The Black House

by Paul Theroux

A reign of terror begins for Alfred and Emma Munday when they take their failing marriage to the solace of an old country house.

There, in the peace and quiet of the Dorset countryside, a strange and beautiful apparition enters their life, disrupts it…creates a fatal triangle of fear, fantasy and eroticism.

Genres: Fiction, Horror, British Literature, 20th Century

245 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1974

About the author

Paul Edward Theroux is an American travel writer and novelist, whose best known work is The Great Railway Bazaar (1975), a travelogue about a trip he made by train from Great Britain through Western and Eastern Europe, the Middle East, through South Asia, then South-East Asia, up through East Asia, as far east as Japan, and then back across Russia to his point of origin. Although perhaps best known as a travelogue writer, Theroux has also published numerous works of fiction, some of which were made into feature films. He was awarded the 1981 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for his novel The Mosquito Coast.

He is the father of Marcel and Louis Theroux, and the brother of Alexander and Peter. Justin Theroux is his nephew.

Reviews

[Jeffrey Keeten · Rating 4 out of 5]

”But something no usual motive could properly explain or make less beastly was another secret he would have to keep from her and bear alone. It was like a hidden infidelity, a habit of faithlessness he was starting to learn, suppressing what frightened him so that Emma would not be alarmed.”

They both feel it, something not quite right about the Black House. A tricky heart has forced Alfred Munday to abandon his studies in Africa and return to England. Emma has always wanted to live in the country, and this house, this gloomy, unnerving house has proved to be less than ideal for either of them. Alfred is sulking and would have been annoyed at any place they chose to live that wasn’t in a tribal village in Africa. Emma is seeing things, something that is there, and then gone again. The excitement she felt to finally leave Africa and live in the place she’d been pining for is quickly becoming a nightmare. When you can’t describe what is wrong, it is hard to convince yourself of your own validity.

So England is not what either one of them would hope. On a trip to London, Alfred decides to pop in on a woman he once had a torrid affair with and finds she has become dumpy, old, and unattractive. Yet another illusion or fine memory shattered by his new English reality.

The small town people and their insinuations, their manipulations, their cliquish behavior, and their mean spirited retorts are making a grumpy Alfred even more irritated. Alfred is difficult to like anyway. He is highly opinionated, intolerable of others, and let's be frank, racist. Even though he professes to adore African culture, when he is pressed, he doesn’t really treat Africans very well. His troubles with the small town people remind me of the trials and tribulations that Chevy Chase and Madolyn Smith experience in the movie Funny Farm (1988). We romanticize country life, but the reality is far removed from the ideal.

All of Alfred’s misgivings about being back in England are wiped away when he meets Caroline Summers. ”There was something luxurious about Caroline, the message on her mouth, the angle of her chin, the bones lifting at the base of the neck, the distinct edges of her hips and the thrust of her dress hugged. From the moment he saw her he wanted to be near her, to touch her; he felt a mingled desire and respect.” Let’s be honest here: this is not love at first sight. It is lust at first sight. If Alfred were able to sculpt a salacious woman from marble, Caroline would be his Galatea. Lust and love are often confused, and you would think that a jaded man like Alfred, especially at his age, would be immune to its siren song.

And let's not forget the tricky heart.

Somehow Caroline is tied into both of them. She leads Alfred around by his cock, and even more interestingly, she seems to be able to wander about in the halls of Emma’s mind. The story, up until the emergence of Caroline, feels like a pleasant, old fashioned ghost story, but then evolves into The Story of O as Alfred begins to live out every erotic fantasy that has ever taken up residency in his mind. Paul Theroux frequently puts a healthy dose of sex in his fiction, and this is certainly no exception.

This book has shown up a couple of times on gothic horror lists, and given that I do like Theroux’s work, it was perfectly natural for me to pick it up. It isn’t particularly scary or that unnerving, but the writing style, a nod back to old classics, is a breath of fresh air, which tells me that I need to cue up more older literature. Theroux gets a hard knock for his fiction as most of his fans prefer his curmudgeonly travel books, but I still like to read his fiction. I have fond memories of reading Mosquito Coast, Ozone, and Blinding Light, to name a few. (Many readers hate Blinding Light, but they are IMHO being way too hard on it.) This one is like several of his books in that it seems to be missing that one more ingredient to make it really great. I still enjoyed it, and seeing Theroux peeking over the garden gate occasionally and sometimes showing up behind the eyes of Alfred Munday made the book a pleasure to read.

