Take a photo of a barcode or cover
3.64 AVERAGE
3.64 AVERAGE
This is my first book by Malfi, and I must say I'm impressed. Such a haunting tale; not so much about a haunted house, but a haunted man. Sam Hatch becomes a drifter after the deaths of his wife and child. He happens upon an old abandoned house that appears to be on its last leg. It is here that he must either face his demons or succumb to them. To me, his journey is just heartbreaking.
Malfi is a wonderful storyteller, and I look forward to reading his other works.
Malfi is a wonderful storyteller, and I look forward to reading his other works.
http://ensuingchapters.com/2012/12/18/review-the-mourning-house/
Dr. Sam Hatch is a soul adrift. Since losing his wife and child a year before, he’s tried to outrace his pain, literally, with a series of taped-together cars and sometimes his thumb. Now a transient, he squats for a night in a “vacant shell of a house” in Maryland.
Here is where the past catches up with Hatch.
Ronald Malfi’s The Mourning House (published Dec. 18 by Delirium Books as an e-book and limited edition hardcover) is a short tale of grief, obsession and the fragility of physical and mental structure. It is also a haunted house story, if there is such a thing (I’ll explain in a moment).
Malfi, whose previous novels include the IPPY-award winners Floating Staircase and Shamrock Alley, adds to this great literary tradition, and The Mourning House is a thoroughly enjoyable tale that is more of a character study than a plot-driven thriller. It hooked me with the opening chapter and kept me burning through the pages to the end.
It also got me thinking about the lure of the haunted house. Why is it such an enduring trope? There are the familiar literary explanations: the house as manifestation of the self (“The Fall of the House of Usher”); the lingering energy (aka back story) of past inhabitants (The House of the Seven Gables); the narrative tale that leaves you wondering whether the characters are occupying the house or the other way around (The Shining).
But The Mourning House is part of a lesser-discussed subgenre: the malleable or ever-shifting house. This also happens to be my favorite kind of haunted house story.
I don’t subscribe to the supernatural. I’m not afraid of ghosts, and I’ve yet to fall victim to a family curse. But “The 5 1/2 Minute Hallway” in Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves is one of the most terrifying passages I’ve ever read. Here, new residents of an old house discover that the interior and exterior dimensions of a hallway are incongruent. There is a geometric dissonance that disturbs the occupants (and the reader).
Malfi taps into that feeling of dissonance. Hatch isn’t visited by apparitions in The Mourning House, and there’s nothing a poltergeist could do that would torment him as severely as his own memories. What is troubling is that items around the house have moved while he was out; his closet seems to be of variable dimensions; and a curious subfloor is revealed beneath his feet.
Each morning, Hatch awakes in, essentially, a new house, and that, my friends, is the crux of great horror fiction. It tickles that spot in our lizard brains that burns for shelter. It’s why the haunted house is a timeless premise—and why I argue that there is, ironically, no such thing.
At the core of every haunted house story is a protagonist troubled long before they ever set foot in the house. The house becomes a metaphor, a hallucination, a projection of mental disturbance. The nature of the haunting reflects the nature of one’s troubles. For Hatch, the ever-shifting house is symbolic of helplessness and fragility. He was a successful doctor with a happy marriage, but in an instant it was taken from him.
Our homes are extensions of ourselves. That’s why home invasions are more traumatic than street muggings. For Hatch, it’s only natural that his haunting plays on his vulnerability. At any moment, the place where he should feel safest could shift forever. And he is helpless to do anything about it.
Malfi handles this masterfully in The Mourning House. The beginning and ending are magnificent, as is the bulk of what comes between. For the most part, the novel is well-paced, the prose solid and the action compelling. Here and there, scenes feel rushed or we get an overload of description without the emotional interiority that anchors us to the story (see chapter two).
But there’s no sense nitpicking over these few moments. Malfi is an excellent storyteller and a demon of description. This is a great piece of writing, and I recommend it for any fan of quality horror fiction or anyone who may fit that description on your holiday shopping list.
Dr. Sam Hatch is a soul adrift. Since losing his wife and child a year before, he’s tried to outrace his pain, literally, with a series of taped-together cars and sometimes his thumb. Now a transient, he squats for a night in a “vacant shell of a house” in Maryland.
Here is where the past catches up with Hatch.
Ronald Malfi’s The Mourning House (published Dec. 18 by Delirium Books as an e-book and limited edition hardcover) is a short tale of grief, obsession and the fragility of physical and mental structure. It is also a haunted house story, if there is such a thing (I’ll explain in a moment).
Malfi, whose previous novels include the IPPY-award winners Floating Staircase and Shamrock Alley, adds to this great literary tradition, and The Mourning House is a thoroughly enjoyable tale that is more of a character study than a plot-driven thriller. It hooked me with the opening chapter and kept me burning through the pages to the end.
