A review by saltedsnail
Ghost Story by Peter Straub

Did not finish book. Stopped at 62%.

I really tried. DNF at over half way through, which is saying something with a book this scale. I’ve had this one recommended to me a thousand times as someone who DEVOURS horror and cares a lot about witnessing the works that influence the genre as a whole, I really wanted to love it…. Or at least be able to finish it. Ghost Story does so many brilliant, interesting, unconventional things in its telling and the prose is fine enough. I just cannot get past how disgustingly sexist this book is… and I read all the way through Matheson’s Hell House. I have a bad habit of hate-reading really awful sexist and exploitative pulp horror from the 70’s & 80’s and this is worse because it’s GOOD. It’s well written enough and doing brilliant things outside its abysmal portrayal of every single female character. It’s not just women boobing-boobily alongside tacky prose about ectoplasm leaking from walls or some other contrived garbage. That I can slog through, that I can laugh at. Peter Straub’s underlying dismissal of, distrust for, and general distaste of women really ruin what I would otherwise likely call a masterpiece. The women in this book are unredeemable and flat while the men in this book are dynamic, complex characters…. And this is very clearly not a self-aware choice on Straub’s part, but rather an extreme limitation of his own imagination and indication to his own prejudices. A pity, really, for a book with so much potential.