Julia

Rating:
Summary: Frightening!
Review: A fantastic ghost story... haunting and frightening! I lost much sleep because of this book. My only complaint is that the ending is hurried, open-ended, and left a little bit unexplained, but the book is well-worth buying and reading!

Rating:
Summary: Great opening, poor ending
Review: After the sudden death of her nine-year-old daughter, Julia Lofting decides to leave her tyrannical husband and move to London to start a new life. She buys a house but is unaware of the bad history of this new residence. When the first day she sees a nice young girl that looks very much like her deceased daughter, Julia is unable to find her much sought for peace of mind. Slowly but surely she starts to suspect that something supernatural is watching her, waiting for the ideal moment to strike.

And it all started so nicely: a lonely woman in a strange environment seeing things that are not there. The lively narrative of Peter Straub really gave me shivers of excitement. It was like reading one of those creepy old-fashioned haunted house stories so typical for the seventies. But sadly enough, every part of that exiting atmosphere is slowly killed off as the story evolves. It feels like Peter had a bright idea for the start of the novel, but did not find the energy to search for a nice ending. A pity.

Rating:
Summary: Too much characterization and not enought action!
Review: Found this book too slow of a read. Just not enough action and too much characterization and description of peoples thoughts and actions. Story line was hard to follow and seemed lacking in direction. I finished the book only because I was hoping for an unusual ending which wasn't there

Rating:
Summary: The only one I didn't like
Review: I am sorry to say I didn't really like the book. It was not that frightening and very predictable. It is unlike Mr. Straub to be that way. I was disappointed in this one. It is worth reading style wise, but if you have read others by him, you might be let down.

Rating:
Summary: The only one I didn't like
Review: I am sorry to say I didn't really like the book. It was not that frightening and very predictable. It is unlike Mr. Straub to be that way. I was disappointed in this one. It is worth reading style wise, but if you have read others by him, you might be let down.

Rating:
Summary: Confusing but Captivating
Review: I first encountered Peter Straub while in college. I read Ghost Story on a whim and WOW! Was I scared! Julia being the second Straub book I've read I expected the same horror. In some ways the horror was recreated but in the same sense Julia the main character was extremely weak and almost pathetic. I found myself disliking her and became as confused as she was by the end of the book. What carried me along was the sense that I needed to see if it would all be explained. The last few chapters of the book left me lost and slightly annoyed. I must have re-read them at least three times trying to see if in fact I missed something -- sadly after reading the reviews from other readers I guess I didn't. Maybe that is the point of Julia: the story is strange and leaves all of the characters puzzeled and unsure of the reality that surrounds them. I felt the same way and perhaps that is the true horror of the story.

Rating:
Summary: Nice beginning for Straub's thrilling career
Review: I found the book quite enjoyable. There is a lot of psychological horror at a subtle level. It lays open the way for his masterpieces in the next few books.

Rating:
Summary: Unforgettable and Wonderful
Review: It greatly saddens me to discover this wonderful novel is both out of print and boasts a mere 3 customer reviews! The book is sheerly one of the most horrific and terrifying studies in evil and obsession I have ever read. I first saw the marvelous (and also out of print!) film "The Haunting of Julia" starring the incomparably marvelous Mia Farrow, and then read the book. Both are great, though the book is more complex. I would recommend seeing the movie first however because then you can picture the wonderful house it is set in. The horror of a dominating spouse-Magnus is here....There is great suspense, who is haunting Julia, is it her beloved Kate? Or someone else.....Olivia Rudge is absolutely the most frightening ghost I have ever read about. The book scared me so much I couldn't sleep for a week or get the horrid frightening images out of my mind! I love the character of sweet Julia and this is a testament to Straub's great writing ability. This book is GOTHIC horror at its best, and has a twisty ending also.

Rating:
Summary: Rich And Idle
Review: It's hard to sympathize with a character who seems as bent on her own destruction as the title character in Peter Straub's "Julia." The story opens with rich, harmless, and seemingly brainless, Julia Lofting in the process of leaving her brutal, domineering husband Magnus (With a name like that you'd hardly expect him to be the timid, sensitive type.) after the death of their daughter in a dining room tracheotomy gone wrong.

Understandably distraught, she buys a stupendous, eight-bedroom house in London. No sooner does she gain possession of the keys than she spots a little girl who reminds her of her own dead daughter, and becomes obsessed with this child who, we subsequently learn, makes The Bad Seed look like Anne of Green Gables.

Julia's new home, once the scene of a horrific murder, starts manifesting curious occurrences right away. The depiction of the haunting is genuinely frightening and ambiguous. The way that Straub upends the cliché of the cold that traditionally accompanies ghostly visitations was particularly effective in that it gave the house an oppressive, soporific atmosphere that almost (but not quite) explained Julia's inertia.

Although this multi million heiress experiences a plethora of weird phenomena including ghostly voices, regular sightings of that god awful little girl, and a the death of a psychic friend, she resolutely stays in that wretched house. It all ends badly, as these things invariably do. Alas, it also ends in total confusion.

Perhaps it was Mr. Straub's intention that we should share Julia's growing disorientation. If so, success was his. By the end of the story I wasn't sure of what was going on. There was no resolution of things that had gone before. No reason was ever given for the ghost child's malign nature and a totally, unnecessary main character ended up working as a janitor in LA! HUH?

For me confused and unresolved endings are a no-no. I may have to accept them in life but I will not have them in my fiction. For those of you, however, who like evil blonde children, dead cockney psychics, and rich people so idle that they will not even save their own lives, I highly recommend "Julia."

Rating:
Summary: Rich And Idle
Review: It's hard to sympathize with a character who seems as bent on her own destruction as the title character in Peter Straub's "Julia." The story opens with rich, harmless, and seemingly brainless, Julia Lofting in the process of leaving her brutal, domineering husband Magnus (With a name like that you'd hardly expect him to be the timid, sensitive type.) after the death of their daughter in a dining room tracheotomy gone wrong.

Understandably distraught, she buys a stupendous, eight-bedroom house in London. No sooner does she gain possession of the keys than she spots a little girl who reminds her of her own dead daughter, and becomes obsessed with this child who, we subsequently learn, makes The Bad Seed look like Anne of Green Gables.

Julia's new home, once the scene of a horrific murder, starts manifesting curious occurrences right away. The depiction of the haunting is genuinely frightening and ambiguous. The way that Straub upends the cliché of the cold that traditionally accompanies ghostly visitations was particularly effective in that it gave the house an oppressive, soporific atmosphere that almost (but not quite) explained Julia's inertia.

Although this multi million heiress experiences a plethora of weird phenomena including ghostly voices, regular sightings of that god awful little girl, and a the death of a psychic friend, she resolutely stays in that wretched house. It all ends badly, as these things invariably do. Alas, it also ends in total confusion.

Perhaps it was Mr. Straub's intention that we should share Julia's growing disorientation. If so, success was his. By the end of the story I wasn't sure of what was going on. There was no resolution of things that had gone before. No reason was ever given for the ghost child's malign nature and a totally, unnecessary main character ended up working as a janitor in LA! HUH?

For me confused and unresolved endings are a no-no. I may have to accept them in life but I will not have them in my fiction. For those of you, however, who like evil blonde children, dead cockney psychics, and rich people so idle that they will not even save their own lives, I highly recommend "Julia."