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[Lobstergirl · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the story of a douchebag middle-aged anthropologist and his childless, homemaker wife who return to England from a 10-year stint studying village life in Africa. They settle in a small village in Dorset, in a damp, ugly house which immediately, and for the rest of the book, creeps them out. The villagers are almost uniformly hostile, and the anthropologist doesn't make it any easier by being condescending and snotty. The theme of the novel is village life; we are asked to compare small-minded provincial Dorset villagers with African villagers. As it turns out, both groups like doing things with daggers and practicing witchcraft (possibly).

[Alex · Rating 2 out of 5]

Theroux mounts about sixty Chekhovian shotguns on the wall and fires not a single one of them. The decision might be brave--might be: it might also just be Theroux writing a bunch of checks he can't cash and splitting town when the time comes to resolve all he has set in motion. In any event, I've often wished for books to be less like John Irving and more like life and cut the incredibly received strategy of foreshadowing. Of course, Theroux doesn't dispense with the foreshadowing. He foreshadows relentlessly, and then the foreshadowed things never arrive. Which is not what I had in mind, since he's only showing contempt for reader expectation without giving us an alternative. He might reply that an alternative is unnecessary, that the pleasure lies in the suspense even when there's no release. That dog won't hunt, though, because if the conversation is to be about pleasure, then it is a real problem that the conclusion offers no pleasure. And the novel has simply not been good enough throughout to have earned the right to tell us NO in the last pages.

Yes, the failure of the content lays bare the formal corruption. If the content were strong enough, the formalism might even add to the artwork. As it stands, though, Munday is too repellent and minor for his descent to have much meaning. He's mediocre. It's hardly shocking that things don't work out for him, and the appearance of the supernatural and of psychosis seem like way too much gun for the game. A dynamic version of Munday would deliver immense benefits to the text, and I wonder what Theroux was thinking that he couldn't see that. Everything that happens could be preserved. The text would have so much more power if we were on the side of Munday.

[BLRBrazil · Rating 1 out of 5]

(spoiler warning)
Paul Theroux commits the basic error of writing a suspense in which the main character not only fails to elicite any sympathy but actually a growing desire to see him get his comeuppance. Initially, he appeared to be a miserable curmudgeon who was disorientated by his return to England from East Africa. But what emerges is an egotistical individual for whom other people are merely tools to further his self-aggrandizement. How many people would boast about their wife's wealth as if that somehow made them a superior person? It was pompous little people like that who cost the country the international respect that underpinned the British empire. In a further irony, he is an anthropologist who clearly doesn't understand people, much less like them.
I found the ending ambiguous. Perhaps it was my steadily eroding interest in the story or a lack of subtlety on my part. Had he lost Emma for good, just as he had finally found some respect for her? Or was she sleeping late in the same way Caroline did after she became a widow. Caroline was right that he knew nothing, and the biggest reason for that was his closed mind - he thought he knew everything and it was the others who were the fools! Would Emma stay to live as a threesome, or move on, with or without Alfred? was Caroline gone for good, or would she reappear for more steamy sex scenes? Quite frankly, who cares!

[Rolandofeld · Rating 1 out of 5]

Did not really enjoy. It had a good lead in and did a fair job of pulling me into the story but left me wanting after that. And not in a good way...

Spoilers follow.

Basically the gist of the book is that it's sometime in England, I don't remember if they specified the exact year. Irish bombs are going off and people are driving cars but the countryside is still the countryside with fox hunts and complaints about oil derricks being installed locally instead of in the North Sea.

Our hero and his sickly, weak wife comes back from doing a 10 year + anthropological study of African peoples. He was forced to return (aren't they all?) due to a heart diagnosis. The couple promptly moves to the countryside to write a book (don't they all?). The house, it is black, is described, both vividly and exquisitely, as a place of foreboding and depression based upon the sensed presence of some unnamed horror or entity. The local folk are aloof and rude but not Lovecraftian in their oddity, and the couple pine away bitching and moaning about their life, and not writing one bit of a book.

This is where it all breaks down. Basically the protagonist is a self centered twit who can't get over himself. I say that because for half the book he fawns and mourns for leaving Africa and the people, who he regards in a much more positive light than other British folk of his time do, but then when the African student that got a university scholarship in London because of his recommendation comes to visit our hero is too ashamed to take him into town and instead detours his tour of town into a 'country walk' that ruins his companion's attire, which was more suited to a few drinks in a pub than slogging through cow pastures and open fields and mountains, on purpose no less.

