The Haunting of Hill House (Penguin Classics)

published	November 28th 2006 by Penguin Classics
first published	1959
binding	Paperback
isbn	0143039989 (isbn13: 9780143039983)
pages	208
description	Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House has unnerved readers since its original publication in 1959. A tale of subtle, psychological terro...more [close] Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House has unnerved readers since its original publication in 1959. A tale of subtle, psychological terror, it has earned its place as one of the significant haunted house stories of the ages. Eleanor Vance has always been a loner--shy, vulnerable, and bitterly resentful of the 11 years she lost while nursing her dying mother. "She had spent so long alone, with no one to love, that it was difficult for her to talk, even casually, to another person without self-consciousness and an awkward inability to find words." Eleanor has always sensed that one day something big would happen, and one day it does. She receives an unusual invitation from Dr. John Montague, a man fascinated by "supernatural manifestations." He organizes a ghost watch, inviting people who have been touched by otherworldly events. A paranormal incident from Eleanor's childhood qualifies her to be a part of Montague's bizarre study--along with headstrong Theodora, his assistant, and Luke, a well-to-do aristocrat. They meet at Hill House--a notorious estate in New England. Hill House is a foreboding structure of towers, buttresses, Gothic spires, gargoyles, strange angles, and rooms within rooms--a place "without kindness, never meant to be lived in...." Although Eleanor's initial reaction is to flee, the house has a mesmerizing effect, and she begins to feel a strange kind of bliss that entices her to stay. Eleanor is a magnet for the supernatural--she hears deathly wails, feels terrible chills, and sees ghostly apparitions. Once again she feels isolated and alone--neither Theo nor Luke attract so much eerie company. But the physical horror of Hill House is always subtle; more disturbing is the emotional torment Eleanor endures. Intense, literary, and harrowing, The Haunting of Hill House belongs in the same dark league as Henry James's classic ghost story, The Turn of the Screw. --Naomi Gesinger [close]
date added	02-10-07 edit book

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Brooke rated it:

06/12/07

bookshelves: 2007, classics

Read in January, 2007

recommends it for: fans of psychological horror

I'm a huge fan of books where houses are one of the characters (see: House of Leaves, for example). I'd recently Tivoed The Haunting (the 1999 version) and was annoyed that while there were some good underlying ideas, the execution was cheesy and over-the-top. While browsing the horror aisle at a used bookstore, I saw Shirley Jackson's original novel, which is considered a classic ghost story, and decided to give it a try in hopes that it would retain the good parts of the movie and eliminate th...more I'm a huge fan of books where houses are one of the characters (see: House of Leaves, for example). I'd recently Tivoed The Haunting (the 1999 version) and was annoyed that while there were some good underlying ideas, the execution was cheesy and over-the-top. While browsing the horror aisle at a used bookstore, I saw Shirley Jackson's original novel, which is considered a classic ghost story, and decided to give it a try in hopes that it would retain the good parts of the movie and eliminate the Hollywood cheese.

In short, The Haunting of Hill House is about a scientist who invites people who had previously experienced paranormal events to stay in Hill House and help him scientifically prove that it is haunted. It was written back in 1959, so a lot of the dialogue and ideas seems outdated. I was able to overlook this most of the time, but sometimes I just had to raise an eyebrow and thank the heavens I didn't live in such a conservative time.

While the movie relies on in-your-face scares, such as phantoms floating down from the ceiling, the book goes in the opposite direction and keeps the horror mostly psychological. The supernatural events at times seem to be taking place solely in the main character, Eleanor's head; much of the book is ambiguous and leaves it up to the reader to determine whether the hauntings are real, or if Eleanor is going insane, and whether the house is the blame for her insanity, or if she's finally breaking down after an isolated life. The supernatural events are also only half described; a character sees something and screams for everyone to run, but the "something" is never described. In some ways it has a Jaws-like effect of heightening the terror, but on the other hand, left me desiring more.

The final plot twist in the 1999 movie version regarding why Eleanor was invited to Hill House was not included in the book, which disappointed me. I was looking forward to reading a better-executed version of the concept, but it definitely would have been at odds with the subtle and ambiguous style of the rest of the novel.

