Title: The Haunting of Hill House
Publication Year: 1959
Plot: 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, the 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.
Miscellaneous: In 2018, The New York Times polled 13 writers to choose the scariest book of fiction they have ever read, and Carmen Maria Machado and Neil Gaiman both chose The Haunting of Hill House. It has been made into two feature films and a play, and is the basis of a Netflix series
After a little break due to medical concerns, we are back at Lone Peak. We met 2 days before Halloween to discuss Shirley Jackson’s classic The Haunting of Hull House. The last time we met, we had discussed The Shining and had about 11 of us. Today, we had 4, largely due to movement of readers from one facility to another. They did, however, receive an influx of new inmates, so we might be able to replenish our numbers. I’ll leave it to our loyal readers on the inside to do the recruiting.
Despite our small numbers, we had a riveting discussion. Off the bat, most readers thought the book was somewhat shallow and not all that entertaining. They admitted there is a lot of flowery language, and not any real emotional depth to the characters, at least outside of Eleanor. They said they didn’t find it all that scary, but they could see where others may have thought so. One reader said it was great to read it right after The Shining, as it’s apparent King read this novel—its “haunted house” influence. Which lead us to our first question of the night…do we believe in haunted houses?
The reader that was leading the discussion took us to a passage that talks about Hill House, and how it’s a “disturbed” house. But we got to talking about actual haunted. 2 of the readers said no, there’s an explanation for everything, even if we don’t know the explanation. One reader said many inmates believe the prison is haunted, as they see faces, or shadows, or other things late at night. And the other reader pointed out that it’s more in our minds, that we bring certain things into houses or to objects. He said we’re primed to thing something is haunted.
A lot of our conversation was taken up by the character of Eleanor. One reader noted how life happened to Eleanor, and that she seemed to allow things to take over her. She isn’t a very strong-willed person and just goes with the flow. The readers weren’t too surprised by her fate in the end. “She didn’t make a plan for herself,” one reader said. “She just lets things happen to her.” A few of the readers went as far to say that she’s an annoying character. But the dissection of Eleanor led us into one of the more interesting conversations of the night.
Eleanor was lonely, and she let that consume her. After her mother’s passing, she let grief overcome her. She is mentally feeble. And this loneliness, one reader pointed out, is a void. Eleanor tries to fill that void, hence a somewhat spur-of-the-moment volunteering in a psychic experiment with others. One reader really learned a lot from Eleanor, saying that he thought about what he does when he feels lonely or feels rejected. There are healthy ways react and unhealthy ways. He noted that his unhealthy reactions got him in prison in the first place. He said many inmates talk about what they’re going to do their first day out of prison, and the two most common answers are getting laid and getting high. He said those are needs and voids that are natural to want to fulfill, but everyone should be careful with how they deal with needs and voids in their life. He is a reader who initially wasn’t super excited about reading horror fiction but he has learned some valuable lessons in our first two books.
We rounded out the discussion with the astute observation that the first paragraph and last paragraph of the novel mirror each other. I was blown away! This not only helps create the idea that the horrors that take place at Hill House are contained, but that they might keep repeating themselves—the beginning is the end, which is the beginning, and so forth. It was quite a discussion. I am happy we were able to meet and talk about books again. They’re going to do some recruiting for some new readers.
Next week, we’ll be discussing The Ruins by Scott Smith.
Feel free to leave comments below. We’d love to hear what you think.
Until next time,
E.
If you’d like to purchase The Haunting of Hill House, you may do so here: