The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

 

My dad recommended The Haunting of Hill House to me. I remembered that he had read it six times because we were visiting my family in Russia and it was the only book he had in English. At first, I thought that the book must have been excellent for him to read it so many times, but I was wrong. This was the most boring book I have ever read! I usually read in the evenings, but I could not read more than five pages at once without dozing off out of boredom. 

You would think that a psychological thriller about a woman slowly losing her mind in a haunted house would have you at the edge of your seat, but I found otherwise. The plot starts very slowly following Eleanor who takes her sister's car to drive off to Hill House as a part of an anthropologist's experiments to test supernatural occurrences. The house was home to several untimely deaths of residents who are now said to haunt it, but the most supernatural thing that happens in the whole book is some unexplained banging on the wall at night. Eleanor slowly goes crazy throughout the novel. By the end, she feels she has no place in the world except for Hill House, causing her to take extreme actions in the face of her loneliness. I suppose that the true fear of the book if you can call it that, is not the house, but what the preconceived notion of it being haunted can do to the mind of an already mentally unstable person. Spoiler, the end of the story, takes a dark turn for Eleanor…

The book was published in 1959 by Shirley Jackson, but since then there have been multiple movie adaptations. Because I wanted to torcher myself even more and because it is one of my dad's favorite films, I watched the first movie produced. I found it slightly more entertaining than the book even though it stayed true to almost every word in the novel. It was interesting to see how movies were made before special effects. The film was in black and white and many parts that nowadays would use special effects relied on the viewer to fill in the exact events for themselves, which added to the overall horror effect of not really knowing what is going on. 

As I have already stated I did not like this book, but I think some people may enjoy it. You just need to have the patients for a slow plot with not too many unexpected turns. My dad begs to differ about my analysis and says that the book described a neurotic individual in detail. That being said, I can see why my dad was fond of reading it in Russia in my grandfather's house. My grandfather's house somewhat resembles Hill House with stained glass, twisting stairways, bear rugs, dark intricate carved wood, and minimal lighting. I guess where you read I book can greatly change the overall experience. Let me know if you have read The Haunting of Hill House, or if you think you would.

Thanks for reading,

Sasha G.