thepunktheory's Review of The Haunting of Hill House

by Shirley Jackson

The greatest haunted house story ever written—the inspiration for the hit Netflix horror series!

First published in 1959, Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House has been hailed as a perfect work of unnerving terror. 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, his 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.

Full book vs. movie review on my blog!

I was pretty excited to pick up the book but ended up very disappointed.
Why you may ask? First of all, the characters were pretty annoying. I didn't like any single one of them or cared in the slightest what happened to them. Especially, Eleanor was so much in her own headspace, constantly complaining about bullshit that I soon got very annoyed with her. Honestly, most of the characters seemed to be so bothered by entirely trivial things that I couldn't help but roll my eyes.
Had the story been intriguing enough, I would have been prepared to overlook that. However, the haunting remains rather ominous all the way through. There are some moments that seem to be building up to something but the big reveal I had been waiting for never came. Especially the ending was rather anti-climatic and really stretched what I would have been willing to accept.

The Haunting of Hill House

by Shirley Jackson

Reviewed by thepunktheory on Apr 4, 2020

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