The Haunting of Hill House is a quick read for anyone looking for something creepy, but if you like a little bit more certainty to your novels, it might be a little too draw-your-own-conclusions for you. I'll probably reread it again in the future, now that all the expectations I had due to the movie have been stripped away. I expect I'll take something different from it now if I read it while trying to decide if Eleanor is insane or if the hauntings are real, instead of waiting for the scenes from the movie to occur....less

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Paul rated it:

(review of isbn 0140071083)

05/02/08

Read in April, 2008

Whenever I think of Shirley Jackson I automatically click on her "Lottery" short story, which had a big impact on me when I first read it in 9th grade. I've so linked her with that story that I tend to forget she wrote anything else, and I was surprised to find her as the author of this book. Sadly, I can remember times in the past when I thought of reading this book, and was surprised to find her as the author. Will I ever remember, or am I destined for a repeating cycle...more Whenever I think of Shirley Jackson I automatically click on her "Lottery" short story, which had a big impact on me when I first read it in 9th grade. I've so linked her with that story that I tend to forget she wrote anything else, and I was surprised to find her as the author of this book. Sadly, I can remember times in the past when I thought of reading this book, and was surprised to find her as the author. Will I ever remember, or am I destined for a repeating cycle of idiocy? Maybe now that I've actually read the book I'll remember.

I've long wanted to read the book because I think The Haunting, a 1963 movie that was based on this book, is about the creepiest movie I've ever seen, and I've been curious if the book could equal its film counterpart for horror.

It didn't. I think the book fails because of the 1st person standpoint of Eleanor. I can see inside her mind too much, and she's not a character with great depth, and the level of horror never reaches a level past a vague unease. Even then, much of it is linked (in my head) to scenes from the movie. Again, I'm talking of the original movie, not the overdone remake. And certain aspects of horror (sounds, for example) just take to the movies more than to novels. What novels can do far better is psychological horror, but the 1st person standpoint largely eliminates that advantage, especially near the end of the book, when Eleanor is becoming a part of Hill House, and her earlier fears are removed. If the 1st person character feels no horror, why should we?

Maybe it's best to look at this book as a character piece, and it would be more successful from that angle, but I went in looking for some horror, and I didn't get it, so I'm pissy.

Also, this book is simply too short to reach any sort of horror crescendo. I felt the principles arrived at Hill House, then, for a bit, nothing happened. Then a few things began happening. Then it was over. Where was the interim period of rising horror? I don't need a Stephen King-sized pile of pages, but the brevity of this book meant that everything was black and white, with no transitional gray. First there was no horror. Then there was. First Eleanor and Theodora were great friends, then they hated each other. Aaah, maybe I was just expecting too much, having been creeped out by the 1963 movie, and having just read Jackson's We Have Always Lived in the Castle, which I found to be both a brilliant piece of literature, and damnably creepy. That book was Jackson being genius, and this book was Jackson being competent. ...less

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El rated it:

03/01/08

bookshelves: late20th-centurylit

Read in March, 2008

recommended to El by: Rhonda T

Eleanor Vance is a painfully shy and inexperienced woman who spent a large chunk of her time caring for her ailing mother. Afer her death she lived with her sister and her sister's family instead of using the opportunity to live on her own and experience her own life. She is wracked with guilt over her mother's death and is insecure enough to allow her sister and her brother-in-law make most decisions for her. When Eleanor receives an invitation to Hill House she is intrigued and eager to hav...more Eleanor Vance is a painfully shy and inexperienced woman who spent a large chunk of her time caring for her ailing mother. Afer her death she lived with her sister and her sister's family instead of using the opportunity to live on her own and experience her own life. She is wracked with guilt over her mother's death and is insecure enough to allow her sister and her brother-in-law make most decisions for her. When Eleanor receives an invitation to Hill House she is intrigued and eager to have an experience of her own.

At the depressed Hill House Eleanor meets the other members of this exclusive shindig: Theodora, a seemingly polar opposite of Eleanor and thus embodies everything Eleanor wished for herself; Luke Sanderson, heir to the Hill House; and Dr. John Montague, the mysterious doctor who invited the rest to join him in his study of Hill House. Their project is to investigate the history and haunting of the house, using Eleanor's history of psychic phenomena to bring the house to life. In the process of bringing the house to life, however, the house is on its own mission to keep one for itself.

