The Haunting of Hill House

Spoilers

Basic plot summary, four people move into a haunted house for the summer; Eleanor, Theodora, Luke, and Dr. Montague.  I loved this book and I am so very sad that I saw the movie first many years ago.  The entire time I was reading I saw Catherine Zeta-Jones in my head as Theodora.

If I were going to be a horror writer, I would want to write like Shirley Jackson. Her descriptions of the house and her creation of atmosphere, of psychological and emotional tension are all superb. In fact, the beginning of this book might be one of the best I have ever read.

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...

This next line also spoke to me. "Hill House, she thought, you're as hard to get into as heaven." There is something subtly creepy about this sentence. We know the house is evil already (by pg 29), we know from pg 1 that it is not sane, and yet, Eleanor's reaction is a comparison to heaven. An example of antithetic parallelism if I have ever seen one (even if we aren't strictly reading poetry).

Another example of how opposition creates horror in this little book.

Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut.

This is a description of a house in order, of an aura of rightness, of correctness. Instead, inside is chaos and madness -- the order itself, the architecture, the clean lines we soon learn are a bit off.  Not skewed in any obvious way, but faintly almost indistinctly except on a subconscious level.  Askew in a way that is perhaps uncanny or to reference Freud more directly un-home-ly:

An instance where something can be familiar, yet foreign at the same time, resulting in a feeling of it being uncomfortably strange

Actually, I find the dialogue in this book to be quite uncanny also.  It often seemed as if the characters were having a normal conversation, just chatting among friends, but in fact the things they would say were so very strange, not quite right but not quite nonsense. 

However, I did find the end to be rather flat.  I am perfectly thrilled to be horrified sans blood, gore, and guts, but I came upon the last words thinking "oh, so this is the end."  I do like how Jackson concludes with the paragraph that began the novel, bringing the book and the house full circle.  What has stood for 80 years will continue to stand for 80 more.  I get that.  I also sense that the title of the book could easily be The Haunting of Eleanor Vance.  I just wish Eleanor had devolved in a more dramatic way.  Clearly, for the last 100 pages or so (well, half the book I suppose), Eleanor is losing her mind.  However, it is all so surreal that, for me, the moment of her death did not quite leave an impact (no pun intended) upon me.  Alas, I fear I am not explaining myself very well.  

Finally, I could have done without Mrs. Montague.  She interrupted the flow of the story.  If I thought about this more -- I literally finished the book about 30 minutes ago -- I might be inclined to forgive Jackson for this.  Perhaps, Mrs. Montague's disruptive influence served a narrative purpose.  I hesitate to think she was just there as a plot device to piss off the ghosts, but that is how I am feeling at the moment.  

But those are minor issues.  Shirley Jackson is an amazing writer, and I am also very sad that I have not read her in more depth before this moment (my only previous encounter being The Lottery).