The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
Sunday 7 February 2010
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Dr Montague, an anthropologist whose true passion is the supernatural, rents the supposedly cursed titular building in order to investigate the existence of psychic disturbances. His guests are the house's heir, Luke, and two women with previous experience of the paranormal, Theodora and Eleanor. The group bond almost immediately, but fear is a corrosive emotion and the house's manifestations soon cause cracks to appear.
Jackson treats her material – which could be reduced to penny dreadful stuff in less deft hands – with great skill and subtlety. A background cast of characters adds a welcome note of comedy: the housekeeper, Mrs Dudley, is possessed of a limited repertoire of conversation ("We couldn't hear you, even in the night. No one could… in the night. In the dark"), which she intones in a not entirely straight-faced manner.
The horror inherent in the novel does not lie in Hill House (monstrous though it is) or the events that take place within it, but in the unexplored recesses of its characters' – and its readers' – minds. This is perhaps why it remains the definitive haunted house story.
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