"The upstairs of Hill House. "She (Eleanor) had a quick impression of the builders finishing off the second and third stories of the house with a kind of indecent haste, eager to finish off their work without embellishment and get out of there..."
More at Writer's Houses.
(via Forbidden Planet)
Hill House was the first adult book I ever read, when I was about seven (if you don't count MacBeth, which I read without understanding when I was four or five). It totally got me hooked on ghost stories -- I still am! -- and I read it every summer until the book fell apart.
The year I was about 9 my room for the summer was a closed-in porch with a door to the outside. I'm reading in bed about midnight (in summer my parents were very lenient about staying up reading) and just as I got to the scene where Eleanor and Theo are huddled in Theo's room, listening to something coming down the hall, banging on the doors, something started banging on MY door!
When I finally came down from the rafters, gathered up my bravest teddy bears and went to go see . . . it was my dog! He was trying to open the door and come in, but it was hooked and kept slipping away from him and slamming shut. ;)
Posted by: Loretta Ross | 10 August 2010 at 11:44 PM
Thank you so much. Perhaps you recall my Shirley Jackson obsession. I must gather my thoughts and blog about this.
Posted by: Gail Gauthier | 11 August 2010 at 06:10 PM