So like I said the other day with Light Years and how Ender’s Game is just a sub-genre now, the whole “people trying to get to the bottom of a haunted house through a combination of parapsychology, scientific method, and psychical powers” ala The Haunting of Hill House is a sub-genre too.
In Shirley Jackson’s novel, which is quite subtle in its narration, themes, and spookiness. There’s a suggestion that our main character’s sense of self and questions about her sexual identity are being explored and exposed in the novel.
So this novel is a lot like that: if a shithead screamed about them at the tops of his lungs!
This novel is about a rich old man who is about to die paying a group: a mental/emotional psychic, a physical psychic, and a parapsychologist with a method! to explore a famous old haunted house.
It’s called Hell House, that house.
Anyway, what happens is pretty much what happens in The Haunting of Hill House. Some of the exploration of the haunting is interesting and inventive.
But the issue with this book is how explicitly written and frustrating the prima facie misogyny is. There’s no subtlety whatsoever, and even in non-sexually exploitative moments, there’s LOTS of talk about breasts and breast size. And that’s before the ghosts start sexually assaulting the women and “cucking” the men.
It was frustrating to read because it had almost no charm, no real purpose, and was not a lot of fun at all.
(Photo: https://www.amazon.com/Hell-House-Richard-Matheson/dp/0312868855/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=hell+house&qid=1557493275&s=gateway&sr=8-2)