I’m not sure where to start with this one! Back in the 90’s I watched the film The Haunting (with Catherine Zeta-Jones and Owen Wilson) and at the time it really spooked me (I was barely a teenager and afraid of my own shadow so dumb move watching it really!) then many years later, Netflix release their series in time for Halloween and my colleague at work was enthralled by it- so I just had to give it a go and I was riveted! I jumped, squealed and even fell off the sofa at one point? But loved the series!
But how did I get on with the book? Well, I think I expected it to be different somehow. As soon as I started reading it, it clicked that The Haunting was based on the book (excuse me for being slow, but I didn’t know about that until this point) and I was really interested to see where it went. The book is written with a fairly “old style” of speech; I don’t know how to put it, but in my head some of the sentences didn’t quite seem to flow or make much sense, BUT that’ll likely be because Jackson was born in 1916 and the use of language was far different back then.
I did find the book was riveting and interesting with the descriptions being really good, however it wasn’t as scary a read as I anticipated (thanks for that Netflix!) although it was enjoyable and I wasn’t able to put it down (I read it in less than a week) and I’m so interested to read Jackson’s earlier works (mostly her first printed piece “The Lottery” which was met with utter disdain- makes me want to read it all the more!)
But honestly, what an imagination! It’s great to discover a horror writer from the much earlier generation of authors!
Morelli’s Reads 