Much like the classic ghost movies of the 60s and 70s in which much of the horror is in everything not seen directly on the screen, Jackson's ghost story never reveals anything immediately obvious as a ghost. The experiences shared by the four within the house are all shadows, classic knocking, resulting in more of a psychological horror than anything else. The house feeds on their fear and uses it to specifically enter Eleanor's psyche, which is already damaged by her previous life.

Some of the dialogue between the characters leave much to be desired, and some repetitions were unnecessary. However, the overall creepiness of the story was enough for me to enjoy the reading 100%, even during the more obnoxious parts including the appearance of Mrs. Montague and her companion, Arthur. If the house wanted to take anyone, it should have been one or both of them.

Thanks for letting me borrow your copy, Rhonda!...less

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Will rated it:

05/13/08

Read in May, 2008

recommended to Will by: Jenny Robinson
recommends it for: Fans of ghost stories

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

The Haunting of Hill House is a modern classic in genre fiction. The main character Eleanor, a lonely, young woman who has spent her entire adult life caring for her ailing mother, gets an invitation to stay at Hill House while a paranormal investigation is carried out. Seeking to escape her insufferable sister and the memory of her dead mother, she accepts the invitation. She is chosen as a guest by Dr. Montague, a paranormal researcher, because of a bizarre incident in her past involving p...more

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Lauri rated it:

05/16/08

bookshelves: wish-list

Read in May, 2008

recommends it for: those who are willing to "get into it," those who are not easily scared

I will admit to having a literary crush on Shirley Jackson, like so many others, after I read her short story, "The Lottery." The imagery still haunts me, some 12 years after reading the story.

When I discovered she also penned "The Haunting of Hill House," a movie from the 1960's my parents made me watch, I figured it was worth a trip to the library.

Well, the trip was worthwhile indeed. The book is very short (I read it in 1 day- and it was a work day to boot), an...more

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Kate rated it:

02/19/08

bookshelves: fiction

Read in October, 2007

"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...more

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Mark rated it:

11/12/07

Read in November, 2007

This is the last book I read in my recent horror-focused reading line-up (The Offspring, The Regulators, The Doom that Came to Sarnath and Other Stories, and Mister B. Gone being the first four). I don't usually read that many books from one genre all in a row, but Halloween was just last month, and I got pretty hung up on horror for a little while.

Not that they are at all related aside from my reading them together, I would put The Haunting at the top of the list, the best of these five bo...more

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Faustess rated it:

05/07/08

bookshelves: fiction-megalist

Read in December, 2005

This much cinemized (I doubt that's a word, but you know what I mean) book by Shirley Jackson seemed a little derivative - though I know that's only because I've seen so many film versions of the novel. If you've managed to avoid the related movies, you'll find a great work of psychological tension in the vein of Henry James' The Turn of the Screw. Is Eleanor Vance experiencing ghostly phenomena or is she losing her mind? This question is not resolved in the text.

While somewhat spoiled somew...more

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Wednesday rated it:

04/22/08

bookshelves: horror

Read in May, 2006

Iv'e heard great things about this author and decided to try this story first.
I must say I totally loved most of the book, it truly expressed a "creepy" feeling that many horror books lacked. The only other book Iv'e read that reaches that level of creepy is Stephen King's The Shining. That being said I see major connections between King's Rose Red and this book. I'd almost venture to say he ripped her off.
The story is told from a first person view of Eleanor, a psychic and maybe a...more

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Anne rated it:

11/13/07

I was once so in love with Shirley Jackson that I declared I'd marry the man who could identify the source of this passage:

"Don't do it, Eleanor told the little girl; insist on your cup
of stars; once they have trapped you into being like everyone
else you will never see your cup of stars again"

Thank goodness this didn't happen (this was before search engines, by the way), but I'll hold to the opinion that Shirley Jackson is one of the most intriguing writers of the 20th cen...more

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anenko rated it:

(review of isbn 0140071083)

06/23/07

bookshelves: fantasy-and-paranormal

Read in June, 2007

The story of “The Haunting Of Hill House” is atmospheric, and intensely creepy. The slow building horror is primarily psychological, but there are a few truly disturbing moments: holding hands with someone in the dark, footsteps left by an invisible person along the riverbank, a pounding in the night which leaves doors rattling in their frames.

