The Haunting Of Hill House By Shirley Jackson

 

 

My Views-

 

There was once an authoress with a dogged-determination,

To give her readers heebie-jeebies,

By weaving a plot around a notorious deranged Victorian Hill-House,

Standing tall for 80 years,

With an impressive long-list of tragedies in it’s honour.

We all live and die somewhere, afterall!

She constructed a tale of sheer-brilliance,

for her readers to construe.

Is it a tale of the supernatural? Maybe yes…

Is it a tale of psychiatric anomalies? Maybe yes…

Is it a tale of the subconscious deciphering the real-life battles and the more? Maybe yes…

Is it a tale of self-deception? Maybe yes…

Who knows, maybe one of the above or all!

Read it yourself, to know! 😊

 

 

A middle-aged quizzical professor of anthropology, Dr. Montague, an occult scholar, invites three folks with telekinetic abilities, to support his research in unravelling the mystery of the Hillhouse, for his research paper.

 

Out of the three, one is Theodora, an ebullient, open-minded young woman, with telepathic abilities, exhibiting a contrast of kindness and selfishness!

 

Another one is, Eleanor, spending major youth in nursing the deceased mother, dreamy, self-declared inconsequential-being, carries a truckload of repressed emotions!

 

The third one to join is, Luke Sanderson, the heir of the Sanderson family and the representative of the Hill house. He is roguish!

 

Once the gang, starts living in the house, there are multiple events, that leave them flummoxed, finally leading to a legit end!

 

Many may find the ending to be frizzled-out, but for me, there could not have been any better ending to such a novel, that embodies not only a supernatural element, but much more!

Weighing a novel with few hundred pages, it holds ambiguity, relatability to all the characters (we end-up meeting such characters and living these traits for ourselves), an evenly-paced plot, state-of-art writing, and above all there is a hill-house!!

 

For me, the hill-house isn’t a non-living entity, but a living entity, and another character in the novel. With multitude of hallways, doors, and the complex gothic architecture, it shouts out, eeriness, darkness, grimness, chaos and dysfunction. This dysfunction emits into the plot, to the highest degree! If you take away the dark and grimly architecture of the Hillhouse from the novel, then no element of gothicism or excitement remains!

 

A sure-shot scary 5-stars, for this subversive classic-horror!