusions to this story — specifically the use of music — and found the mistakes surrounding them interesting as well as thought provoking.

That’s all I have for this week. Has anyone read The Fall of the House of Usher before? What did you think? Is it your favorite Poe story? Or is there another one which is better? And what of Poe’s biography? Could the allegations be true? Let me know your thoughts in the comments.

Looking forward to talking about this one! See you all next time!

A Home Run for ‘Just Like Home’

by in Book Reviews, Horror and tagged , , , , , | 3 Comments

Wow, what a creepy story.

It’s nearly Halloween, and much to my own chagrin, I’ve almost completely ignored that fact for most of October.

No longer!

We’ll have reviews of spooky books, and we’ll have them now!!

While horror isn’t my go-to genre, I’m not completely new to it either. In my youth (or really this blog’s youth), I had a ravenous hunger for zombie stories and I gorged myself on the likes of Appalachian Undead, the O.Z. (original zombie?) W.B. Seabrook’s Dead Men Working in the Cane Fields, and World War Z.

Since I tried to write my own haunted house story last year (check out a preview of Boutilier House, and get a glimpse into my revision process) I’ve been focused in that area (side trips into whatever genre you’d put Ring Shout into notwithstanding). Last week, I was somewhat unimpressed by Haunting of Hillhouse.

But this week, I was blown away by Sarah Gailey’s Just Like Home.

In terms of “genre”, Gailey seems to be able to do whatever the fuck they want, whenever the fuck they want it. My introduction to their writing came from Magic for Liars (sadly not reviewed on this blog) which completely thrilled me with its combination of a Harry Potter-esque wizard school setting, and a Jessica Jones style protagonist. Plus it contains one of my favorite surprises of who-dunnit in a mystery so far.

Then I read Upright Women Wanted (again woefully unreviewed on this blog), a different kind of western, filled with librarians (always a plus for me) who ride around on horseback like cowboys, nontraditional gender rolls and pronouns, and a genuinely heart swelling romance.

Just Like Home shows Gailey’s ability to write horror is nothing to scoff at either. The premise alone — daughter of a serial killer, who’s tried to forget and repress her past must come home to close up her mother’s estate while Mom is still alive, but literally on her death bead — does not even need the supernatural or fantastic element to draw a reader in, but apparently more is also more, so let’s add a skeevy artist and make the house haunted too. Why not?

Despite so many elements to juggle, the story feels tightly written and is both scary and psychologically thrilling. Vera’s arc is perhaps not a traditional hero’s journey, but it felt perfect for her circumstance, the family in which she was raised and her lived experience as every character in this book is a boat load of walking contradictions. Vera’s father is a serial killer, and yet seemingly not a psycho or sociopath, as he is able to feel and show an intense love for Vera (and assumedly at one point her mother Daphne).

I still don’t know what to make of Vera’s mother. Does she hate Vera? Did she love her? She was clearly jealous of Francis Crowder’s (Vera’s father) affection for Vera, but could her behavior also have been rational in the situation given the type of person Vera might become under her father’s care? Also the house . . .

There is so much in this book that feels like it should not go together, and yet it does.

My only difficulty in reading this gripping tale was unfortunately its use of misandry. I’m not opposed to characters who hate men (lord knows there’s enough misogynists in fiction we could use a few misandrists if only for variety), but it felt somehow awkward in this story. Gailey’s other works are steeped in themes of identity politics, so when a main character says she ‘doesn’t date men’ it’s natural to assume that perhaps she’s a lesbian and this is something that adds meaning to her interactions with other characters of any gender. When that character is admiring the physique of a male bartender, or the overtly sexual artist James Duval, and trying to push away urges, it might be natural to think the MC is bi, and this too changes our interpretation of the character.

When that character is being told as a child, “Boys are just like girls, in almost every way. But men … men are demons, Vee.”, it becomes harder to reconcile what is going on. Is she just deeply repressed? Or are the urges she’s combating even sexual? Maybe a bit sexual and a bit something else? (I’ve been watching the Jeffery Dahmer Netflix special which has taught me those things are apparently not mutually exclusive lol).

In most pieces of fiction, I’m not opposed to, and often enjoy ambiguity. The author should present a story and it is up to us as readers to interpret the meaning behind those words. But I think I could have used a little help with this one.

So It Was Good?

Oh, it was great. Scary, thrilling, and (to me) an unexpected and satisfying resolution. Sarah Gailey again shows themselves to be an extraordinary storyteller, no matter the genre. The story of this family alone is enough to be a great story, but Gailey gives the reader more, adding in the haunted house element and some puzzling issues of identity which will have you pondering long after you’ve finished reading.

If you haven’t already, go give this one a read!

Has anyone already had the pleasure? What did you think? What was the scariest part? Who was your favorite character? Please let me know in the comments, I’m really looking forward to discussing this one!

