A review by ceallaighsbooks
The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

challenging dark emotional funny mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

“...wake up, she thought, wake up and be faithless. None of them will open their doors, she thought; they will sit inside, with the blankets pressed around them, shivering and wondering what is going to happen to them next; wake up, she thought, pounding on the doctor’s door; I dare you to open your door and come out to see me dancing in the hall of Hill House.”

TITLE—The Haunting of Hill House
AUTHOR—Shirley Jackson
PUBLISHED—1959

GENRE—gothic horror
SETTING—Hill House, seems perhaps meant to be at a time contemporary with the book’s publishing, in an intentionally anonymous area in the US
MAIN THEMES/SUBJECTS—mental illness, haunted houses, paranormal activity

WRITING STYLE—⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
CHARACTERS—⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
PLOT—⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
BONUS ELEMENT/S—on this reread I have definitely decided to get the cup of stars quote as a tattoo somehow somewhere ❤️❤️; oh and “Fellow babe in the woods,” she said, “let’s go exploring.” is going to be the epigraph to my memoir. 😁
PHILOSOPHY—⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

This was a reread with one of my favorite bookstagram bookclubs and I definitely loved it at least twice as much as I did on my first reading. I picked up on SO much that I missed the first time around and 😚👌🏻 Jackson has written the *perfect* book.

It’s a little unsettling how perfect it is it, really, makes me feel like Jackson really *knew*. 😬 In particular I was struck by how much Eleanor’s experience depicts what it’s like to “lose your mind”, “go insane”, aka deal with neurodivergency and/or a mental illness. And especially dealing with it in front of people who don’t understand and don’t have any sympathy for the experience.

She also captures how it feels when what is so apparent to you is in fact something no one else sees, or of course, is willing to see. And, in the book, instead of helping Eleanor, the other characters end up making it worse through their actions, which, to a highly paranoid person, come across as bullying or harassment, even though I think in the case of each character, it is rather their own defense mechanisms (Luke’s humor, Theo’s snarkiness) in the face of their fears or discomforts that is making them act that way.

I really sympathized with how Eleanor was feeling the last day at breakfast—just the debilitating feeling of utter humiliation, dejection, and isolation after they see your illness exposed and you realize they just don’t understand and don’t care. ☹️ I think, in that sense, Hill House really operates as a metaphor for a “broken” mind. Obviously it means many different things to many different readers and scholars but on this particular reading of it for me that’s what really struck.

“Why am I doing this? Why am I doing this? Why don’t they stop me?”

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

TW // mental illness, suicide, bullying, gaslighting, paranoia, emotional abuse

Further Reading—
  • everything else Shirley Jackson has written
  • White is for Witching, by Helen Oyeyemi
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