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madness, illness, grief, and the haunting of hill house

Beware of mild spoilers ...

I recently finished watching The Haunting of Hill House on Netflix. But it is still with me. It was at times an uncomfortable watch, but it also may be one of the best things I've seen in a long time. It can't really be called an adaptation of the immortal Shirley Jackson novel. That classic book could be considered more of a jumping-off point for this, an original, deeply-felt horror story.

The original novel, first published in 1959, concerns a group of disparate people who have come together to study a house with a bad, even evil reputation: the organizer of a paranormal study, Dr. Montague; Luke, a descendant of the original owners of the house; Theodora, who seems to have run out of fun things to do and is there on a lark or a dare; and the fragile Eleanor, who is ready for something, anything, to happen in her life. The house's only two caretakers, a cook and her husband, adamantly refuse to stay in the house after dark — if only the quartet paid closer attention to that fact ...

Jackson's prose is poetic, and helps to weave a spell around the characters and the reader as they follow Eleanor through the halls of Hill House.

No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.

The mini-series uses many of the same character names but makes them a family — a family held together, but also blown apart, by grief and madness. Interesting moments in the book are given a new twist on film.

Eleanor looked up, surprised; the little girl was sliding back in her chair, sullenly refusing her milk, while her father frowned and her brother giggled and her mother said calmly, "She wants her cup of stars."

Indeed yes, Eleanor thought; indeed, so do I; a cup of stars, of course. 

"Her little cup," the mother was explaining, smiling apologetically at the waitress, who was thunderstruck at the thought that the mill's good country milk was not rich enough for the little girl. "It has stars in the bottom, and she always drinks her milk from it at home. She calls it her cup of stars because she can see the stars while she drinks her milk." The waitress nodded, unconvinced, and the mother told the little girl, "You'll have your milk from your cup of stars tonight when we get home. But just for now, just to be a very good little girl, will you take a little milk from this glass?" 

Don't do it, Eleanor told the little girl; insist on your cup of stars; once they have trapped you into being like everyone else you will never see your cup of stars again; don't do it; and the little girl glanced at her, and smiled a little subtle, dimpling, wholly comprehending smile, and shook her head stubbornly at the glass. Brave girl, Eleanor thought; wise, brave girl.

No Human eye can isolate the unhappy coincidence of line and place which suggests evil in the face of a house, and yet somehow a maniac juxtaposition, a badly turned angle, some chance meeting of roof and sky, turned Hill House into a place of despair, more frightening because the face of Hill House seemed awake, with a watchfulness from the blank windows and a touch of glee in the eyebrow of a cornice.

Carla Gugino is amazing as Olivia

Timothy Hutton as Hugh Crain: family together, yet apart

The best horror is based on real-life fears. Slasher and vampire movies are tied to sex. Zombies and ghost stories to death. But The Haunting of Hill House mini-series takes a scary-enough-on-its-own ghost story and ups the ante by becoming a meditation on madness, illness, and grief.

Art provides one of the best outlets for grief and loss. When my father died in 1993 I was drawn to Sting's 1991 album, The Soul Cages, where many of the songs touched on what he had experienced after his own father died. Comedy movies that we had shared together while he was alive, like 1991's What About Bob, were also a balm. My mother died two and a half years ago and I am still struggling to come to terms with what that means and what it is like to live in a world with such a vast void — the invisible wall between life and death that my parents represented is now gone forever.

My mother had dementia, so it was a slow, heartbreaking decline to at first care for, and then helplessly witness. As I watched The Haunting of Hill House I recognized so many of my own feelings on display by the Crain family siblings — fear, grief, guilt, even loathing, of family members' conditions — possible madness, drug addiction, suicide. In this version Hugh and Olivia Crain (Henry Thomas and Carla Gugino) move their young family of seven into the dilapidated Hill House on the early 90s — with hopes to refurbish and flip it and make their own family fortune. But Hill House seems to already be inhabited — by ghosts — who menace the family — especially its youngest and most vulnerable inhabitants, the twins Luke and Nell. The story flashes forward to the present, and the estranged adult siblings and their father (Timothy Hutton) who are haunted by that summer and what happened there.

