The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

ISBN-13: 9780143039983
Publisher: Penguin Group (USA)
Published: November 2006
182 pgs

I have a habit of reading the introduction pages (or the Author's Notes, or any other stuff that are printed before the first chapter for that matter) but I have to say this is the book where you have to skip reading the introduction pages and jump to the story first. Why? Besides a little background of the author (which I enjoyed reading and learning more about her), they also include some information about the story and the characters which I felt are a bit of a spoiler so I would suggest anyone to read the story first unless you do not mind it at all. That said, let me get on with this review.

First, I have to thank Nymeth for mentioning this book. Without her lovely review, I would have given this book a miss. As the title indicates, this is a story that centered around Hill House and it had stood so for eighty years. It all begins when Dr. John Montague, a scholar who had taken his degree in anthropology when he wants to find some evidence of supernatural manifestations. When he heard about Hill House, he knew he had found an excellent place for his "investigations". Thus, he rented the place for three months, and he had engaged four assistants (they should fit the criteria of involving in any supernatural or abnormal event) but only Eleanor Vance and Theodora (that is as much name as she used) turned up. Together with Luke Sanderson, the future heir of Hill House, the four of them will stay in the Hill House and they shall wait to see if the supernaturals really do exist.

As much as this is about the haunted Hill House, I have to say there is much more than it. Besides the intensity thrill like any other ghost stories, this story is very much about the setting, the atmosphere, the psychological feeling and not to mention the set of characters that make this book a total different reading experience as compared with the others of the same genre. In this case, Eleanor plays an important role in this story as the readers get to experience the story from within her consciousness. Through Eleanor's perspective, the readers follow her through this grand adventure as the story moves along and that is the most intrigue experience in my opinion.

I can understand why the author chose Eleanor for this role because she is quite an interesting and a complex character. Before she took up Dr. Montague's invitation, she has been spending most of her life looking after her ailing mother and one could say she is very much a loner since she hardly interacts with anyone. However, that changes after she got acquainted with Dr. Montague's team and lives in Hill House and this is where I should stop telling more about the premise.

Oh, I feel I need to mention the housekeeper of Hill House, Mrs Dudley because she is a strange woman. She is not at all scary or menacing but there is definitely an aura of mystery surrounding her.

All in all, The Haunting of Hill House is a great read. I have also heard We Have Always Lived in the Castle is another great novel by her so this would be my next choice among her other list of books.

Other reviews:
A Striped Armchair
Bibliolatry
Books for Breakfast, Drinks for Dinner
Booknotes by Lisa
Jenny's Books
Sadie-Jean
So Many Books
Stuck in a Book
Things Mean A Lot
(Let me know if I missed yours.)

Wordless Wednesday

Koln, Germany

Cover Attraction

This is a weekly event hosted by Marcia of The Printed Page every Wednesday.

Marcia says:

I love beautiful, and interesting, cover art so every Wednesday I post my 'Cover Attraction' for the week along with a synopsis of the book. Everyone is welcome to stop by and, if they'd like, post a link to their favorite weekly book cover.

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My find for this week is The Rose Labyrinth by Titania Hardie.

ISBN-13: 9781416586005
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: September 2009

Synopsis:

From bestselling British author Titania Hardie comes a mystical fiction debut that takes readers on a romantic journey from Elizabethan England to modern-day London where a centuries-old secret awaits.

Before his death in 1609, Queen Elizabeth's spiritual consultant, astrologer, and scientific advisor John Dee hid many of his most astonishing written works, believing that the world was not yet prepared to face the shocking truths that they revealed. For seventeen generations, his female descendants have carefully guarded the secret of his hiding place, waiting for the right moment to bring Dee's ideas to light. That time is now.

In The Rose Labyrinth, Titania Hardie masterfully blends historical fact and fiction as she introduces readers to Lucy King, a beautiful, young documentary producer based in London. With the help of a brilliant group of friends, Lucy races through London, France, and New York to decipher the clues that will eventually lead her to the hidden treasure of the Rose Labyrinth. Along the way she finds true love with Alex Stafford, the doctor who saw her through a life-threatening heart condition and transplant.

A sweeping adventure for readers who loved The Da Vinci Code and The Expected One, The Rose Labyrinth is a decadent, romantic novel with a historical twist. It features a wonderful mix of literary references, from Shakespeare, to the Romantic poets, to Gabriel Garcia Marquez; the folklore and history of Islam, Christianity, Judaism, and Paganism; and of course, astrology and numerology, of which Hardie is an expert. As the Rose Labyrinth tells us, the world we think we know is not all that it appears tobe.

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To find out more or participate, go to The Printed Page every Wednesday.

Teaser Tuesdays

TEASER TUESDAYS asks you to:

• Grab your current read.
• Let the book fall open to a random page.
• Share with us two (2) “teaser” sentences from that page, somewhere between lines 7 and 12.
• You also need to share the title of the book that you’re getting your “teaser” from … that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you’ve given!
• Please avoid spoilers!

My teaser for today:

Jolted back to reality, Heath couldn't help but think about the funeral, his grandfather's heavy casket plunging into a freshly dug grave. The image was dark, but that wasn't so bad.

What was bad was that he still couldn't picture the face in that casket, and he couldn't find the emotion you were supposed to feel when your grandfather dies.

(Note: I have to include another sentence to show how Heath is feeling towards his grandfather.)


