lonemagpie

THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE by Shirley Jackson
This is a reread of an old favourite- will have to watch the 1963 movie again. Still a classic with a great sense of eeriness and atmosphere, and depth and subtext and an unreliable POV character – but I'd never noticed before how foot-fetishistic it is... (Seriously, Eleanor is repeatedly studying her own and Theo's feet in some detail...) I'd also forgotten it isn't set in England, but in New England. Anyway, yeah, nice to revisit an old favourite.

Crossposts: https://lonemagpie.livejournal.com/1072758.html

Read Jeremy Dyson's The Haunted Book- a lovely pastiche of *several* types of ghost story collection, which is a fantastic read for those of us who are fans of both the nonfiction travelogue of haunted places type of book, and different eras of fictional anthology.

It also takes a somewhat meta tone, but this is less successful, as the very end meta part just somewhat jumps the shark, changing genre, and actually strangely holds back from going ahead with what it first starts to imply. It also, unfortunately comes over as frankly intrusive, with a bit too much of a blatant message.

Still, apart from that, it's great - the Tetherdown Lock story, and the two 1907-era stories are by far and away the best, and in fact would make great TV adaptations.

Crossposts: http://lonemagpie.livejournal.com/1023298.html

http://originallonemagpie.tumblr.com/post/98823492812/october-31-days-of-halloween

Day 6 - Favourite literary ghost story

Oooh. So many to choose from. The Signalman has to be a top contender, and MR James did so many... But I'm going to go with Schalcken The Painter today. Ask me tomorrow and I'd probably have a different answer, but today it's Schalcken The Painter, by Sheridan Le Fanu.