Spooky yet thought provoking

The scariest monsters are those you don't see explicitly, and imagine in your own head. This book lets you do that brilliantly and leaves you with a satisfied feeling at the end, although probably not the end you were predicting. The characters work well as a small but varied bunch with little in common, exploring the house and its mysteries. I liked the slow, but not too slow, increasing feeling of unease, and wondering what the nest escalation will be. If you like ghost or supernatural stories at all, then this is a must for your library.

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1 person found this helpful

meh

glad it was a short story. found it pretty boring, wouldn't class it as scary

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Good atmosphere and an interesting idea for the house.

It was okay, a little spooky but not as scary as I would have imagined. more sad than anything.

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Unsettling and spooky story excellently performed

I like to listen to something spooky at Halloween and have wanted to read this for a while. What I like about this story is the fact that so much is left up to the reader to decide. The narrator is so obviously unreliable that it's never clear if we can trust a thing she says. Who has seen what? Is everyone in the house experiencing the same thing? Hill House itself has a strong presence as a character and even the dimensions and angles of the rooms seem to be inherently evil. I was reminded a bit of H.P. Lovecraft's non-Euclidean geometry in Dreams of the Witch House (one for the fans there).

If you've seen the truly dreadful film with Liam Neeson and Catherine Zeta-Jones, please rest assured that it bears almost no relation to this source material.

Bernadette Dunne is a great narrator who manages to portray the apparent malice of the house and really seems to get inside Eleanor's head.

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25 people found this helpful

Wanted to read after seeing stage show

Enjoyed this novel, bit different from the stage show I saw at Liverpool Playhouse but still good. Absorbing psychological horror.. Just don't listen to close to bedtime as I'm convinced my dreams were more vivid and anxiety laden as a result!

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A bit of a disappointment.

I had meant to read/listen this book for a long time and after the Netflix series from this book and my love for the movie The Haunting (1999) I was excited to start this book. However I found the story somewhat flat and I lost interest very quickly. I do think the film and TV series outshine this original story.

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Fantastic classic ghost story

I've seen the film but it doesn't capture the inner world of the protagonist. At times felt chilled and spooked, as a ghost story should provide. But the psychological possession is a masterpiece for this genre
Narrator carried the story without overdoing the performance. I read the mixed reviews and very glad I decided to give it a go.

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A classic

I think a number of reveiwers here have failed to grasp this story. The characters are perfectly beleivable, one of the things I find interesting about it is reaching for the mindset of the time period, and the subtleties of interaction in a world with so few distractions from conversation, that our modern world has lost.
Also it's a mistake to call this a psychological horror, the phenomena here are overtly supernatural, even if the true heart of the terror is watching the cleverly evoked monstrous forces manipulate the claustrophobia of a woman desperately trying to escape a life unlived. Those same forces mirror the empty life she is desperately trying to escape, and the inability of her new 'freinds' to understand her or the real danger of the house is a reflection of this.
She lies to convince them she's a real person with a life, so they'll accept her, but this prevents them understanding how desperate and vulnerable she is, just as it stops her truly communicating with them.
It's all cleverly enmeshed, and terribly sad, but every element feeds into making a very dark peice of supernatural fiction.

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A traditional slow burning ghost story

I feel like those who come here after the TV series might be disappointed. This is a very slow creeping story relying on the narrator and her increasingly unstable perceptions. Worth a read.

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Expected more.

I found this book to be well written in places, but meandering in others. It works more as a character study than a horror novel, so if you approach this book expecting Mike flanagan you will be disappointed. Worth reading for the historical value and the well developed characters, none more so than Hill House itself, which is described in vivid detail and presented as a character in its own right, but not the ghost story I had hoped for.

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