It Was A Dream To Read This Nightmare (Nightmare House book review)

Nightmare House by Douglas Clegg

If my fiancé hadn’t come home from work, I would have finished this book in one sitting. It is a very quick read. I was ¾ of the way through and already recommending it to my friends. Finally, a book about a haunted house that I enjoyed!

This book is what it means for a haunted house to be its own character and have its own personality. The house was built to be a puzzle, a maze, with occult practices in mind during its creation. Looking into the book as a series, “the Harrow series consists of several books set in or around the haunted estate in the Hudson Valley. Each Harrow story can be read out-of-order because the main continuing character is the dark mansion itself or those people who have or will touch it,” (Amazon). This is so accurate and makes me want to request the rest of the series from the library. In fact, I normally buy the books I like best from each of my terms and this one just might make the cut.

Point-of-view can make or break a book. This story was told from two different perspectives, thought technically the same character: Esteban/Ethan Gravesend as a young man first entering Harrow House and him as an old man looking back on his childhood and manhood. The duality furthered the story’s depth. There was a lot of duality and binaries. The perspective of Ethan, the personalities of Matilda, the morals of Pocket. All of them had good and bad sides, but one always outweighed the other in the end.

Now, if you asked me what the beginning of this book was about, I wouldn’t remember much to say except character introductions up until the tower. But that is fine with me because I was never bored. I enjoyed meeting all the interesting personalities and learning about Ethan’s grandfather until we hit the wonderful twist of family secrets literally hidden in the woodwork. And my goodness, the twist of Matilda being buried alive and then hidden in the walls of the house. I was screaming in the best way possible when finding her body came to light. The twist about her being Ethan’s mother was also fabulous.

This book has perfect examples of good twists in horror throughout it. Nobody is who they seem.  The whole books works really well to keep you unsure of what is morally right. That was something I really appreciated about it, especially in a ghost story which can so often push for the ghost as malicious.

My only complaint with the book really was the end with Maggie. Ethan can’t save her, and despite not knowing her very well, he is convinced they were meant to be together. Therefore, he takes care of Alf and lets him basically take over control of Harrow. This was not a great ending for me, but I did like that Ethan refused to go into the house again.

Overall: I would read this book again and recommend it to friends.

Link To Original Post

Books I've Read In 2020

The Chowder That Left Me Hungry, And Not For More (Ghost Story book review)

Ghost Story by Peter Straub

Let it be known that if I was writing an academic essay on Ghost Story by Peter Straub, I would have a very differing opinion of this book. During undergrad when I was in honors for literature, a thesis on this book would be easy. The structure of the novel is very intentional. From the current descriptions of the Chowder Society’s minds, to the morbid stories they tell during meetings, to the background about Donald Wanderley and his lover, every bit of this book is a puzzle piece of individual ghost stories. While at the beginning they may appear a bit disjointed, slowly but surely they all connect. 

The Chowder Society tell tales of young boys killed, talk of their nightmares of each other’s ghosts, hear voices before they die. The reader gets tales of how a member, Edward Wanderley, was scared to death a year prior, and we get the backstory of his nephew who was engaged to someone who not only talked to a ghost, but seemed to have never existed at all herself based on the ‘truths’ she told. The structure of the chapters puts the reader in a sense of unease, unsure what is true or not, but always telling a version of a ghost story no matter the character’s point-of-view.

From a non-academic standpoint, I hated the structure. I’m glad that these posts are more like opinion articles from a newspaper rather than literary essays because this book did not work for me. I called it disjointed before and I stand by that, both in structure and characters.

There were too many characters. We have multiple members of The Chowder Society, all their wives,  kids, other townspeople, and more. Then we learn that some of the long list of characters we’ve heard of and tried to keep track of are now all the same person. Eva Galli is also Alma Mobley, Ann-Veronica-Moore, Anna Mostyn, and Amy Monkton. Greggory Bate is also Greg Benton and Greggorio. Fenny Bate is the small boy beckoning everyone to come outside and play. So after taking extensive notes to keep track of everyone, it’s all for naught. 

Up until the middle of the book, I assumed everything happening was created by the minds of The Chowder Society from untreated trauma, but near the middle-end of the book, confirmation is given on supernatural entities being behind it all. We get a ghost in Fenny Bate, and another in Lewis’s dead wife. We get a werewolf in Greg Benton. We get multiple women with the initials A.M.. Then we learn that Eva Galli is a shapeshifter. Let’s not forget the slaughtered sheep who died to a  vampire (which before the scarf discovery, I assumed was a Chupacabra). So are the characters shapeshifters, vampires, werewolves, or something else? The answer is left unclear, Straub explaining it off as some greater being that can speak in and mess with the minds of humans. Great for a monster book, not as great for a ghost story. The book left much to be desired. 

Overall: Too consistently confusing for 567 pages. 

Also, here is a link to someone else’s review that I enjoyed.

Now That's One Hell of a House (Hell House book review)

 

Hell House by Richard Matheson

Now this book is what I wanted out of a haunted house story. The house itself seems to have its own personality, Belasco being the one controlling all of it, like a puppet master in the wings.

Hell House did a wonderful job in keeping the reader unsure whether to trust Florence or Lionel, mediums or scientists. Back and forth we went, seeing the evidence validated from both sides until the very last scene. I’ll admit, I did think the book was over after Lionel’s machine finished, but then Benjamin said exactly what I was thinking, that ending like that was too easy. Chapter to chapter, I never knew exactly what was the truth or not about the ghosts, Belasco, Daniel, Florence’s power, or anything else in the house. I love that.

The prompt for this week talked about masculine takes on haunted house books, specifically using the term ‘testosterone-driven’. This book was not that to me. Perhaps Belasco himself was sex-crazed and lusty over the women in the book, even possessing them into doing sexual acts, but the other men were uninterested. Sex, not testosterone specifically. That being said, the lines where they women were possessed and saying vulgar sexual things to one another really turned me away from this book. I am asexual, like Alexis, but I find myself often sex-repulsed by such blatantly lewd things. The bruises around her nipples and even they gay wandering eyes didn’t bother me, but the vulgar speech was what got to me despite being integral to the haunting.

That being said, Matheson does have a style. It reminds me of Clive Barker. We previously read Rawhead Rex for the Monsters course, and the same kind of imagery was found in that story. I titled that blog post ‘Raw-Head Sex, Urine, Menstrual Blood, and Other Forgettable Fluids’. Matheson seems to have a clear focus on body mutilation and sex when it comes to Hell House. That subgenre is not my cup of tea (and I love most tea). But whereas a short story such as Rawhead Rex didn’t hook me in, Hell House caught my attention and held it, so I was able to get past the vulgarity to get to the next plot point. A few times I did chuckle from how absurd it was. The vulgarity was the only thing I didn’t like about this book. Everything else was lovely.

The ending for this book was both a hit and miss for me. Finding out Belasco was a self-hating, self-mutilating man with leg extensions was disappointing. Degrading him into submission was also very unsatisfying. But learning that his dead body was hidden behind the chapel in a lead room, and he had dehydrated himself to death with a pitcher of water a few feet away? Now that is what I was looking for.

But Hell House really hit all the notes I wanted that The Haunting of Hill House didn’t. We get more of the paranormal. We still get parallels between science and the supernatural. We get inside the heads of the characters analyzing phenomena around them without being dragged down by lengthy internal monologues.

Overall: I enjoyed reading this book, but probably wouldn’t watch a movie adaptation of it.