(Pg 38, Thanksgiving at the Inn by Tim Whitney)

Musing Mondays: Wishlist

Today’s MUSING MONDAYS post is about your wishlist…

Do you keep a book wishlist, either on paper, Amazon/etc, or via a book database site (Shelfari, GoodReads, LibraryThing)? If yes, do you share this list with others (especially coming up to Christmas)?

With all the great recommendations I get from fellow bookbloggers (or anyone who recommends me a book title for that matter), it is surely hard not to keep a wishlist, hehe. In this case, I keep track of the books I want on a journal (or on a piece of paper if I don't have the journal in hand). I do have an account with Shelfari, GoodReads and LibraryThing, but I use them for different purposes.

For Shelfari, it is a record of the books I own though I have not updated it in a long while! GoodReads is where I share my book reviews besides here on my blog, while LibraryThing is the place where I list my latest acquisitions. I also keep a wishlist on BookMooch so I could mooch the book once it is available.

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I will be taking a short break from blogging for the next few days (I am not going anywhere as I will be spending some time with my daughters at home), and I am not sure if I would have the time (or a chance) to be online given that my 1-yr-old is always vying for my attention. I am not even sure if I have the time to read too but I can always try! However, I have some scheduled posts updated for some memes (i.e. Teaser Tuesday, Cover Attraction and Wordless Wednesday) for the next two days so it would not look as if my blog is going on a hiatus. I have just finished reading The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson and I loved it! I have to gather my thoughts before writing a review on it so I am hoping it would be up on Thursday or Friday.

Meanwhile, happy reading to you all and I will catch up with everyone once I am back next week!

Mailbox Monday

Mailbox Monday is hosted by Marcia from The Printed Page.

I only received one book last week but it is enough to make me very happy:

Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins

I would have got this book way much earlier if I had not waited for it from the bookstore (they claimed the books have not arrived). I guess I was too impatient to wait anymore so I ordered it from The Book Depository instead. And guess what, I still didn't see the books on shelves the last time I visited the bookstore (i.e. last Thursday) and I am so glad that I didn't wait much longer!

So what books came into your house last week?

Curious Wine, Katherine V Forrest

I imagine that getting a lesbian love story published in 1983 must have been quite a chore.  After all, you couldn't really even talk about being a lesbian in 1983.  Writing a book about a lesbian affair, especially one with as much graphic sexuality as Curious Wine, seems pretty courageous.  So let's take a moment to honor that courage...ok, moment over...let's begin...

Curious Wine is the story of Diana and Lane, two women discovering they love women over a long weekend at a cabin in Lake Tahoe.  Drawn together by fate and irresistible desire, and unbeknownst to anyone else, they create a small lesbian oasis in the room they share.  Surrounding these two are a group of women, mostly in their 40s, in varying states of relationship with men.

The fact that this book was published in 1983 shows in the way that the characters relate to each other.  I had to think of the book the same way I think about an exhibit in a museum.  Dated, an object from another time to examine and study.  For a third wave feminist such as myself, it was hard to feel a kinship with any of the women, defined as they are by their relationships (or lack of relationships) with men.  There was Liz, the bitter divorcee; Madge, the "progressive" woman in an open marriage, though only her husband ever dabbled;  Chris, the spinster; and Viviane, who decided to forgo staying at the cabin with the rest of the women so she could stay in town with her boyfriend.  The main characters were equally stereotypical.  Diana had just come out of a bad break-up, a relationship which followed a bad marriage.  In trying to deny her lesbian feelings, she picks up a man in a bar who ends up assaulting her, thereby driving her into the arms of a woman.  Lane had briefly had a wonderful relationship with a man, only to be devastated when he died in Viet Nam.  She then spent the next several years being rather promiscuous, which I think the author wanted us to perceive as forward thinking and strong on her part, but which came off as desperate.  At one point in the book the women play some encounter games, the kind popular in the 1970s, and all of the negative female stereotypes of competition, jealousy, and apologizing for having ideas and opinions comes out clearly.  Maybe the author herself was struggling with how to be a woman in the age of the ERA-if so, her struggle is evident in her portrayal of these women.

As a lesbian myself, I hoped to feel some kinship with the two woman-loving women in the book.  I did feel a connection with Lane's character, a take-charge lawyer who refuses to be drawn into the other women's drama during the encounter games.  Lane was the character most like me.  As a teen and young adult she had intense feelings towards other girls, but didn't recognize them for what they were, or suppressed them out of guilt and fear about being a lesbian.  I didn't recognize my own first crushes for what they were, either, though I was saddled with WAY less guilt and shame coming out in 2000.  Sadly, that is where any identification I felt with the characters ended.  Do I think that trying to run away from your same-sex feelings and hiding from the world is historically accurate?  Of course.  I just don't think that this novel does a great job of making the reader feel like they are part of the story, and therefore experiencing the past in a way that speaks to the now.  Anyone who has read Stone Butch Blues or Ruby Fruit Jungle has had that experience.  This novel just didn't rise to that level.

I looked up this author before writing this post, and she has written many books and won numerous awards from gay literary organizations.  I suppose there is something to be said for reading Curious Wine as a primary source for the development of feminism and gay identified literature.  In that sense, it is very much like a museum exhibit-you'll learn something about the past, but in such a way that you can't really touch it.