Houses Without Doors

De: Peter Straub

Narrado por: Patrick Lawlor

These psychic and horror fictions - seven of them short-shorts - reveals Straub at his spellbinding best. Two tales (first installments of his Blue Rose trilogy), are linked to Koko and Mystery and exactingly probe the consequences of boyhood clashes with evil.

In "Blue Rose," sadistic Harry Beevers, 10, hypnotizes and destroys his younger brother; the tale leaps ahead to the ironic verdict in Harry's court-martial for wreaking atrocities in Vietnam.

In the outstanding "The Juniper Tree," a novelist relives a harrowing, seductive summer when, at age seven, he was sexually molested in a movie house by drifter Stan, a seedy Alan Ladd lookalike.

"The Buffalo Hunter" fastidiously chronicles the fixations of a 35-year-old who numbs his fear of women by sucking his coffee and cognac from baby bottles.

In the ambitious gothic thriller/academic spoof "Mrs. God," a fatuous professor is lured to a creepy English mansion crammed with grisly secrets to research the papers of his poet ancestress; dead babies provide a subtheme.

Wry and riveting, "A Short Guide to the City" fuses and parodies two genres: the self-congratulatory tourist blurb with a news alert on the "viaduct killer."

©1990 Peter Straub (P)2012 Brilliance Audio, Inc.

kind of disappointed

never found a hook in any of the stories. One was particularly obscene and did't adding anything to the storyline.

Do NOT waste your money

What could have made this a 4 or 5-star listening experience for you?

A story that was engaging and had some sort of purpose.

What was most disappointing about Peter Straub’s story?

It was convoluted and had no logical flow.

How could the performance have been better?

Get a different narrator

You didn’t love this book... but did it have any redeeming qualities?

None.

What was that?

This book wasn’t for you, but who do you think might enjoy it more?

Nobody I know.

Would you be willing to try another one of Patrick Lawlor’s performances?

No. Would be better reading kids books.

What reaction did this book spark in you? Anger, sadness, disappointment?

Dissapointment. Can I get my credit back?

Any additional comments?

Couldn't finish it......just couldn't.