Tag Archives: Shirley Jackson

A Surreal Estate Book Tag!

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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!

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!