The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

First published in 1959, Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House has been hailed as a perfect work of unnerving terror. It is the story of four seekers who arrive at a notoriously unfriendly pile called Hill House: Dr. Montague, an occult scholar looking for solid evidence of a “haunting”; Theodora, his lighthearted assistant; Eleanor, a friendless, fragile young woman well acquainted with poltergeists; and Luke, the future heir of Hill House. At first, their stay seems destined to be merely a spooky encounter with inexplicable phenomena. But Hill House is gathering its powers—and soon it will choose one of them to make its own.

Why I Picked It Up

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For one, I need to read more classic horror. I love any form of Gothic, and feel a lot of kismet overlap with the idea of places being sentient; that's a threshold of storytelling I personally adore, for which hauntings fit quite nicely.

The show is one of my favorites, and I've always loved the score too. I think the adaptation is utterly brilliant and gorgeous.

I've often used The Haunting of Hill House purely as a comp title for my own book for this idea that horror is most about corrupted nostalgia, memory you can't go of, etc. So for that reason, the show and my debut novel, Mountain Sounds, can be similar thematically.

About the Book

Admittedly, I was expecting a lot more from my experience with The Haunting of Hill House. I'm not sure whether, because it feels like a template, I found any sort of events or reveals to be a bit...boring?...and not as compelling. But I can't go back and erase years of modern lit from my brain, and I can't read The Haunting of Hill House in a vacuum.

Of course, I'll credit this book for being one of the original pillars here; for example, I feel similarly about Dacher Keltner's Awe in that I've read so many titles pulling from it that the actual book was slightly underwhelming in its familiarity. But that's because it came first!

There were small moments of repetition that I liked or found clever, like the house being built at an ever-so-odd slant, or this description that "journeys end in lovers meeting," which I expected to have more impact than it did. There are a lot of good kernels within the book, but I'll note that many readers might find it more domestic than horrifying.

Once it's established that the house has its own persona that sinks into you, that's the plot right there. The entities banging on the door, the sense that it doesn't want you to leave—that's all there, but it's established early. While it sinks into you all slow and murky, there's not a whole lot of surprise, which may just be the template I expect from a more modern horror.

Characters

I loved the chaos and messiness of the relationships but, again, their details feel slightly underdeveloped. Eleanor, or Nell, is deeply insecure, and you can see the paranoia start to take hold. The book overall is such a lovely depiction of the dangers of resentment, overall. As she pouts and despises Luke and Theodora in turn, her feelings veer from affection to hatred (which also mimics her relationship with the house.) At the end, I was surprised to find out she was a liar. The line between love and hate can be a fine one, after all?

Overall Thoughts

I think the show just had so many layers that you can see the source material through that the original book was always going to feel vaguely flat for me—for having that ending. Still, The Haunting of Hill House was a relatively short, straightforward read with plenty of grip.

The atmosphere is compelling. There are a lot of scenes that picture the group around a cozy, lopsided fire drinking brandy until they're too tired not to fall asleep. Suspicions narrow. I did just read and love a snowed-in locked door mystery, so The Haunting of Hill House almost aligns with that remarkably similarly.

The bonus, which I really wasn't expecting, is probably how clever the characters are in terms of creative rapport. They each have a dry, almost bitter humor that makes the dialogue entertaining to read.

I enjoyed crossing this one off my list! A must in my canon for sure.