Then there is the other woman, I forget her name so we'll just call her Sultry Emotional eXtra, or SEX for short. They meet a New Years Eve party and the wife is bewitched by her and made to feel ill and exit stage left while (don't they always?) the man and SEX begin a sultry affair front and center.

I basically gave up long ago but somehow the other woman is a ghost that is the presence in the house the entire time and eventually our hero realizes he's either been fucking a ghost or just mentally masturbating the whole months they've been in the house but now he's happy with his wife all of a sudden.

Fin.

PS - There was something about some skinned dogs in local farmer A's backyard and somehow someone's hunting dog was stabbed with one of our hero's artifact African daggers. But cognizance really wasn't a key feature of the plot so why expect it now.

Would not read again. Wtf Stephen King, I guess there's some reason this is far enough up your alley to make you recomend it but I can only see bits and pieces of why.

[Marcella · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is typical Paul Theroux fiction. (That is not an insult.) Both The Black House and Kowloon Tong have British men as the main charaters that are weak and insecure. It makes me wonder if Teroux is using this character as a metaphor for (how he perceives) Britian in the world...not Britons in the UK but rather ex-pats in Africa or Asia. He could be commenting on the British relationship with countries formerly under British rule. I could be reading too far into these stories however Theroux did talk about the importance of metaphors at the 2006 Printers Row Bookfair in Chicago.
I'd like to point out a possible discrepancy on pages 150-151 (in 1st Ed). While driving, Munday takes off his glove and lays his hand on the thigh of his passenger. A few moments later the story reads "it seemed a swift and crazy memory already-had he done it?-he wore only his left glove" Wouldn't Munday be wearing his right glove if he were driving in England and took off a glove to put his bear hand on the person next to him?
Did Theroux throw this in the story to see if anyone was paying attention? Or was it an honest mistake. He threw a line in Dark Star Safari that jolted me out of my reading and made me wonder if he wrote with that intention. Again, I could just be reading too far into something.

[Kylie · Rating 1 out of 5]

So, this is the kind of book that if I was reading it to study, I would find things to say about it - especially good things. But since was reading it for pleasure (pleasure which was pretty lacking, frankly), no such luck.

Firstly, this book is in the character study style of storytelling, so not much of interest actually happens. There's bits of older racial attitudes, how village life is universal, and the link of the supposed prescence in the house and Munday's affair borders on interesting but since the ghostly goings on are implied, and personally I see it in context more as a metaphor than an actual thread of the plot. And since I initially decided to read the book hoping it might be somewhat supernatural, that was disappointing.

However, I often do enjoy character studies - Remains of the Day, for example - but I didn't care about anyone in this book and I was very glad to finish it. I put it down for a time while I read something more interesting and was very tempted not to pick it back up again.

[Aline · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't think I've ever read a book where I detested the main character throughout quite as much as Alfred Munday. The writing was very good, the description was excellent, and certain turns of phrase shone. Atmosphere building was nice. Village folk were stereotypical.

[The Ghost's Library · Rating 4 out of 5]

A nasty little gothic about middle aged ennui, crushed dreams and foolish ambitions, and British racism. Add in some of the most graphic and uncomfortable sex scenes and you have a good book — if not one I enjoyed reading.

[Matt · Rating 2 out of 5]

So evocative of post-WWII England - as I imagine it based on books and tv such as this novel (1974).
Of course everyone still "remembered the war" or "did time in Burma".
It must've been a dreadful time for the whites - centuries of entrenched racism and class-bias starting to fall around their ankles, so they tried even harder to be... worse.
But sorry Tom, I did not get the end at all!!
4 oir 5-star all the way apart from the last 10 pages.
I had been reading all night soooo maybe should read again.

[Kate · Rating 3 out of 5]

Weird and uneven. The reader is set up with the expectation that something spooky will happen, but if it does, it happens off-screen. Not particularly scary or thrilling at all.

The ending seems to point to Munday being the most savage at all, cheating on his wife while she is dying in the room above. While that's an interesting way to conclude, that particular ending saps any energy from the first section of the book, which is dependent on us being scared *for* him and his wife Emma. The managing of reader expectations seems to be carelessly done, as if Theroux has contempt for the reader.