It also got me thinking about the lure of the haunted house. Why is it such an enduring trope? There are the familiar literary explanations: the house as manifestation of the self (“The Fall of the House of Usher”); the lingering energy (aka back story) of past inhabitants (The House of the Seven Gables); the narrative tale that leaves you wondering whether the characters are occupying the house or the other way around (The Shining).
But The Mourning House is part of a lesser-discussed subgenre: the malleable or ever-shifting house. This also happens to be my favorite kind of haunted house story.
I don’t subscribe to the supernatural. I’m not afraid of ghosts, and I’ve yet to fall victim to a family curse. But “The 5 1/2 Minute Hallway” in Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves is one of the most terrifying passages I’ve ever read. Here, new residents of an old house discover that the interior and exterior dimensions of a hallway are incongruent. There is a geometric dissonance that disturbs the occupants (and the reader).
Malfi taps into that feeling of dissonance. Hatch isn’t visited by apparitions in The Mourning House, and there’s nothing a poltergeist could do that would torment him as severely as his own memories. What is troubling is that items around the house have moved while he was out; his closet seems to be of variable dimensions; and a curious subfloor is revealed beneath his feet.
Each morning, Hatch awakes in, essentially, a new house, and that, my friends, is the crux of great horror fiction. It tickles that spot in our lizard brains that burns for shelter. It’s why the haunted house is a timeless premise—and why I argue that there is, ironically, no such thing.
At the core of every haunted house story is a protagonist troubled long before they ever set foot in the house. The house becomes a metaphor, a hallucination, a projection of mental disturbance. The nature of the haunting reflects the nature of one’s troubles. For Hatch, the ever-shifting house is symbolic of helplessness and fragility. He was a successful doctor with a happy marriage, but in an instant it was taken from him.
Our homes are extensions of ourselves. That’s why home invasions are more traumatic than street muggings. For Hatch, it’s only natural that his haunting plays on his vulnerability. At any moment, the place where he should feel safest could shift forever. And he is helpless to do anything about it.
Malfi handles this masterfully in The Mourning House. The beginning and ending are magnificent, as is the bulk of what comes between. For the most part, the novel is well-paced, the prose solid and the action compelling. Here and there, scenes feel rushed or we get an overload of description without the emotional interiority that anchors us to the story (see chapter two).
But there’s no sense nitpicking over these few moments. Malfi is an excellent storyteller and a demon of description. This is a great piece of writing, and I recommend it for any fan of quality horror fiction or anyone who may fit that description on your holiday shopping list.
This is the first book I've read in 2013, and talk about starting the year with a bang! Sam Hatch has just suffered a serious tragedy and has found himself wandering the country. He finally stumbles upon a house in a small town and immediately buys it. He's not sure why the house speaks to him so much, but the residents of the small town all think that the it's haunted.
And maybe it is.
Because Sam begins to hear noises in it late at night, and when he goes searching for the sources, digging through the floorboards and plaster, he finds relics and items from his old, dead life.
What I enjoyed most about this story is that it reminded me a lot of classic weird/horror fiction by the likes of M. R. James and maybe Arthur Machen. It's a short and fun read filled with real characters, great dialogue, and a creepy atmosphere. Recommended!
And maybe it is.
Because Sam begins to hear noises in it late at night, and when he goes searching for the sources, digging through the floorboards and plaster, he finds relics and items from his old, dead life.
What I enjoyed most about this story is that it reminded me a lot of classic weird/horror fiction by the likes of M. R. James and maybe Arthur Machen. It's a short and fun read filled with real characters, great dialogue, and a creepy atmosphere. Recommended!
what a very good dark story this is!
Full review is on http://deskynowsky.blogspot.com/
Thanks to Netgalley and DarkFuse for giving me a chance to read this story..
It was short and for me personally it's a very good bed-time story!
So basically, it was a story about a man who seemed to have a happy small family. He had a wonderful and lovely wife and a newborn baby girl. But then something bad happened and he lost the most important things in his life, his lovely wife and baby girl. Then he started to lose himself and decided to leave. Somehow it ended on him buying a creepy old house in some place out of nowhere. And the house was a puzzle, even for me who read this story. I can't quite decide whether the house is haunted or just a puzzle that play a mind-trick to anyone that come to the house.
There was a mystery and dark-twist to it. It was not a story of some sort of hero. It was just a story of a man who unfortunate enough lose to the villain house. Somehow the ending felt unfinished as many of dark/horror stories ended. Not all of stories have it's happy endings. This is one of them, but I am just open-minded enough to understand where the writer wants this story goes and I think I can see why.
Good one, a very nice bed-time story.. ;)
Full review is on http://deskynowsky.blogspot.com/
Thanks to Netgalley and DarkFuse for giving me a chance to read this story..
It was short and for me personally it's a very good bed-time story!