The Haunting of Hill House plays with truth and belief. If you look closely, there are things that live in the shadows — or are there? Are we watching the fractured break-down or haunting of Olivia? There are hints that her madness was already there — the way she doesn't seem to notice or react to her children being terrorized — but how one reads that behavior can depend on one's own perspective or reading of the story. Like a Choose You Own Adventure book, I think the filmmakers have left interpretation open-ended for the viewer. Shirley Jackson treated Eleanor in a similar fashion. Did she see what she thought she saw?

Shirley Jackson's book was also brilliantly and faithfully adapted in 1963 as The Haunting, starring Julie Harris as Eleanor

For me The Haunting of Hill House is a powerful meditation on illness and grief. And hope. Olivia's illness and death may have splintered, even destroyed her family for a time. But when they go back to revisit Hill House and the events that led to her death they are also able to close that chapter of their lives and move on. There is light to be found in the shadows of grief. There is life after someone's death.

All quotes from The Haunting of Hill House, by Shirley Jackson, 1959.


This post also appears on Cannonball Read 10

and then there were satanists ... the legacy

The Legacy, by John Coyne, is a mixture of an Agatha Christie whodunnit, as members of a house party are knocked off one by one, and an occult thriller. It's not always clear how much of the menace is due to dark magic or just plain old greed, as six people have been elected to inherit a legacy — of vast wealth, property, and possibly, supernatural power. Coyne wrote the novel as a tie-in to the successful film starring Katharine Ross and Sam Elliot (and The Who's Roger Daltrey in a small role). He wrote a number of other horror novels before switching to golf novels, which is his current genre.

I liked the film when I saw it as a kid, so thought I'd give the book a try. It's a good read for a few spooks and thrills, but much of it seemed very dated — especially how the relationship between the main couple, Maggie and Pete (Ross and Elliott in the film) is handled. It was hard not to roll my eyes while Pete took fragile Maggie in his strong arms again and again. I remember Katharine Ross being pretty kick-ass and spunky in the movie, so I put those scenes down to the author's own attitudes about the sexes and their roles. There were a few occasions where Coyne could have added some more background, as to why Maggie and Pete found themselves at an English palatial estate, and how Maggie's family tree might be a factor. But after one fevered dream sequence that Maggie has halfway through the book, he seemed to drop it.

So, honestly, there is not much to be gained by reading the book versus seeing the original film, which is just some cheesy fun (complete with a Sam Elliot shower scene — bonus). That's the way to go, in my opinion.

Novelization or film? Film all the way. Plus, it's fun to watch these two fall in love (and they're still together 40 years later!)

wonderful, lyrical, practical magic

I saw the movie Practical Magic with Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman quite a few years ago. It's one of those movies that I wanted to be better than it was — it seemed to have so much potential, but it just didn't work, even with the wonderful Aidan Quinn as Bullock's love interest.

I have been in the mood lately, Halloween coming up I guess, to read some witch-related books, so even though I didn't love the movie I had heard good things about the book by Alice Hoffman, so I thought I'd give it a try. I am so glad I did. The book is, from start to finish, a delight. Hoffman tells the story of Sally and Gillian Owens, two orphan sisters that are raised by their eccentric aunts in a wonderfully creaky old family home in Massachusetts. Their aunts, and the girls, too, are looked on with suspicion and fear by their neighbors — but that doesn't stop the townswomen from showing up at their kitchen door night after night in search of a charm or something that the old ladies can brew up to help their love lives. All through their childhood Sally and Gillian eavesdrop on these goings-on with fascination, while also realizing that this might not be the best atmosphere to grow up with a healthy view of romantic relationships ...

Hoffman's prose is lyrical, and the girls, their aunts, and all the other characters are wonderfully depicted. I really didn't want it to end. The good news is that Hoffmann recently published a "prequel," The Rules of Magic, centered around the aunts in their youth. Looking forward to reading that next. She also has a book written about the mother of painter Camille Pissarro, who was the mentor of the French Impressionists — The Marriage of Opposites. That sounds great, too.

it was a pleasure to burn - fahrenheit 451

The kid is in high school now, and although her getting older must mean that I, too, must be getting older (yikes!), there are a few perks. One of them is getting to watch her discover things, like some great books that I read when I was around her age. First up is Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, a dystopian masterpiece. The story of a society, perhaps our own, that has decided that the ideas included in books are dangerous, seems eerily prescient. The floor-to-ceiling view screens that most of society, including the protagonist Guy Montag's wife Mildred spend their days and nights glued to easily double for our large-scale flat screen televisions, tablets, and smart phones. And "The Family," the drivel that appears on the screen every day is simply reality television and YouTubers. Fahrenheit 451 was first published in 1953. Montag is a fireman, whose job it is to burn books, but is growing increasingly disillusioned with his job and his place in society.

