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millennial_dandy's review
4.0
"It was all the monster stories he had ever heard come to life; it was all the fears he'd ever had; it was his worst nightmares, his most horrible imaginings."
As a life-long fan of the Halloween season and all things spooky, I'm always happy when I find a story drenched in it -- none of that 'it was set on Halloween, but that's just a vaguely outlined backdrop' nonsense.
'The Manse' is a Halloween novel as much as it's a haunted house story, and author Lisa Cantrell really leaned hard into both.
In the story, a local adult youth group have established a tradition of putting together and hosting a haunted house attraction at an old mansion owned by two elderly sisters who have begrudgingly leased it to them as a means of ensuring its survival and upkeep.
Already, this is a great set-up because in a story you can make a haunted house attraction as cool as you want it to be, unlike in real life, where it would be way too expensive to pull off. And her descriptions of the various scenarios the youth group put together are definitely really cool, and part of the fun of the reading experience was the feeling of wanting very badly to visit the attraction myself. Because Cantrell well and truly let her imagination go wild, dreaming up far more abstract and weirdly creepy set-ups for rooms at a haunted house than your typical 'everything's a bit dark and actors in masks slam doors and jump out yelling 'boo!''
But, of course, this is not just a Halloween story about a haunted house attraction: this house really is haunted... or alive... we're never really let in on the answer, and to be honest, it doesn't really matter.
I'm not generally a huge fan of 'haunted house' horror, especially because in movies this usually amounts to windows and floorboards rattling, shapes flitting across the screen, culminating in physical anthropomorphic figures attacking people, or possessing people -- you know.
But in 'The Manse' Cantrell again employs her imagination to instead come up with some truly singular means for the house itself to be the monster that kills unwitting haunted-house-goers or other trespassers. The darkness is a major antagonist in the story, and it has this uncanny ability to morph into something that exists in a state between a solid and a liquid. It moves like a vine, reaching out tendrils of shadow to capture its victim, drag them into itself, and destroy them.
Fire, mist, cobwebs, and any other material it can co-opt function similarly, and yet with their own little diabolical twists.
Towards the climax, we veer to the edge of the almost Lovecraftian.
There's background intrigue of just who the twins are who own the house, the identity of a mysterious woman who hangs around sometimes, and just what it is that makes this house tick.
Right before the climax things get a tad exposition-y when it comes to the question of the sisters, and that could have used some editing down, we never really find out what the deal with the woman skulking around is other than a tenuous connection to the story of the sisters. And we also never really know what the deal with the house is: is it evil because a string of murders was committed there, or was it evil before that and somehow caused the murders?
I'm not the type to need the magic explained, but I feel like Cantrell picked secret option number three by giving enough information that it feels like it should lead up to an explanation, but then not giving the answer -- and not in the fun 'open ending' kind of way, but more so in the 'let's wrap this up quickly' kind of way.
It's not the kind of book that's inviting you to think too hard, and if you do, none of it will make sense, so best not. Much like going to a haunted house attraction in real life, part of the fun is the chaos, and the chaos was rather glorious.
I was also pretty impressed by how well she was able to juggle a fairly large cast of characters. They were all fleshed out well enough that it was easy to remember everyone, the interpersonal conflicts were believable and felt interconnected even without tying back to the house itself other than them all working there. There were no stand-outs, but everyone was serviceable, and the love triangle drama didn't take up too much space.
There was a weird bit towards the beginning when Cantrell was trying to establish that one of the main characters is Black that was…uncomfortable. He's trying to comfort a kid that got really spooked at the haunted house, but the kid is afraid of him because his skin is dark (???) and the kid mistakes him for a monster (???) and then she also uses the phrase 'he shot her a homeboy smile' more than once. So there was a bit of cringe there, but then she luckily decided to just let him be a person and stopped doing that.
All in all, I really like 'The Manse' for what it is: Halloween horror schlock for everyone who likes the spooky season. I picked it up for the cover and I got what I was after.
As a life-long fan of the Halloween season and all things spooky, I'm always happy when I find a story drenched in it -- none of that 'it was set on Halloween, but that's just a vaguely outlined backdrop' nonsense.
'The Manse' is a Halloween novel as much as it's a haunted house story, and author Lisa Cantrell really leaned hard into both.
In the story, a local adult youth group have established a tradition of putting together and hosting a haunted house attraction at an old mansion owned by two elderly sisters who have begrudgingly leased it to them as a means of ensuring its survival and upkeep.
