Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House is a page-turning
psychological thriller. No blood was spilled in the entire book, aside from
some of the ghost writing, and yet it
created the sense of impending doom for its cast of characters. The story
centers on a group of people who were invited to investigate a haunted house. It is the original Ghost Hunters.
For me, there were two aspects of the book
that stood out. The author’s ability to create suspense and the main character’s
ambiguity (Was Eleanor already nuts? Or, was she possessed by the house?)
I will start with the suspense. And
because of it, I’ve never read a book faster, however, in the interest of full
disclosure, the book is short. The version I read was 240 pages, so it isn’t a Dick and Jane story, but it was about
100 pages shorter than the average novel.
Jackson set the tone of suspense up
early by using the following set-ups: describing the characters’ unique pasts;
the Doctor’s spooky stories regarding Hill House’s history; the caretakers’ (Dudleys)
avoidance of Hill House at night; and the town-folks’ disdain for the property.
After the set-ups, the reader’s
interest was pumped and primed. I couldn’t wait to get into the house and see
what was going to happen. Jackson knew people are inherently curious and the
book offered a free ticket to see what the heck was going to happen in the
creepy house. Who wouldn’t want to experience that stuff from a distance?
She created an atmosphere in the
story which made it difficult to turn away. It was a slower version of “Don’t
open the cellar door.”
Additionally, I think she created
suspense by writing the book with a good sense of rhythm, using the transition
between day and night to do so. I was constantly thinking, what is going to
happen tonight, and it forced me to turn the pages rapidly. I wanted to get
into the night scenes. Those transitions gave the reader a little bit of a
breather, too, and helped keep the pacing just right.
The second thing about this book that
hit me was the protagonist Eleanor’s ambiguity. She had a depressing past and
came from a dysfunctional family. Her
mother had been an invalid and her sister treated her poorly. As the book goes
on, the reader isn’t so sure Eleanor wasn’t already bonkers (a non-technical
term for crazy) before the story started. Early in the book, Eleanor had quite
an imagination and there were several tangents of inner monologue as she drove
to Hill House. When she started losing herself at (or to) Hill House, some of those
previous monologues resurfaced in my mind.
Was she insane? Was she possessed
by the house? Did she kill herself? Did the ghosts force her to drive the car
into the tree? There are no clear answers to those questions and I believe that’s
why the book has been such a success. At times, I thought maybe Eleanor was a
ghost, and instead of the first Ghost
Hunters this was where The Sixth
Sense was thought up from.
The Haunting of Hill House was the first
horror novel I’ve read, and I found it was a quick and entertaining read. It
wasn’t scary, but the book makes you think (about losing your mind) and it’s
chalked full of good suspense.
