3.34 AVERAGE

adventurous dark mysterious tense

This is a weird little story I came across in a list of haunted house tales. Except it's not really a haunted house story, and it's not really a vampire story, and it's not really a werewolf story, although there are intimations of each. There's a bit of fungal horror in there as well, but mostly it's one of Lovecraft's "giant terrible thing makes its way out of the deep" stories, and if only said giant terrible thing could have done it more quickly I might have been more impressed. For a short story, this had an awful lot of padding in it. I mean, Lovecraft does have a tendency to belabour his points, and while some people find that atmospheric it kind of goes past atmospheric and into tedious for me. I wanted to shake the protagonist and say "Get on with it man, why are you not digging up the floor already, surely that has been the obvious thing to do from the start?!" But alas: he would rather bloviate.

A pretty unique story. Kinda.. Goosebumps for adults? It's a little lengthy for a short story, there is a lot of background about the house at first, so it takes a while until we get to the ''action'', which is over pretty quick, but it leaves you with a creepy feeling of ''WTF just happened, what was that?!''

Sinceramente dalla fama di cui gode Lovecraft mi aspettavo sicuramente qualcosa di più.
Nonostante lui citi anche Poe nel suo breve racconto, cercando molto finemente di innalzarsi al di sopra di quest'ultimo, temo di continuare a preferire il buon vecchio Edgar.

Non per questo si tratta di scritti privi di senso; anzi, ho trovato diverse affermazioni rispecchianti in modo decisivo il mio animo. E si può comunque affermare che la predilezione per l'occulto e il grande sapere in materia dell'autore traspaiono ad ogni pagina.

Voglio leggere qualcosa di più complesso di Lovecraft. Sicuramente sarà degno di nota.

This story left an oily, fungal film on my skin that I can't seem to wash off. I thought it was terrifying, but unfortunately Lovecraft's purple prose kept hampering my enjoyment and forcing me to reread passages so I could recognize the horror that was occurring. I kept drawing comparisons to VanderMeer's Annihilation throughout - it was creepy, phantasmal, but also somewhat meh .

È il primo libro, o meglio, sono i primi racconti che leggo di Lovecraft. Mi hanno tenuto compagnia per qualche giorno, sebbene non mi abbiano impressionato più di tanto. Lo stile, invece, l'ho trovato incalzante e scorrevole.
Spero di leggere altro in futuro😁
challenging dark mysterious slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: No
Loveable characters: No
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: No

Un buen relato para pasar el rato.

Read after seeing a reference to it in "Food for the Dead." Not his worst effort, but moves at a snail's pace with dense language.
Plot or Character Driven: Plot
Strong character development: No
Loveable characters: No