I listened to the audiobook version, narrated by Tim Robbins. He did a good job with the voices, and seemed to especially have fun voicing Mildred. Maybe it was hearing the book out loud, but  I was struck by how poetic Bradbury's prose sounded, how rhythmic. I'm looking forward to introducing my daughter to some more Bradbury (and re-reading some myself). I'm impressed with this book as a first choice. I wonder what she will be asked to read next ...

BTW — If you are interested in seeing a film adaptation of the novel, please avoid at all costs the recent HBO "adaptation" of the novel. It shared the title, but not much else. A huge disappointment. The Francois Truffaut film, starring Oskar Werner and Julie Christie, from 1966, is the way to go.

still in the mood for thrillers

Here are some recent reads:

And Then There Were None, 1939, by Agatha Christie

This one is unlikely to be reimagined by Kenneth Branagh, but you never know. And Then There Were None is one of Christie's grimmest, and most famous tales. Due to its original title, it is also one of her most controversial. Christie loved to use nursery rhyme references in her book titles, and this book actually incorporates an entire rhyme in the book as a twisted framework for a crime:

Ten little Indian boys went out to dine;
One choked his little self and then there were nine.
Nine little Indian boys sat up very late;
One overslept himself and then there were eight.
Eight little Indian boys travelling in Devon;
One said he'd stay there and then there were seven.
Seven little Indian boys chopping up sticks;
One chopped himself in halves and then there were six.
Six little Indian boys playing with a hive;
A bumblebee stung one of them and then there were five.

Five little Indian boys going in for law;
One got in Chancery and then there were four.
Four little Indian boys going out to sea;
A red herring swallowed one and then there were three.
Three little Indian boys walking in the zoo;
A big bear hugged one and then there were two.
Two little Indian boys sitting in the sun;
One got all frizzled up and then there was one.
One little Indian boy left all alone;
He went and hanged himself and then there were none.

["Ten Little Indians" - based on "Ten Little Injuns" written in 1868 Septimus Winner to be performed in minstrel shows]

Ten people, strangers to each other, are invited to a remote island for a holiday weekend. Once there they are each accused of a crime, a murder, for which they had never been charged. As one after another guest is found dead, paranoia reigns, as the remaining people on the island suspect one another and fear for their lives.

And Then There Were None could be viewed as the precursor of modern horror movies, where each character is bumped off in succession. It was also spoofed in the classic comedy film Clue. The book, although ingenious, is a bit of a downer. Clearly even Christie thought so herself, and changed the ending when she adapted her novel into a play in 1943. That ending is followed in the 1949 film version of the tale, And Then There Were None, directed by Rene Clair (which I recently viewed and liked on Amazon Prime). I prefer that take on the story, although a more by-the-book adaptation was recently filmed in 2015, starring Aidan Turner.

Deathtrap: A Thriller in Two Acts, 1978, by Ira Levin

Continuing my Ira Levin binge, my local library had Deathtrap: A Thriller in Two Acts. I had only seen the movie version, starring Michael Caine and Christopher Reeve. Maybe taking a nod from Ms. Christie, there is really no innocent person in Deathtrap. A twisty-turny puzzle of a play, Deathtrap centers on playwright Sidney Bruhl, whose last play was a huge flop, and who seems burnt out, humiliated, and out of ideas.

A draft of a play is sent to him by a former student, and a diabolical light bulb goes off over Sidney's head ... as he tells his wife, Myra, "It is a thriller in two acts. One set, five characters. A juicy murder in Act One, unexpected developments in Act Two. Sound construction, good dialogue, laughs in the right places. Highly commercial." Levin has a ball winking at the audience, and the play, written in 1978, was deservedly a big hit on Broadway. It reads well, too.