Almost as intense and smothering as the haunting of Hill House is the relationship between Eleanor and Theodora. It is a blend of affection a...more

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Sam rated it:

(review of isbn 0140071083)

08/26/07

bookshelves: fiction

Read in August, 2007

recommends it for: anybody

The Haunting Of Hill House is so much more than a haunted house story. At it's heart it's a psychological profile of a very troubled woman trying to find a place in the world. I'm sure it's chock full of symbolism, if you're one of them literary nerd types. Symbolism is all well and good, but if it weighs down the story then what's the point? Jackson doesn't spend an excessive amount of time on it - she simply tells the story in short vignettes, leading the reader through scenes of lyrical c...more

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Nadia rated it:

05/03/08

Read in May, 2008

i loved shirley jackson's short story, "the lottery," and so picked up this book. it was interesting, but not amazing. probably the best part about the book is the introduction by laura miller (which should be read after completing the book, as it recounts and explains many of the more interesting allusions in the book, among other stories by shirley jackson, and even a bit of the author's personal life). this was probably a far more progressive book when it was written, but today i...more

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Nora rated it:

(review of isbn 0140071083)

06/05/07

Read in February, 2006

I had seen the black and white movie of this book when I was around 14 and then years later the remake. The b&w version was a classic in atmospheric horror, the second just a horrible cgi/ilm free-for-all. Anyway, at some point I realized I should probably READ the actual book these movies were based on.

Haunting of Hill House is pretty short and is comfortingly old-fashioned (I think it is set in the 50's), something my grandmother might have read. Still it had me up some nights stari...more

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Madeline rated it:

11/14/07

The scariest thing about this book is that nothing actually scary really happens - at least, not the type of "scary" we're used to. This is not a chainsaw-weilding maniac, creepy-things-jumping-out-at-you kind of horror story. Hill House is haunted, there's no doubt about that, but everything occurs in such a subtle way that you don't even begin to feel really creeped out until the middle of the book. I especially loved the last line of the book (don't worry, I'm not giving anything aw...more

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Jon rated it:

03/31/08

bookshelves: schoolreads, the-horror

Read in March, 2008

Shirley Jackson is pretty cool and this was a weird book. A cool weird, of course. It's disorienting, eerie, and creepy, with its overall discomfort being quite subtle. But it'll build to something very uncomfortable. The characters all have some sort of personal tension, which Hill House is more than willing to exploit. The difficulty - both for me and the characters, I think - is that I wasn't sure when people's actions were their ...more

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Mike rated it:

02/28/08

bookshelves: ghost-story, horror

recommends it for: everyone, those looking for a good story, those looking for a good ghost story

This is THE book to read if you want to be afraid of your house. Heck it even basically spawned a board game ("Betrayal At The House On The Hill" which is a co-operative exploration game for the first part and then one of the players turns evil and tries to attack everyone else. And yes it's kind of broken, but that's just the way it is.). This is one of the grand-daddies of all ghost stories. There's a really spooky house and a small group of people go to investigate it. It's spooky a...more

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bjhn rated it:

02/02/08

I wanted so much to like this book, given both my fondness for psychological creepiness and my admiration for her book "We Have Always Lived in the Castle." However, I found it very hard to muster much sympathy for the main character. I understand that the story was illustrating how a person's lack of self/subjective experience leaves one vulnerable to impinging experiences, and also how a sense of belonging, even to something "evil," is preferable to being alone, but I sti...more

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Thorn rated it:

07/01/08

Read in October, 1976

is eleanor mad? is she not mad? does it matter? not to me. take the ride.

i first heard about this from my father-in-law, in the early 70's. (i was a young teenager back then.) he was talking about how he had really enjoyed the movie. but it wasn't *ever* on tv, so i looked to see if it was based on a book, and ended up reading the book first.

i just loved how this book is slightly.. off. read it.

and see the *first* movie version. i finally saw it in 1990. it stars julie harris and cl...more

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Koeeoaddi rated it:

10/31/07

bookshelves: 2007, favorites, ghosties

Read in November, 2007

My Halloween book this year. Best opening, ever!

"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 the 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 st...more

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