The House Next Door in Pick-a-Shelf

Feb 28, 2010 GracieKat rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: physical-book-horror, kindle-horror

I used to really like this book but it does not wear very well. Maybe it's because I'm a little older now, I don't know.

SPOILERS BELOW!!

Colquitt is a very unsympathetic character. Pretty much everyone on her street is not very likeable.
From almost the first chapter Colquitt (really? Is that even a name?) is annoying. She whines about the lot next door getting sold and a house put in because then they'll have "People right down their throat". Well, maybe you shouldn't move to a highly populat I used to really like this book but it does not wear very well. Maybe it's because I'm a little older now, I don't know.

SPOILERS BELOW!!

Colquitt is a very unsympathetic character. Pretty much everyone on her street is not very likeable.
From almost the first chapter Colquitt (really? Is that even a name?) is annoying. She whines about the lot next door getting sold and a house put in because then they'll have "People right down their throat". Well, maybe you shouldn't move to a highly populated suburb of Atlanta then. It's not enough that she herself had to point out how many guys drool over her body (let's see, the Swanson boss tell her she looks painted into her jeans, there are men at the office that would worship her if she so chose, a maitre'd has a 'courtly and florid letch' for her as she so helpfully points out to us) but some of the dialogue given to her neighbors has to point out how special she is. An example spoken as she's joking about moving away because of the lot being sold, spoken by her neighbour and best friend: "Don't move away. You bring something special to this street, you enrich it for us somehow." I mean, who the hell talks like that?
A lot of the dialogue in this is hokey. Just a few examples: "You scare me when you talk like this. I feel like you're going away someplace where I can't reach you" and "Welcome back to the neighborhood again, Anita Sheehan, because it's a brand new you".
Ugh.
And since you spend most of your time in Colquitt's head you get a LOT of extraneous thoughts on the wonderfulness of her. That might seem overly snarky but trust me, it's warranted.
Her husband isn't much of a character. He seems to be there mostly for Colquitt to bounce off of. She seems to have a best friend Claire although I would class them a bit of frenemies because it doesn't take much to get Claire gossiping and saying vile things about her.
Anyway, the actual haunting is rather tame. There are some animal deaths on the property, a miscarriage, the house makes a couple of guys be gay just at the right time to embarrass them both and ruin their professional lives (oh, and induce a stroke in his father-in-law). Exit the first couple. The second couple moves in and the house drives the wife mad (well, more crazy since she was teetering there anyway) makes the husband start drinking again and have an affair with the neighbor lady whom the wife trusted and relied on. Also, during a vacation, Colquitt and Kim (the architect who designed and built the house) go over to water the plants and end up kissing hot and heavy. Walter almost catches them and almost kills them. Exit the second couple.
The third couple's story is pretty terrible but it's so broken up by Colquitt moping, her and Claire not speaking to each other that it really has very little impact on the reader. The main action for them takes place when Walter and Colquitt are out of town so it's even farther removed.
I think the main problem is that it is all told through Colquitt in first person so the reader never really connects with the people in the house. We get plenty of Colquitt but nobody else. Near the end, after they decide they must be noble and tell people what is going on, they still don't tell anybody what happened to them. And their story is one of the more lighter consequences of being near the house. Oh yeah, one other dastardly deed the house does: Claire's son gets his girlfriend pregnant at the age of...22. Dun..Dun..dunnnn.
One thing that I noticed on this read-through though that really made me wince. The house's evil is traced to Kim. When Colquitt tells Walter her theory (which explains exactly nothing) Walter says,"But, Col, honey. It's not like we don't know his people. They're good, solid stock!" To which she replies, "But Kim isn't. He's adopted, remember? He doesn't know who his birth parents are!"
Wow, really? They might as well have said, "His parents could be poor, or who knows what! We should never have let an Unknown into our people!"
I know homosexuality was looked at totally different in the time period it was written in but adoption?
And speaking of the end...It sucks. Nothing is explained at all. We get Colquitt's lovely little xenophobic explanation but that is it. We're not even sure what happens to them. Presumably the house kills them but it's not even for sure that they accomplished their mission. I really don't know why Stephen King rates this so highly in Danse Macabre.

Not scary but if you like daily life sorts of books with a dash of terrible happenings then I guess it would be a good choice. ...more

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Jul 09, 2008 Suzanne rated it really liked it

Freaky deaky! A true horror story in that the tension just keeps building and building. I really liked the narrator although Colquit is the oddest name I've ever heard. The story had good pacing and made astute observations of community / friend relationships. A thoroughly satisfying read. ...more

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Oct 17, 2008 Kellie rated it it was amazing

Shelves: pre-marriage-kids-years, fiction-literature

This is one of the most memorable Siddons books.
One of my favorites
It takes place in Atlanta Georgia and it's about a house and the neighbors and all that can go wrong.... ...more

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