Already, this is a great set-up because in a story you can make a haunted house attraction as cool as you want it to be, unlike in real life, where it would be way too expensive to pull off. And her descriptions of the various scenarios the youth group put together are definitely really cool, and part of the fun of the reading experience was the feeling of wanting very badly to visit the attraction myself. Because Cantrell well and truly let her imagination go wild, dreaming up far more abstract and weirdly creepy set-ups for rooms at a haunted house than your typical 'everything's a bit dark and actors in masks slam doors and jump out yelling 'boo!''
But, of course, this is not just a Halloween story about a haunted house attraction: this house really is haunted... or alive... we're never really let in on the answer, and to be honest, it doesn't really matter.
I'm not generally a huge fan of 'haunted house' horror, especially because in movies this usually amounts to windows and floorboards rattling, shapes flitting across the screen, culminating in physical anthropomorphic figures attacking people, or possessing people -- you know.
But in 'The Manse' Cantrell again employs her imagination to instead come up with some truly singular means for the house itself to be the monster that kills unwitting haunted-house-goers or other trespassers. The darkness is a major antagonist in the story, and it has this uncanny ability to morph into something that exists in a state between a solid and a liquid. It moves like a vine, reaching out tendrils of shadow to capture its victim, drag them into itself, and destroy them.
Fire, mist, cobwebs, and any other material it can co-opt function similarly, and yet with their own little diabolical twists.
Towards the climax, we veer to the edge of the almost Lovecraftian.
There's background intrigue of just who the twins are who own the house, the identity of a mysterious woman who hangs around sometimes, and just what it is that makes this house tick.
Right before the climax things get a tad exposition-y when it comes to the question of the sisters, and that could have used some editing down, we never really find out what the deal with the woman skulking around is other than a tenuous connection to the story of the sisters. And we also never really know what the deal with the house is: is it evil because a string of murders was committed there, or was it evil before that and somehow caused the murders?
I'm not the type to need the magic explained, but I feel like Cantrell picked secret option number three by giving enough information that it feels like it should lead up to an explanation, but then not giving the answer -- and not in the fun 'open ending' kind of way, but more so in the 'let's wrap this up quickly' kind of way.
It's not the kind of book that's inviting you to think too hard, and if you do, none of it will make sense, so best not. Much like going to a haunted house attraction in real life, part of the fun is the chaos, and the chaos was rather glorious.
I was also pretty impressed by how well she was able to juggle a fairly large cast of characters. They were all fleshed out well enough that it was easy to remember everyone, the interpersonal conflicts were believable and felt interconnected even without tying back to the house itself other than them all working there. There were no stand-outs, but everyone was serviceable, and the love triangle drama didn't take up too much space.
There was a weird bit towards the beginning when Cantrell was trying to establish that one of the main characters is Black that was…uncomfortable. He's trying to comfort a kid that got really spooked at the haunted house, but the kid is afraid of him because his skin is dark (???) and the kid mistakes him for a monster (???) and then she also uses the phrase 'he shot her a homeboy smile' more than once. So there was a bit of cringe there, but then she luckily decided to just let him be a person and stopped doing that.
All in all, I really like 'The Manse' for what it is: Halloween horror schlock for everyone who likes the spooky season. I picked it up for the cover and I got what I was after.
dnemec's review
3.0
While it drug on a little in the middle, a quality tale of a haunted house from the 80s. The ending was well done and satisfying.
jamiezaccaria's review
4.0
The perfect story to read in October. Highly recommended for any haunted house-enthusiasts.
gentlemanjeff's review
3.0
This is a novel of contradictions. Lisa Cantrell won the 1987 Bram Stoker award for First Novel, and a hell of a first it was. That same year, McCammon's Swan Song and King's Misery tied for the award for Novel. In good company, Cantrell released her thrilling debut about a mansion used as a haunted house attraction in a small town. The story reads like an intense RL Stine, or a restrained Stephen King. As a reader, you're immediately impressed with the vivid clarity of Cantrell's imagery and the immediate accessibility of the characters. She knows how to haunt a sentence, for sure, littering the plot with creative and nightmarish scenes. The contradiction comes when the restraints suddenly come off, splashing the scene with a little gore and couple Fs and GDs. With another author, you'd be right at home and that use of language would only reinforce the tone of the story, but in The Manse, it feels out of place. The characters themselves seem contradictory, being well-drawn to the point that the reader expects to start getting some deeper personality, but then breaking off suddenly like an optical illusion. Rather than building up main characters to make them real, every character is given equal attention and a touch of hero's insight, which sounds like a good idea, until they're indistinguishable in terms of importance.
