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The Haunting of Hill House (Penguin Classics) Paperback – November 28, 2006
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One of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years
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.
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
- Print length208 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherPenguin Classics
- Publication dateNovember 28, 2006
- Dimensions5.05 x 0.55 x 7.69 inches
- ISBN-100143039989
- ISBN-13978-0143039983
- Lexile measure920L
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What's it about?
Haunted house lures four seekers, each with their own motives, into its sinister grasp.Popular highlight
The house was vile. She shivered and thought, the words coming freely into her mind, Hill House is vile, it is diseased; get away from here at once.2,129 Kindle readers highlighted thisPopular highlight
It was a house without kindness, never meant to be lived in, not a fit place for people or for love or for hope. Exorcism cannot alter the countenance of a house; Hill House would stay as it was until it was destroyed.1,612 Kindle readers highlighted thisPopular highlight
“Fear,” the doctor said, “is the relinquishment of logic, the willing relinquishing of reasonable patterns. We yield to it or we fight it, but we cannot meet it halfway.”1,012 Kindle readers highlighted this
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Editorial Reviews
Review
"The scariest book I’ve ever read." —Carmen Maria Machado, author of Her Body and Other Parties
"The books that have profoundly scared me...are few....But Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House beat them all...It scared me as a teenager and it haunts me still."—Neil Gaiman, author of Norse Mythology
About the Author
Laura Miller, previously an editor at Salon.com, writes essays and reviews for the New York Times, the New Yorker, and other publications.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
I
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 alone.
Dr. John Montague was a doctor of philosophy; he had taken his degree in anthropology, feeling obscurely that in this field he might come closest to his true vocation, the analysis of supernatural manifestations. He was scrupulous about the use of his title because, his investigations being so utterly unscientific, he hoped to borrow an air of respectability, even scholarly authority, from his education. It had cost him a good deal, in money and pride, since he was not a begging man, to rent Hill House for three months, but he expected absolutely to be compensated for his pains by the sensation following upon the publication of his definitive work on the causes and effects of psychic disturbances in a house commonly known as “haunted.” He had been looking for an honestly haunted house all his life. When he heard of Hill House he had been at first doubtful, then hopeful, then indefatigable; he was not the man to let go of Hill House once he had found it.
Dr. Montague’s intentions with regard to Hill House derived from the methods of the intrepid nineteenth- century ghost hunters; he was going to go and live in Hill House and see what happened there. It was his intention, at first, to follow the example of the anonymous Lady who went to stay at Ballechin House and ran a summer- long house party for skeptics and believers, with croquet and ghost- watching as the outstanding attractions, but skeptics, believers, and good croquet players are harder to come by today; Dr. Montague was forced to engage assistants. Perhaps the leisurely ways of Victorian life lent themselves more agreeably to the devices of psychic investigation, or perhaps the painstaking documentation of phenomena has largely gone out as a means of determining actuality; at any rate, Dr. Montague had not only to engage assistants but to search for them.
Because he thought of himself as careful and conscientious, he spent considerable time looking for his assistants. He combed the records of the psychic societies, the back files of sensational newspapers, the reports of parapsychologists, and assembled a list of names of people who had, in one way or another, at one time or another, no matter how briefly or dubiously, been involved in abnormal events. From his list he first eliminated the names of people who were dead. When he had then crossed off the names of those who seemed to him publicity- seekers, of subnormal intelligence, or unsuitable because of a clear tendency to take the center of the stage, he had a list of perhaps a dozen names. Each of these people, then, received a letter from Dr. Montague extending an invitation to spend all or part of a summer at a comfortable country house, old, but perfectly equipped with plumbing, electricity, central heating, and clean mattresses. The purpose of their stay, the letters stated clearly, was to observe and explore the various unsavory stories which had been circulated about the house for most of its eighty years of existence. Dr. Montague’s letters did not say openly that Hill House was haunted, because Dr. Montague was a man of science and until he had actually experienced a psychic manifestation in Hill House he would not trust his luck too far. Consequently his letters had a certain ambiguous dignity calculated to catch at the imagination of a very special sort of reader. To his dozen letters, Dr. Montague had four replies, the other eight or so candidates having presumably moved and left no forwarding address, or possibly having lost interest in the supernormal, or even, perhaps, never having existed at all. To the four who replied, Dr. Montague wrote again, naming a specific day when the house would be officially regarded as ready for occupancy, and enclosing detailed directions for reaching it, since, as he was forced to explain, information about finding the house was extremely difficult to get, particularly from the rural community which surrounded it. On the day before he was to leave for Hill House, Dr. Montague was persuaded to take into his select company a representative of the family who owned the house, and a telegram arrived from one of his candidates, backing out with a clearly manufactured excuse. Another
never came or wrote, perhaps because of some pressing personal problem which had intervened. The other two came.