[Esther · Rating 1 out of 5]

A few chapters in I began to think I was really going to enjoy The Black House. A few chapters later--it must have been after Caroline, a character at least as unlikable, by design, as Alfred--entered the scene, I revised my original opinion. A few chapters after that I just wanted it all to end. I mean, that was my era--Cher's song, "Gypsies, Tramps, and Thieves" even got a quick mention--but not even nostalgia could distract me from everything that disgusted me about this book. Maybe that was Theroux's intent? If so, he succeeded magnificently.

[Bob Box · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read in 1977. Ghost story by well regarded author.

[Corey · Rating 4 out of 5]

A little Straw Dogs mixed with a unique haunting.

[Thomas · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted to like (at least parts of) it, but I couldn't quite figure out how much of the racism was meant to show us something and how much of it was just 1970s paternalistic, casual racism.

[Chiefdonkey Bradey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dreamy cruel Dorset noir

[Finn Williamson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Honestly, its well written but pointless.

[John Cooke · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed everything about THE BLACK HOUSE, including its insufferable main character. An elegant, well-written English ghost story. The most poignant aspect of the story is the reverse culture shock experienced by Alfred Munday, the protagonist, on his return to England after 10 years in Africa, where, as an anthropologist, he he lived in a small village to study the native tribe. One quickly gets the sense that he would have been happier, healthier, and generally better off if he and his wife had just decided to stay the rest of their lives in Africa. It was moving back to England that was their mistake. This sort of reverse culture shock is a real thing, and Paul Theroux's treatment of it rings true. I'm a fan of English ghost stories, and enjoyed this one even though it was written by a then-expat American (published 1974, when Theroux was living in the UK).

[Johnny G. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Listen, I've read a lot of Theroux and this one is one of the weirdest of all. An archaeologist and his wife return to England after spending years studying the African Bwambas only to find there are a lot of similarities between life in an African village and an English one. There is a bit of dark magic here...the house they are renting kind of turns them into different people, and Munday, the main character, becomes so grumpy and stubborn about leaving that it ultimately ruins his life. A bit short at 275 pages, but one with some vivid images that will stick with me for a while.

[sisterimapoet · Rating 2 out of 5]

A fair portrait of English village life, viewed through the eyes of an anthropologist returning from Africa - but overall a bit of a dull read. It felt like Theroux was trying too much in one book - comments on the african condition, the english condition, married life, sexual repressions - each got attention but none shone through clearly.

[Georgina · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't usually enjoy books about misanthropes, probably because I am one.... however Theroux is such a marvellous writer, with wonderful turns of phrase and an eye as sharp as a porcupines quill, for human foibles, combined with a descriptive power of old-school brilliance, that this was a compelling read.

[Mary · Rating 3 out of 5]

When Alfred and Emma Munday return from Africa they buy a house in the Dorset countryside. Their marriage is slowly disintergrating and when ghostly occurances start happening to them they don't tell each other about them. This book had great promise but didn't fulfill in my opinion. The plot was great but had a lot of sections that went nowhere. I give this book a B!

[Chris Wharton · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another Therouxian cast of unlikable but enjoyable characters. Here, in the late1960s or early ‘70s, a British couple (the husband an anthropologist) have repatriated to an English village after 10 years in Uganda. They find “village life” back home both as shallow and complicated as village life in Africa, riven by superstition, suspicion, and seduction.

[Craig · Rating 3 out of 5]

Theroux is well known for his travel writing. This is the first novel of his that I've read and I liked it pretty well. It is a ghost story in the same sense that "Turning of the Screw" is a ghost story." The main character is quite unsympathetic; the ending is odd and unsettling.

[Greg · Rating 3 out of 5]

Anthropologist jerk lives in a haunted English cottage in the literary pride of Medford's take on "Turn of the Screw." Have to agree with the comments that said this ghost-story-that-isn't-really-a-ghost-story tries to do too much.

[Debra]

Stephen King recommended author and book.

Book noted as "important to the genre we have been discussing" from Danse Macabre, published in 1981. Author mentioned in chapter 9.

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Massachussetts-born author writes perfect eerie British ghost story: couple returns from ten yrs in Africa, ostensibly b/c of husbands heart. Husband is insufferable, intolerant, egotistic researcher, makes no friends, repels those who try. Is the house the power?

[Ivy · Rating 2 out of 5]

there weren't nearly as many ghosts and supernatural happenings in this book as its back cover led me to believe.

[Linda · Rating 2 out of 5]

Another non-fiction from Theroux that I didn't quite like.

[Mark Levandoski · Rating 1 out of 5]

Boring. I didnt get it?