A Haunting on the Hill by Elizabeth Hand [Horror Review]

Summary 💬

Holly Sherwin has been a struggling playwright for years, but now, after receiving a grant to develop her play Witching Night, she may finally be close to her big break. All she needs is time and space to bring her vision to life. When she stumbles across Hill House on a weekend getaway upstate, she is immediately taken in by the mansion, which is nearly hidden outside a remote village. It’s enormous, old, and ever-so eerie—the perfect place to develop and rehearse her play.

Despite her own hesitations, Holly’s girlfriend, Nisa, agrees to join her in renting the house for a month, and soon a troupe of actors, each with ghosts of their own, arrive. Yet as they settle in, the house’s peculiarities are made known: strange creatures stalk the grounds, disturbing sounds echo throughout the halls, and time itself seems to shift. All too soon Holly and her friends are at odds not just with one another but with the house itself. It seems something has been waiting in Hill House all these years, and it no longer intends to walk alone.

Goodreads

Review ✍🏻

A Haunting vs Hill House

The Haunting of Hill House is one of my all-time favourite books. So, when I first heard of A Haunting on the Hill, I felt some skepticism but mostly excitement. I should have known better. I should have put more stock in skepticism. I let the phrase “the first novel authorized to return to the world of Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House” comfort me. However, I only read about 30 pages before noting: “Do these things just get authorized because the estate wants money? I’m sorry I’m cynical now 😢”

The first 🚩 (red flag) for me was the first-person POV. Thankfully, the narrative develops into a mixture of first- and third-person limited POVs. But for me, a first-person narrative can’t recapture the atmosphere of Hill House. Perhaps I was wrong to expect that weighty mysterious dark atmosphere right off the hop, but oh well. So that was the first sign that this story might not be all I hoped for.

Characterization

Now, I wasn’t totally miserable while reading this book, lol. I did enjoy it more as I settled in. One aspect that A Haunting embraces and renews is the cast of characters. I felt I learn a lot more about them tahn the characters in Hill House. Not that’s necessarily an improvement. Whether you think the chracterization is better in A Haunting or Hill House will depend on personal preference. I liked filling in the personalities and histories of the Hill House characters.

But the characters of A Haunting have their own fascinating backstories (some darker than other) and artistic personalities that modernize and bring to life this present-day story. A few of the characters I could have done without (ex. the realtor, the woman living in the trailer.) Some of the characters first appear to be clear parallels (ex. Nisa = Theo) but they grow beyond those parallells and establish their own identities. Most of the characters aren’t particularly likeable… but I like reading about their dynamic interactions while holed up in Hill House.

Horror Vibes

In general, I got the feeling that Hand did a good job at writing a story that was still hers, without trying too closely to recreate Jackson’s original tale. (I have not read any other books by Hand.) So I can admire that effort at least, even if what I would really like is more of Jackson’s style, lol. A Haunting has more traditional horror scares than Hill House. At least two scenes gave me a fright, where I noted “okay that was spooky” and “my stomach drops lol”.

In Hill House, most of the terror comes from the atmosphere and Eleanor’s internal turmoil. A Haunting felt to me like it was trying to be too clever, to create a physical haunting that is more than what exists in Hill House. I am struggling to describe what I mean lol but perhaps if you’ve read both books you’ll catch my point. Like, a good chunk of the horror in A Haunting is too on-the-nose and reliant on external devices (ex. writing on walls, creepy hares) for my taste. Hill House was super spooky without any of that stuff.

Call Backs

The last thing I want to comment on is the callbacks… there are a few clear references to Hill House, when the mention a woman who died when her car hit a tree. But I had no idea what the eighties story was that they were referring. Was it made up for this novel? Was there some adaptation I missed? Surely it’s not a call out to the Netflix adaptation, which I understand is only loosely based on the original book? it was hard not for me to think of it as a Stranger Things S4 call out. I felt like there were more callbacks to whatever happened in the eighties, than to the original Hill House story… and you bet that irritated me a bit haha.

Then another woman was killed about sixty years ago when her care ran into the same tree. Same thing happened again with another woman in the eighties. They finally cut the tree down.

A Haunting on the Hill, pg 74

The Bottom Line 💭

If you pick up A Haunting on the Hill without longing for the atmosphere of The Haunting of Hill House, you’ll probably enjoy this spooky haunted house story more than I did.

Further Reading 📰

🍂 Author website
🍂 Interview @ Crime Reads
🍂 Reviews: Danika @ The Lesbrary, Malli @ Goodreads, Blair @ Goodreads, Sarah @ Puss Reboots
🍂 Related: My original review of The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

Have you read any sequels/spiritual successors written by a different author?