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Summary: If Danielle Steel and Stephen King built a house...
Review: This book is an odd mix of novel and horror story. Picture an idyllic street with upper class residents whose biggest problem is a neighbor who seems to breed annoying children yearly. Suddenly, a vacant lot, seemingly too small and oddly shaped to build on, is sold and a house goes up. Once in progress, bad luck begins to befall the builders and their architect. At the housewarming party, a shocking event leads to tragedy, causing the owners to move and sell the home. Fast forward through two more similar, yet still interesting, scenarios and towards an ending that is a bit less than satisfying and you've got "The House Next Door."The strength of this book lies in the fact that the story keeps your attention long enough to get you from one shocking revelation to the next. The weaknesses (note the plural) don't ruin the book, but do make it less enjoyable than it might be otherwise. First, the writing is adjective and metaphor rich, often to the detriment of the storyline. I'd occasionally find myself needing to re-read a sentence or paragraph in order to wade through the language to get to the actual point. Second, the characters are a little "too" highbrow to be sympathetic. They belong to the ballet guild and the Junior League, lunch at the club, and describe friends and colleagues as being from "substantial" families. Their biggest problem seems to be having one martini too many at the semi-formal neighborhood party to make tomorrow's 8:00am tennis date. At times, I found myself wishing something terrible would befall them just to bring them down a notch. As for the ending, it left me wanting. It wrapped up the bigger story, but left some of the lesser details without resolution. I actually flipped the last page back and forth a couple of times to make sure I didn't miss something! All in all, I'm glad I read the book. It was enjoyable, different, and surprising at times. I recommend it to anyone wanting a casual, not-too-involved read.
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Summary: An Intense and Original Take On the Haunted House
Review: This book is so different from the usual haunted house fare. There really isn't much that serves as a tangible reason for the house being so evil, it just apparently is. And it's a vicious house for certain, preying on psychological fear rather than manifesting itself as a poltergiest or apparition. Things just "happen" in or around the house, disturbing things. Lives are ruined and that is the only motiff that emerges. It's not a singular entity with just murder in mind. It wants to cause pain to its victims on an inner level and that is extremely frightening in concept. The novel is like a constant mind rape of the characters involved and it is so very delicious in its malice. One of the top 10 horror novels I have ever read and way more intense than Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House or Richard Matheson's Hell House. A must read for any fan of the horror genre or any new home owner.
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Summary: A Great Read-And Scary!
Review: This book was the first I have ever read of Anne Rivers Siddons, and it got me into her other books as well! She did a fine job with her characters, and describing the events in the scenes, as though it were real, and not fiction. Every time some new neighbor had a party in the book, (throughout the story), I always wondered what was going to happen next knowing there was more horror on the way in some form or other. It is very hard to put this book down, and keeps you awake into the night!
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Summary: A must read
Review: This is a wonderful novel. I read it after reading Outer Banks so I knew I was in for some kind of treat. I had no idea this book would be as wonderful as it was. Full of suspense to the very, very end. This is great summer reading, folks, I recommend it highly.
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Summary: Eerie and lingers with you
Review: This is certainly not your average haunted house book. There are no nasty shock tactics, no gruesome depictions of gore, and no hideous monsters waiting in dark corners. There is just a magnificent modern and newly built house, which in its own quiet way wreaks havoc on the lives of its unfortunate 3 successive owners, and in turn, the peaceful and prosperous neighbourhood in which it is built.
What is clever in this novel is the introduction of things that are happening in our society, including some quite horrific things, which are frequently and quietly ignored if not accepted. This forms an eerie basis for the things that are to come. The unnatural closeness of a father and his daughter; the spectre of the loss of a child and the resultant mental illness; the suggestion of domestic violence. The author weaves these themes cleverly into the occupants of the house next door, and you just know that some further bad things are going to happen.
At its best level this book is a psychological chiller. The families involved clearly have issues and unfortunate lives - are the things that happen to them simply further misfortunes? Are the caring neighbours who begin to recognise the growing menace that the house next door represents themselves slipping into paranoia and their own mental illness? It is a very clever book - very clever indeed.
This is a book that will stay with you for a long time. I find myself considering its themes of quiet madness in leafy suburbia, intertwined with the great gothic themes of a haunted house, and I think that it is one of the best books I have read in ages, and one that I recommend highly.
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Summary: brilliant
Review: This novel is pure evil - brilliantly conceived and almost perfectly written. Although unrealistic, the dialogue is more interesting to read than if it had been more authentic. Siddons has created a masterpiece of horror that actually succeeded in shaking me up for an entire afternoon. I finished the last chapter over lunch one day, and couldn't concentrate on the real world until the next morning. Everything seemed to flow from the world she had created, seeming somehow twisted, not right. A must read - one of my all time favorite horror novels, in case you didn't notice.
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Summary: On the Short List of the Greatest "Evil House" Tales
Review: This story of a house built by an enthusiastic young architect, narrated by a next door resident, Colquitt Kennedy, is masterful and original, its closest relative being another entry on that short list, Shirley Jackson's classic The Haunting of Hill House. As Colquitt and her husband observe over some years, the house is inhabited by three families who all leave under peculiar and tragic circumstances. Meanwhile they have become close friends of the young architect. As time goes on, the Kennedys first suspect, then know that the house is evil, that it destroys its inhabitants morally and psychologically. And they begin to dread that there might be a particular source for this evil-- and what should they do about it? The novel is very well written , in clear and vivid prose, by Ms Siddons-- very different from the eerie, poetic writing of Jackson-- but this makes the horror of the ending all the more powerful. As in Jackson's novel, we are left unsure whether a protagonist or protagonists are correct in their dread, or are they merely unhinged? For in this novel, narrated in first person, has the house claimed even the narrator as a victim? and the last little afterword of the plans being found later and the prospect of another such house is chilling-- brr! An excellent novel.
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