The Haunting of Hill House

By: Shirley Jackson

Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne

Length: 7 hrs and 27 mins

Publisher's summary

Now a hit Netflix miniseries directed by Mike Flanagan and starring Michiel Huisman, Carla Gugino, and Timothy Hutton

Past the rusted gates and untrimmed hedges, Hill House broods and waits.

Four seekers have come to the ugly, abandoned old mansion: Dr. Montague, an occult scholar looking for solid evidence of the psychic phenomenon called haunting; Theodora, his lovely and lighthearted assistant; Eleanor, a lonely, homeless girl well acquainted with poltergeists; and Luke, the adventurous future heir of Hill House. At first, their stay seems destined to be merely a spooky encounter with inexplicable noises and self-closing doors, but Hill House is gathering its powers and will soon choose one of them to make its own.

This classic horror novel has been hailed as a perfect work of unnerving terror.

©1959 Shirley Jackson; renewed 1987 by Laurence Hyman, Barry Hyman, Sarah Webster, and Joanne Schnurer (P)2010 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Too long and predictable

It’s easy to understand the appeal this must have had at the time it was written. It dragged along for me despite Jackson’s talent.

A Quiet Classic

Four strangers in a house built wrong. Look for suspense and inner monologues and things spiraling to a conclusion.

Wait what?

So I got this book hoping it would be similar to the tv show. It is not but after reading about it learned it would be a good book. This ended up being good but the most confusing book I’ve read in a while.
Be sure to give this book your full focus

eerie

fun listen. great for listening over the fall mo this. I recommend this one if you're a fan of psychological horror.

4th time listening now. absolutely love

Such a great book!! Narrator does a wonderful job! I recommend all Shirley Jackson books!!

This book will haunt me.

This is the kind of book you will keep thinking about for months after. It's excellently written, especially the way she depicts the inner monolog of Eleanor.

Bernadette Dunne is my favorite narrator. She does different voices for each character, but never over does it to the point of being distracting like a lot of others. I wish all the books were narrated by her.

I wouldn't say this book is terrifying, but it is really creepy, (especially if you're dumb enough to listen to it at night, alone, with the lights dimmed like my dumb ass) but more than anything it's horribly depressing.Jackson did and excellent job of creating an unreliable narrator, to the point I ended up disliking or straight-up hating every character except Eleanor.

The ending is the only possible way it could have ended. Anything else would have been disingenuous.

Overall, I highly recommend giving it a listen, especially if you enjoyed the Netflix series of the same name. The plot is very, very different, but they have the same essence.

Enjoyable, well read and written

Enjoyed the story, though it is admittedly the source material for the Netflix series which took liberties and has a very different plotline, if you, like me, watched the show before seeking out the book.

The setting feels a little older and while I didn't get a lot of the dialogue references, perhaps varying from a different decade in mind, I did enjoy the characters and the overall development of the haunting.

The story follows more of the traditional supernatural studies of what we would call ghost hunters these days, camping out in Hill House to document the supernatural events, and while each person had their own connection to the supernatural and their own talents in the story, the perspective of an unreliable narrator definitely sells the creepiness of a haunting.

While it's not what I originally expected plot wise, the narrator handled the cast wonderfully and kept my attention until the very end.

Really good

Thoroughly enjoyed this novella(?). (I’m not sure what the difference is between a novel and a novella, but the scope of the plot is narrow-I’d guess that that would make it a novella). Jackson’s treatment of Eleanor is definitely pre-ERA, from a more paternal age, and may be a bit startling to non-baby boomers, but it brilliantly captures an anachronistic sensibility. Impeccable writing and vocal characterization.

eh

Bernadette Dunne provided a thrilling performance. The story, like hill house, left a lot unfilled. There weren't many "scary" moments and the few that were, were bleak. It felt like an amateur novel with great intent but poor delivery.

Good Story/Average Narration

This classic still retains its haunting relevance even today when there is so much more in the horror genre. The primary focus of the tale revolves around a rather homely woman named Eleanor who is selected to participate in an experiment on psychic phenomena along with a handful of other susceptible individuals at creepy Hill House. Eleanor has spent her entire adulthood nursing her sickly mother who has recently died, so she is as eager for adventure as she is socially awkward. She quickly finds herself connected with the house and things begin to go wrong. The narrator gave a pretty unremarkable performance and failed to take advantage of the story’s high points. She also didn’t put much effort into differentiating between characters, so that was a big disappointment. There was so much potential to really make this something special, but it was only average. I actually reread many of the scenes without the narration. 2.5/5 stars #psychological suspense #horror #tagsgiving #sweepstakes