Product details
- Publisher : Penguin Classics; 1st edition (November 28, 2006)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 208 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0143039989
- ISBN-13 : 978-0143039983
- Lexile measure : 920L
- Item Weight : 2.31 pounds
- Dimensions : 5.05 x 0.55 x 7.69 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #6,872 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #21 in Ghost Fiction
- #117 in Gothic Fiction
- #767 in Literary Fiction (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
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About the author
Shirley Jackson was born in San Francisco in 1916. She first received wide critical acclaim for her short story "The Lottery," which was published in 1948. Her novels--which include The Sundial, The Bird's Nest, Hangsaman, The Road through the Wall, We Have Always Lived in the Castle and The Haunting of Hill House--are characterized by her use of realistic settings for tales that often involve elements of horror and the occult. Raising Demons and Life Among the Savages are her two works of nonfiction. Come Along With Me is a collection of stories, lectures, and part of the novel she was working on when she died in 1965. All are currently in print (Penguin). Two posthumous volumes of her short fiction are Just An Ordinary Day (Bantam) and Let Me Tell You (Random House). A graphic novel adaptation of "The Lottery" by Miles Hyman, her grandson, was published in 2016 (Farrar-Straus-Giroux). Also in 2016: Dark Tales by Shirley Jackson (Penguin Classics) and an authorized biography by Ruth Franklin: Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life (Norton).
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The first thing that surprised me was how relatively short this novel was. I seemed to zip through it in just a couple of nights’ reading time, and was almost disappointed that it was over so soon.
Nevertheless, the book is so beautifully, even soulfully written, that it really didn’t need anything further. Having already fallen in love with Shirley Jackson’s other most famous novel, “We Have Always Lived In The Castle,” I was afraid that this “horror” novel would either not live up to that one, or would leave a bad taste in my mouth for Ms. Jackson’s work. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Contrary to the deliberate “horrification,” if I may coin a word, of the movie versions, the written word gave a softer sense of sweetness, sorrow, and deepest empathy for our main character, Eleanor. I fell in love with her, but also adored her newly-made friend, Theodora (“Theo”), who I had not expected to like so much.
If you have only seen the movie, do yourself a favor and read the source material, straight from the horse’s mouth. It’s really quite beautiful, and although it is about a haunting, it’s really not horrifying at all.
I did not go in expecting cheap thrills or some sort of gore-fest, but I did not find the book especially scary. There, I said it. I thought the ghostly happenings were actually fairly overt- maybe too overt for it to send the promised chill up my spine. The emphasis is on psychological suspense, and Shirley Jackson's prose does a wonderful job of creating an eerie atmosphere, and provides lots of food for thought, which is really the most unusual and rewarding aspect of the novel. I appreciated the writing and the unusually character-driven nature of the story. The living characters are at least as troubling as the ghosts. Their dialogue is indeed strange, but I felt it might be more true-to-life than we might think, and it definitely added to the otherworldly confusion of Hill House. Maybe if I was in a different place in life I would have found it scary? And, as many have noted, it ends quite abruptly. This isn't really a strike against the book (a good book often ends all too soon), but given how beautifully the first half unfolded, the second half felt like an excerpt. It's not quite horror, in my opinion, but for it to really stand out as a character study, I would have liked a few more pages for the main character's narrative to develop.
I might note that I rarely find any sort of horror truly scary. But, boy, if you happen to like cheesy horror movies and Stephen King, do some reviewers have it out for you! My discerning, sophisticated tastes in supernatural horror reveled in Jackson's gorgeous prose and elegant framing, but were nonetheless slightly unsatisfied.
Oh, and whoever made the movie version I saw in high school should be burned at the stake.
The Haunting of Hill House follows a group of four people as they stay at Hill House, which is supposedly haunted. Dr. Montague is hoping to find evidence of and write about a real haunting. He invites people to be a part of this experience, and two of the people who accept his invitation are Eleanor and Theodora. Luke, the heir to Hill House, also joins their stay at the house. It does not take long for unexplained and scary events to occur: knocking, laughing, cold spots, writing on walls. Everything eventually goes awry, and one of the guests is pushed too far.
I absolutely love Eleanor’s character and seeing how she interacts with Theodora. I think Eleanor is a really interesting character. Beyond that, Jackson’s writing is just incredible. The story is not only well-written but so atmospheric as well. I appreciated the time that was spent on developing the setting and the house. Some of my favorite parts were the ones where characters were haunted by the house, and for Eleanor, by her mind and life outside the house.
