The Haunting of Hill House
Shirley Jackson
Brilliant.
Frustrating.
And I’ll read it again; not sure when but it will happen.
Even the title is brilliant and you don’t realize why until after you read the book. The non identity of the place in the story and the characters all adds to the weight of it’s ending.
So much disengagement, so much intimacy that is not real but self-satisfying and the terrifying element is that the house knows it.
I’m going out on a limb and stating that this novel epitomizes our “Saran Wrap,” late twentieth century attitude – if I may be baser our condom attitude, that has flourished in the 21st century. We engage, we are brilliant actors we know nothing of each other. We talk politics rather getting to know the person beside us, we move in gangs of attitude rather than individualize.
The house divided and conquered and in the end we had one question that haunts us and will haunt me every time I think of this novel; “Why am I doing this?”
I’ll read it again because the first time the pace of the story drove me like cattle to market, I had to know the end – even though I knew the end. I’ll read the story again to try and find an answer to the question above and an answer to the last question asked – “Why don’t they stop me?”
Brilliant work.