Until next time!!

Good Enough to Inspire Others to Greatness: ‘The Haunting of Hillhouse’

by in Book Reviews, Horror and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Wow, where has October gone?

It’s already the 21st, which means Halloween is right around the corner, and I haven’t done a single spooky thing on this blog.

How dare I?

Well, what better way to get into the spirit of the holiday, than to review an old classic.

Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hillhouse hardly needs an introduction. Published in 1959, this story is thought to be one of the best haunted house stories ever written. It was a National Book award finalist back 1960 and Steven King wrote about its main character that:

“… Eleanor Vance is surely the finest character to come out of this new American gothic tradition”.

King S, Danse Macabre, pg 268. 1981

It’s been made into two movies, a play, a Netflix mini series, and was recently (ish) alluded to in an author’s note as a sort of (anti) inspiration for a 2021 Hugo nominated short story, Open House on Haunted Hill by John Wiswell.

Clearly, there is something special about Hill House.

With accolades like that, it seemed to me that this book should have been a slam dunk for me in terms of enjoyment; however, I was left stunned while reading this book, by just how much I WASN’T enjoying it.

Whaaat?

Yes, you read that correctly. I DIDN’T enjoy Haunting of Hill House.

Why though?

In some respects, I believe my dislike for this novel may actually stem from all the hype it has received over the years. Perhaps there is no real novel that can live up to the concept of this novel that is currently circulating the literary zeitgeist. Perhaps I was set up for disappointment (TIL there is a name for this feeling called Hype Backlash).

Perhaps it may be that times have changed, and what was impressive in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s no longer impresses us. Or maybe the tropes and techniques pioneered in this novel are so influential that now they are completely pervasive, and they seem commonplace and trite to modern readers (the whole Seinfeld is UnFunny thing).

Or perhaps Jackson was just an inconsistent wordsmith . . .

The Writing Excuses Podcast had an entire episode devoted to the craft of just the opening lines of Haunting of Hillhouse. Indeed it is quite an opening:

“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.

Jackson S, The Haunting of Hill House, pg 1. 1959.

I won’t disagree with anything the writers on the podcast said, that is one hell of an opening. It really brings you into the world of the story, and sets up your expectations for the rest of the story, not only in terms of what will happen throughout, but also for the level of craftmanship and precision dedicated to the prose.

And then we have:

“I should have turned back at the gate, Eleanor thought. The house had caught her with an atavistic turn in the pit of the stomach, and she looked along the lines of its roofs, fruitlessly endeavoring to locate the badness, whatever dwelt there; her hands turned nervously cold so that she fumbled, trying to take out a cigarette, and beyond everything else she was afraid, listening to the sick voice inside her which whispered, Get away from here, get away.”

Jackson S, The Haunting of Hill House, pg 24. 1959.

I get hung up on a few things in this passage. The first is the use of “the badness”. I can kind of see that perhaps it is a kind of childish or simple term (maybe a bit primal?); perhaps even a term that would come immediately to mind when someone was actually afraid and didn’t have the proper words to express that feeling, but it still just feels like Jackson didn’t have the proper way to express a feeling of fear.

The next thing that stuck out was “nervously cold”. People get nervous, and hands can be cold. I don’t think hands can get nervously cold. Personally simply stating that her hands felt cold and then showing Eleanor fumbling for the cigarettes, we get the idea that she is nervous.

This same telling vs showing happens again (and throughout the book), when we’re told “…beyond everything else, she was afraid.” Again, seeing Eleanor’s actions we can guess that she is afraid.

In all, these types of descriptions were not too terrible, but after the expectations set by the opening line (and all the study of it), they did stand out to me and often took me out of the action of the story.

I had a few more complaints, but unfortunately I did not have enough time to write down the quotes I wanted to use as evidence (plus I have probably already hurled enough insult at a classic for one day), so I won’t be able to go into them here, but suffice to say, written in another time or not, I felt most of the dialogue in Hill House was nearly incomprehensible.

What I felt Hill House got right, was the environment as antagonist trope. This house is deeply uncanny to experience (as we saw above) from the very first line.

Did it Live Up to the Hype?

For me, no. The Haunting of Hill House is certainly an interesting book to research and learn about (and for writers perhaps to study), and it certainly brought us forward in terms of ‘Place as Antagonist’.

However, for me, the actual text itself often seemed to pale in comparison to the lofty accolades proclaimed by genuinely amazing writers. I still have much to learn (and read) about the horror genre and haunted house sub-genre specifically, but I think in many ways, this was much like (IMHO) some of the earliest genre fiction (detective, sci-fi, and superhero pulps), something that was just good enough to inspire others to greatness.

Have any of you all read this one? What did you think? Was I too harsh? Please let me know in the comments. I’m curious to hear your thoughts!