The Haunting Mind of Eleanor Vance (The Haunting of Hill House book review)

 

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

In this week’s group discussion, we were asked which is more effective for ghost stories: fast-paced or slow burn. The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson is definitely the latter. Since I grew up in an era of ‘can’t catch my breath’ thrilling ghost stories, I could immediately tell that this book was older, from 1959 upon further research.

The beginning of this book had me hooked. We got the gold dining set debacle with the old sisters who owned the house, and the theories about subterranean waters instead of ghosts. My favorite funny moment was doctor joking about how he wouldn’t have hanged himself from the library tower like one person did and would instead have liked it to be from the deer head in the game room.

This book kept sending my mind to the movie Clue (1985). The feeling of the old house and the people interacting drew me there, especially after the ominous story of the two daughters of Hugh Crain. The details about the house being just slightly off in angles was great.

But the characters ruined this book for me.

The story centered around the mindset of Eleanor Vance, a woman mentally unstable after taking care of her disabled and demanding mother for years. So we have an unreliable narrator who could either be especially sensitive to the supernatural or could be seeing and hearing things the other characters couldn’t because of a psychotic break.

And oh, Eleanor could whine! The first few sections of the book had me hooked, even through the slow burn of getting to the writing of the blood on the walls the first time and the dog. But then we have Nell’s repeated ‘journeys end in lovers meeting’ that drove me crazy. Plus her wishy-washy relationship with being almost cousins with Theodora, then hating her, then heartfelt wanting to move in with Theo, etc. Theodora was no saint herself as a character, a clear caricature of a whiny and spoiled rich kid. Luke was the classic troublemaker that begrudgingly helped. The Mr. and Mrs. Dudley are the stereotypical Scooby-Doo rude caretakers of the estate. A slow burn isn’t a bad way to tell a ghost story, but these characters were not helping the situation.

There were very few decent characters. Dr. Montague was a good leader of the group, and I found when his wife came in she was ridiculously over the top, adding yet another humorous element to the story. Arthur, the toxically masculine teacher and guard, was entertaining on occasion but forgettable. But the book wasn’t told from their points-of-view.

Almost everything after the first bloody writing and dog seemed to drag for me, excluding Mrs. Montague’s outbursts. The plot was too much of Eleanor’s internal dialog and thoughts. If they had been about the ghosts, perhaps it would have been interesting, but instead they were all about how she was perceived by the other characters. I had hoped the ending would turn everything around, back to the enjoyment I had at the beginning. It did not.

Eleanor finally snaps. She runs around banging on doors daring people to open them in case she is a ghost. She runs up a decrepit staircase, putting herself and Luke (sent to get her) in danger. The others force her to leave the house because she shouldn’t be enjoying staying in such a cursed environment. Thus, she drives her car into a tree, and her last thought is why, as if the spirit of Hill House possessed her and made her do it. Of course, we don’t technically know she is dead, but the end chapter of the book is telling what all the other characters did after, but there is no mention of Eleanor, so it can be assumed she is gone. I wonder if her spirit stayed at Hill House to join Hugh Crain.

Overall: While I don’t mind a slow build up for ghost stories, this book fell flat for me. But perhaps the recent TV adaptation is better, though I’ve never seen it.