Button, Button: Uncanny Stories, 2008, by Richard Matheson

This is an eclectic collection of stories by the author of What Dreams May Come and Stir of Echoes. The title story has been adapted twice - as a Twilight Zone episode and a feature film, The Box. I have yet to see either one, but I liked the story, which features a fun and creepy twist ending. Another of the stories in the book, "Dying Room Only," is a great, tense read, but may discourage the reader from ever stopping again at an out-of-the-way spot to grab a bite while on a road trip. Most of the stories were written and published previously in the '60s and '70s. They are a bit of a mixed bag - some good ("Clothes Make the Man"), some humorous, some dated ("The Creeping Terror"), some some just strange ("A Flourish of Strumpets," "'Tis the Season to Be Jelly"). Button, Button is a diverting read, but makes me wish the library had I Am Legend or Hell House instead.

By the Pricking of My Thumbs, 1968, by Agatha Christie

Agatha Christie's most famous detectives were Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. But she also wrote five books featuring the detective couple Tommy and Tuppence Beresford. They met in The Secret Adversary (1922), were married in the collection of short stories Partners in Crime, on the track of German spies during WW2 in N or M? (1941), were retired with grown children in By the Pricking of My Thumbs (1968), and elderly in the last novel she wrote, Postern of Fate (1973).

In By the Pricking of My Thumbs the Beresfords visit Tommy's elderly Aunt Ada in a nursing home. While Tommy is with his aunt, Tuppence meets a strange old lady, Mrs. Lancaster, in the common room, who points at the fireplace and asks her, "Was it your poor child?" The next time they visit the home Aunt Ada has died and Mrs. Lancaster has disappeared.

The title comes from Shakespeare's Macbeth: "By the pricking of my thumbs, Something wicked this way comes." She is not kidding. This is one of Christie's creepier mysteries. It is also, like its writer and her detectives, a little bit older and unfocussed. But there are enough thrills and a truly sinister ending to make this book not one of her greats, but definitely worth a read.

speaking of mustaches ...

I have been into thrillers lately ...

Murder on The Orient Express, by Agatha Christie, 1934

I had to re-read this classic Agatha Christie novel after recently seeing the Kenneth Branagh movie version. I have always been a huge fan of David Suchet and his version of Christie's most famous detective, Hercule Poirot. I was initially horrified at the promotional photos of Branagh's take on the inimitable Belgian's famous 'stache, but I actually enjoyed his lively take on the character. Maybe some of that enthusiasm carried over when I was reading the novel, which is not as smooth or fast-paced as its many screen versions. But I found myself not getting caught up in Christie's clues and red herrings (a dropped pipe cleaner, monogrammed handkerchief, etc,) and instead enjoyed his conversations with a train full of suspects and his unique take on the solution of the crime.

Can Branagh's Poirot and his magnificent mustaches solves the case?

The Mystery of the Blue Train, by Agatha Christie, 1928

Christie didn't just set one murder on the famous and luxurious Orient Express, or Blue Train, as it was sometimes called. Poirot shows up about halfway through the book, written before Murder on The Orient Express. The mystery features plenty of adultery and romance, centering on a married couple who are both involved with other partners. Christie is said to have not liked this book, but that may be because she was writing it both before and after her infamous disappearance and the dissolution of her first marriage. Whether she liked it or not, Poirot is at his most charming - flirting with young ladies on the Riviera while he tracks down a murder and solveds the disappearance of a famous ruby known as the "Heart of Fire."

Agatha Christie, by Mary S. Wagoner

This is an O.K. biography of Agatha Christie. The author gives a brief biography of her life, leaning heavily on Christie's own autobiography for the majority of her quotes. Readers who are not familiar with all of the author's intricately plotted books might want to steer clear of this one, as major plot points and solutions are revealed. It is a fun but slim read for the Christie-phile who might want to learn a little bit more about the author, including lesser known features of her life, like the numerous long-running plays she wrote when not cranking out her best-selling mysteries, and the romance novels she wrote under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott.

Lori, by Robert Bloch, 1989

This book was just ... strange. It tells the story of Lori Holmes, definitely no relation to Sherlock, who comes home from college with her boyfriend/fiance to find out that her parents are dead and her childhood home has burnt down. Bloch, the author of Psycho, seems to not know whether this should be a supernatural thriller or murder mystery. Not that a book can't be both, but this book never seems to find its voice. Lori has strange, sometimes disturbing dreams, but she seems to be more a girl of the 50s than the almost-90s. She passively accepts tons of tranquilizers from the men in her life who just want to shut her up. And most of those said men have mustaches, and similar attitudes, so seem hard to tell apart. Were mustaches really a thing in 1989? I remember men being more clean-shaven. Anyway, it's not horrible, I got through it, but not so good, either. It was more than a little hard to hang in there to find out if any of Lori's dreams or hallucinations would pay off.

down the rabbit hole with ira levin

My latest writing project is of a spooky nature, so I thought I might get a little inspiration from one of my favorite horror movies, Rosemary's Baby. It didn't disappoint and holds up after many viewings.