The first time I read this book was for an American Literature class in college. I read it in a matter of days and really loved being able to talk about it in class. I even chose to write about it for my midterm essay. I focused a lot on how Jackson handled sexuality and identity. I wrote about how she possibly juxtaposed Eleanor and Theodora to reflect the changing role of women in families and to challenge their traditional roles. I really enjoyed seeing what else stood out from the text this time that further supported my argument, but it made me think about a lot of new things this time too. For instance, the possible portrayal of mental illness was even more prevalent on a reread. Since I knew what was going to happen, I could analyze what led to do those events. It was really interesting to see how Eleanor handled her grief after losing her mother and how this haunts her and maybe pushes her too far.
Shirley Jackson was an incredible writer. I have read Hill House multiple times now but have also enjoyed some of her short stories and We Have Always Lived in the Castle. Since reading this book for first time, I have gradually collected Jackson’s other works. I honestly cannot wait to pick them up because I know I will love them.
*Content warning: mental illness, suicide, parental death*
Top reviews from other countries
Read this soon. . .now. . .just not after dark!
(BTW, the 1963 film is FABULOUS! But don't watch it alone.)
I’m obsessed, you don’t understand, that line IS SEARED into my brain, how am I supposed to be normal about this?? you write an opening sentence like that, and I would follow you to the ends of the earth!!!
The second I’d read that sentence I felt it in my bones that this novel would bag one of my rare 5-star ratings. It reads like poetry, it reads like magic, it reads like beauty on the outside, with danger lurking on the inside.
Long have I known about Shirley Jackson and the cult-like status she (rightly!) enjoys not only among horror fans, but in the English literary world in general. As such, the fact that this edition is blurbed by Stephen King – king of horror for obvious reasons – is a bit misleading, and unfair. Misleading because I expected the same kind of horror I’d expect from It or Pet Cemetary; unfair because Shirley Jackson did everything King does now, only decades earlier. If still alive, SHE should be blurbing his books.
And no, Shirley Jackson does not write horror like King, and if you hear “horror” and all you can think of is “clown” and “undead animals” and if you then go into a horror novel expecting exactly those things from it only to end up being disappointed and letting that disappointment influence your rating, then I’m sorry because it means the term has become so uniquely specific, it excludes almost everything else that makes horror horror. It also means you should read something that is NOT what you think horror is.
No, Shirley doesn’t do King’s horror; instead, she writes about a supposedly haunted house, a doctor curious enough to move there and investigate it, and two women and a man who are just bored, adventurous, and lonely enough to move in there with him. Taking course over just a week or two, the experiment of trying to find and explain the reason for the haunting of Hill House, the house and its characters are slowly coming undone, pulling readers into unknown depths of disbelief, deceit, and despair.
Mainly told from the first-person perspective of Eleanor Vance, who arrives at the house with a car stolen from her sister (it’s half hers!) and her mother freshly six feet under, we are thrust into a setting in which “the haunted house” becomes a character in its own terms, more substantial than any of the novel’s human characters and granted far more attention than any of them except Eleanor.
This short story packs such a punch, it’s almost unbelievable, given how little is neither confirmed nor denied and how much is left up to our imagination. And yet… and yet, Jackson knows exactly where to drop that little word, that sentence that is sure to let your thoughts run wild. It’s almost impossible to consume this story sitting still. Shuffling, walking, changing sitting positions, breathless laughter over a clever pun, it’ll all happen, guaranteed.
The switch between Eleanor arriving at the house, afraid and small but simultaneously hopeful and excited for her life to start turning into a ferocious, jealousy-ridden, giggling, angry woman happens both so quickly and slowly that when you blink, the entire character has changed within the span of a second, and you blink again, and you think it must have all been a figment of your imagination. Is this genuine horror? Is the house really alive or filled with ghostly entities? Or is this a psychological terror of the mind that has Eleanor’s (in Freudian terms) Id and Superego fighting a battle of wills? The juicy and uncomfortable truth: it is up to the reader to determine what is “really” going on, and if we believe that wherever these characters came from before they arrived at Hill House is indeed the real world.
This book is so clever, and the language is so smart and timeless, at times I could not believe Shirley wrote dialogues this sharply modern. I read what the characters were saying and what Eleanor was thinking, and there wasn’t a doubt in my mind that some of those lines are exact replicas of what some of us would say were we in the same situation. It’s cutting, and it’s absurd, and it’s EXACTLY RIGHT.
This novel will be re-read and re-read and re-read because it’s great, it’s smarter than me. Because I need to underline sentences and scribble in between the lines next time I read it because reading it is like staring at a rotten brain carefully preserved in formalin, because it’s disgustingly good and haunted and crooked.
🎬 If you enjoyed this you should watch that: The Haunting of Hill House (2018)
Reviewed in India on August 11, 2023