So basically, it was a story about a man who seemed to have a happy small family. He had a wonderful and lovely wife and a newborn baby girl. But then something bad happened and he lost the most important things in his life, his lovely wife and baby girl. Then he started to lose himself and decided to leave. Somehow it ended on him buying a creepy old house in some place out of nowhere. And the house was a puzzle, even for me who read this story. I can't quite decide whether the house is haunted or just a puzzle that play a mind-trick to anyone that come to the house.
There was a mystery and dark-twist to it. It was not a story of some sort of hero. It was just a story of a man who unfortunate enough lose to the villain house. Somehow the ending felt unfinished as many of dark/horror stories ended. Not all of stories have it's happy endings. This is one of them, but I am just open-minded enough to understand where the writer wants this story goes and I think I can see why.
Good one, a very nice bed-time story.. ;)
This was an excellent haunted house story.
Dr. Hatch has lost his family. Broken by the weight of his guilt, he decides to leave the family home and wander aimlessly. Until he comes upon an abandoned house. The Mourning House.
I have read a few great haunted house stories in the last few weeks. This one stands right up there with the best of them.
Dr. Hatch has lost his family. Broken by the weight of his guilt, he decides to leave the family home and wander aimlessly. Until he comes upon an abandoned house. The Mourning House.
I have read a few great haunted house stories in the last few weeks. This one stands right up there with the best of them.
I often find something to bitch about when reading short stories and novellas because usually something is missing or lacking or characterization gets shafted in exchange for less words. Or, perhaps the worst sin of short stories, the ending is rushed. Don’t you hate that? The Mourning House is an example of how to do the novella the right way. It has a very small cast of characters, doesn’t attempt more than it should, builds with a slow, creeping sense of dread that slowly leads up to the non-rushed ending and the author doesn’t waste any words on unimportant filler. And best of all? Its main character is a sympathetic guy you get to know pretty intimately.
Sam Hatch was once a happily married successful doctor with a beautiful baby daughter. Now he’s an unwashed drifter who is filled with regret and guilt and has walked away from everything that reminds him of his previous life. Something compels him to stop at a creepy run-down house and beckons him to enter.
Oh Sam you should’ve kept driving!
He doesn’t. He stops. He moves in. Strange things begin to happen. He has to face down his demons and we get to watch it all unfold and it’s gloriously unsettling. The reader sees Sam’s sanity start to slip the longer he resides in the house but he can’t leave for long because he needs to go back. It’s that compulsion again. Is it real or is it in his head? I loved not knowing and held my breathe throughout most of it. This story reminded me a wee bit of The Red Tree by Caitlin Kiernan which is one of my favorite books that examines madness, grief, pain and the haunted. If you haven’t read it you really should.
As I said, I felt for the main character. In a few short paragraphs I was easily able to understand his plight, even though many details were not yet revealed. The author also has a knack for evoking a scene and an emotion with only a few well-chosen words. “When he awoke, darkness had its face pressed against the windows.” How dreadful is that?
This is one of those stories that will likely haunt me for a good long while and is definitely worth seeking out and reading. I don’t give out fives easily (I’m stingy like that) but this one is deserving of my highest rating. It’s the kind of story that makes me glad I’m a reader and gives me hope that there are still gems out there after I’ve read one too many “meh” books in a row.
* I received a copy of this novella from the Publisher via NetGalley. The FTC made me say that.
Sam Hatch was once a happily married successful doctor with a beautiful baby daughter. Now he’s an unwashed drifter who is filled with regret and guilt and has walked away from everything that reminds him of his previous life. Something compels him to stop at a creepy run-down house and beckons him to enter.
Oh Sam you should’ve kept driving!
He doesn’t. He stops. He moves in. Strange things begin to happen. He has to face down his demons and we get to watch it all unfold and it’s gloriously unsettling. The reader sees Sam’s sanity start to slip the longer he resides in the house but he can’t leave for long because he needs to go back. It’s that compulsion again. Is it real or is it in his head? I loved not knowing and held my breathe throughout most of it. This story reminded me a wee bit of The Red Tree by Caitlin Kiernan which is one of my favorite books that examines madness, grief, pain and the haunted. If you haven’t read it you really should.
As I said, I felt for the main character. In a few short paragraphs I was easily able to understand his plight, even though many details were not yet revealed. The author also has a knack for evoking a scene and an emotion with only a few well-chosen words. “When he awoke, darkness had its face pressed against the windows.” How dreadful is that?
This is one of those stories that will likely haunt me for a good long while and is definitely worth seeking out and reading. I don’t give out fives easily (I’m stingy like that) but this one is deserving of my highest rating. It’s the kind of story that makes me glad I’m a reader and gives me hope that there are still gems out there after I’ve read one too many “meh” books in a row.
* I received a copy of this novella from the Publisher via NetGalley. The FTC made me say that.
A quick (about 100 pages) story about a haunted house and a man with a sad past. Definitely had a creepy feel to it and it read quick.