An author with such a promising start, Cantrell herself is a contradiction, with The Manse and its sequel comprising 50% of her long-form output. There's a reason this one isn't remembered as a classic, but it's a hell of a debut (pun intended). Many authors only surpass this kind of result at their peaks. It's a solid offering for light, holiday-oriented reading and surely one of the better Paperbacks from Hell(Grady Hendrix) titles. If you're trying to get in the spirit of the season this September or October, grab a copy (I found an autographed one cheap!), and light your jack-o-lantern. Then, just sit back and enjoy the show.
An author with such a promising start, Cantrell herself is a contradiction, with The Manse and its sequel comprising 50% of her long-form output. There's a reason this one isn't remembered as a classic, but it's a hell of a debut (pun intended). Many authors only surpass this kind of result at their peaks. It's a solid offering for light, holiday-oriented reading and surely one of the better Paperbacks from Hell(Grady Hendrix) titles. If you're trying to get in the spirit of the season this September or October, grab a copy (I found an autographed one cheap!), and light your jack-o-lantern. Then, just sit back and enjoy the show.
ghostinthepages's review
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
5.0
This was amazing! I loved it and there are a few scenes that are definitely going to stick with me
ghoulnextdoor's review
3.0
In The Manse, some self-important small town JCs (junior chamber of commerce members) decorate a local historical space–an old house owned by two doddering spinsters tucked away in a local ALF– every year for Halloween and make enough money from their haunted house doings to keep the old place afloat for another year. But! The house is apparently situated over a portal to hell and feeds on the fear generated by these annual Halloween shenanigans, and by its 13th year, its saved enough fear-bucks to do something big. But…what exactly? I am not sure. Hell’s grand opening, with lots of samples, like a Saturday afternoon at Costco, maybe? I feel like these vintage paperbacks are always sketchy on the details of whatever the titular Big Bad is actually trying to accomplish. The Manse is awfully silly, but the cover art of a demonic jack-o-lantern intensely nomming on a cobwebby banister is actually pretty great.
paperbackstash's review
3.0
Meh, the book had great cover art but I'm not sure why it was chosen as an award winner. It's a typical haunted house story but without much backstory explained - little plausibility on how the house itself comes alive when it does. It's an 80's horror fun romp but I had little fun in it for some reason - could it be because I'm too jaded by now?
Characterization is lackluster. There's some trademark characters like Pearl, who is the ominious housekeeper who warns about the house, and then there's the toss-away people who run the house for the halloween event. A random love story is involved, although it'd be as good without. There's a twist for the homeowner, that I did like, but other than that little stood out.
My main gripe was this book was dull - it didn't flow together well enough and with enough ooomph purpose to keep me enthralled. I didn't care much about characters, some of the cheesy scenes didn't work, and I found myself confused rather than glued to a lot of the action scenes.
There's little else to say about this one - it has a cool cover, that Halloween vibe, but it doesn't make the cut as a horror novel that stands above the others.
kkehoe's review
4.0
An extremely slow burn haunted house story that will, sadly, lose a lot of readers before it finally reached a fantastic conclusion.
quilly14's review
3.0
2.5 stars
Winner of the 1st Annual Bram Stoker Award for Best First Novel(1987)
A group of Jaycees put on on haunted house every Halloween season at a spooky old house known as "The Manse." Over time, members of the group notice odd things happening.
"Meandering." That's the word that comes to mind when I'm trying to formulate thoughts on this book. I never did get handle on what it was going for. It felt like it needed a clear protagonist, but it jumped between characters too much to figure out who that was. And the ensemble cast members weren't fleshed out enough to warrant all the perspective jumps.
Once people started believing that the odd things going on were of a supernatural nature, things moved pretty quickly, and there were a few good haunt scenes. But it took forever to get to that point. Seriously, like two thirds of the book.
Nothing terrible, but if I hadn't unofficially challenged myself to read all the Stoker winners(someday), I may not have finished it.
p.s. Love the cover.
Winner of the 1st Annual Bram Stoker Award for Best First Novel(1987)
A group of Jaycees put on on haunted house every Halloween season at a spooky old house known as "The Manse." Over time, members of the group notice odd things happening.
"Meandering." That's the word that comes to mind when I'm trying to formulate thoughts on this book. I never did get handle on what it was going for. It felt like it needed a clear protagonist, but it jumped between characters too much to figure out who that was. And the ensemble cast members weren't fleshed out enough to warrant all the perspective jumps.
Once people started believing that the odd things going on were of a supernatural nature, things moved pretty quickly, and there were a few good haunt scenes. But it took forever to get to that point. Seriously, like two thirds of the book.
Nothing terrible, but if I hadn't unofficially challenged myself to read all the Stoker winners(someday), I may not have finished it.
p.s. Love the cover.
tattooedhorrorreader's review
1.0
Did not finish - I just couldn't get into this one. Nearly 70 pages in and still no concept of a plot. Giving it up for now.
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