Halloween is closing in on us and I decided to make it a time of scary stories. I read five books of around 200 pages this week and three of them made it on the (at least slightly) scary list.
1. The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
Hill House is supposed to be haunted and Dr. Montague intends to proof it. He therefore invites a few people who are prone to experiencing paranormal phenomena to spend the summer there with him. It starts out slow, lots of talking which I assume not everyone will enjoy but I did because I liked the conversations she put together so neatly and I felt that through them I noticed the house slowly taking over one of the characters. So there might not be all that much happening but it was scary enough in a very elegant way and I might have felt more afraid had I read it at night .
“No Human eye can isolate the unhappy coincidence of line and place which suggests evil in the face of a house, and yet somehow a maniac juxtapositions, a badly turned angle, some chance meeting of roof and sky, turned Hill House into a place of despair more frightening because the face of Hill House seemed awake, with a watchfulness from the blank windows and a touch of glee in the eyebrow of a cornice. Almost any house, caught unexpectedly or at an odd angle, can turn a deeply humorous look on a watching person; even a mischievous little chimney, or a dormer like a dimple, can catch up a beholder with a sense of fellowship; but a house arrogant and hating, never off guard, can only be evil.”
2. Gwendy’s Button Box by Stephen King and Richard T. Chizmar
Can’t go wrong when Stephen King is involved. This one doesn’t start out slow at all. We jump right in there and stay in there till the very end. The story stretches over 10 years and we spend those years following Gwendy who is given a ‘magic’ box by a stranger to take care of it. It is implied from the beginning that he will one day come again to claim it. The box is capable of doing great things for her but it’s also deeply evil. It actually is whatever it wants to be at any given time. In the wrong hands it could destroy all of us but thankfully Gwendy is a very sensible young girl.
“Wanting to know things and do things is what the human race is all about. Exploration, Gwendy! Both the disease and the cure!”
Ever since I read “The Ocean at the End of the Lane” I’ve been feeling an unconditional love for every word Neil Gaiman writes. “Coraline” is simply perfect. It’s the story of a little girl who just moved into a new house with her parents and is incredibly bored during school holidays. So she goes exploring and finds a hidden pathway leading into a parallel world where she finds a talking cat, singing rats and her ‘other’ parents who are creepy versions of the real ones and who refuse to let her go again.
“Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.”
There is so much more to say about all three books but you might want to find out for yourself what happens next in each of them.
I plan on reading more scary stories in October and will keep you posted. Meanwhile, enjoy the pumpkin season.
Bowl Of Oranges 