Mia Farrow is having a tough trimester in Rosemary's Baby

After the umpteenth time of watching poor Mia Farrow find out what was really behind her linen closet, I got to wondering about the source material. A trip to the library resulted in a bag full of Ira Levin thrillers:

Rosemary's Baby (1967)

While reading this thriller I was surprised to discover that pages of word-for-word dialogue made its way into the film version. This book is as tightly, subtly plotted as the film. Book Rosemary may seem slightly more naive than Movie Rosemary, and the sinister characters a bit more sinister. But there is also quite a bit of humor in it, too. And it was and still is absolutely brilliant of Levin to take the state of being newly wed and newly pregnant and turn that into horror, with its built-in nine-months of build-up. I really enjoyed this book, maybe appreciated it even more when I knew what was happening between the lines.

Son of Rosemary (1997)

Levin wrote this sequel decades after Rosemary's Baby. It starts off with Rosemary waking up from a coma, which she fell into in 1973. She soon reunites with her now 32 year-old son Damien, I mean, Adrian, I mean Andy - and it goes downhill from there. Rosemary doesn't exhibit nearly enough awe or interest in how things have changed in the 30-odd years she's been comatose, not to mention how she's up and at 'em in record time with no physical side-effects, except shock at her reflection in the mirror, which reminds her of her 50-something year old aunt. To make matters worse, there is absolutely no suspense or any surprises in this book. If you can't predict just about every turn the plot takes, then I have a bridge in Brooklyn that I can get for you real cheap ...

The Stepford Wives (1972)

This book was definitely a palate cleanser after Son of Rosemary. It is another cult classic, which has generated movie adaptations good (starring Katharine Ross) and bad (Staring Nicole Kidman). NOt to mention countless mediocre TV movie adaptations featuring Stepford wives, husbands and children. It is very similar to Rosemary's Baby in that it has a female protagonist, Joanna, who finds that certain conventions that she has taken for granted (marriage, life in the suburbs) may not be all that they seem. You have to hand it to Levin, whose book has coined a term that we are now all familiar with, a Stepford wife, and the scary perfection that term implies. But I still think readers will be surprised and horrified when they read about Joanna's life in Stepford, and interested to discover how deeply entwined this book was with the Women's Lib movement of the time. The Stepford Wives is a thriller and a relatively quick read, but its story has echoes which are eerily reminiscent of some of the "let's go back to the good old days" rhetoric that is being spewed today.

Sliver (1991)

Sliver is a very creepy book. It is not in the same league as Rosemary' Baby or The Stepford Wives, but it is just as tuned in to its time as they were. It features another female lead, New Yorker and book editor Kay Norris, who after two bad break-ups moves uptown with her amazing cat Felice into a huge, new, shiny, silver building, a "sliver." What she and the hundreds of other tenants don't know and we find out from the first sentence (so no spoilers) is that they are being watched, recorded, and taped, 24-7, by the building's owner. Ick. The book is set up as a murder mystery, but the real suspense is not so much whether Kay will find out who is behind the snooping and/or the killing, but what she will feel or do about it/them when she finds out. This book was written before cell phones or smart phones were a part of our daily lives, and reality television the norm. The intrusiveness of the Peeping Tom and his justification for spying on his tenants - It's so real and it can't hurt them if they don't know you're watching - has real echoes for our current obsession with screens and over-sharing and reality television. It's also got a ridiculously implausible ending, but readers might find its predictions of the Big Brother era we now seem to have no trouble inhabiting, interesting.

Ira Levin didn't write many novels. What he did write has proved fodder for many films on the large and small screen. I don't have any interest in trying The Boys from Brazil, but the two others, A Kiss Before Dying (his first, written in 1953) and The Perfect Day (1970) are still out there, waiting to be read. My local library has his play Deathtrap, too, so that could be fun.