Review: The Haunting of Hill House

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

“We couldn't even hear you, in the night....
No one could. No one lives any nearer than town. No one else will come any nearer than that.”

I’m not sure what I was expecting from The Haunting of Hill House. Or rather, I thought I knew what I was expecting, but wasn’t sure. Which is slightly different. It’s a horror story, right? It’s about a haunted house - it says so in the title. The book has been on my to-read list for perhaps longer than any other, since I was a teenager and read Stephen King’s Danse Macabre when it was first issued in paperback. King loved Hill House. It is all over Danse Macabre. But it was out of print in UK until 2009. Still, that is almost ten years ago and, still, I didn’t read it.
So, it being Hallowe’en, and with the new adaptation on Netflix (which, it turns out is excellent, but is not an adaptation, rather a reimagining), I decided it was time to read this really scary ghost story. And it is really scary, but is it a ghost story? Is Hill House haunted?
The writing is excellent, the prose lyrical (The opening and closing paragraphs are rightly lauded as classics but there are many similar passages). The dialogue is perhaps a little old-fashioned but it was written 60 years ago and it fits the gothic storytelling. Yet, on finishing the novel I was slightly disappointed. There are certainly some moments which make the hairs stand up on the back of your neck (“God! Whose hand was I holding?”) but there are so many conversations in the book about being scared, about the nature of being scared, almost looking forward to being scared. The writing is excellent though and so I gave it four stars.
And, yet. In the days since I finished the book, images and scenes have stayed with me. I am ‘haunted’ by some of the imagery and find myself replaying some of the key scenes in my head.

“Fear," the doctor said, "is the relinquishment of logic, the willing relinquishing of reasonable patterns. We yield to it or we fight it, but we cannot meet it halfway.” 

The characters surrender themselves willingly to the idea of being scared, in the same way as many of us do when reading horror fiction or watching a scary movie. And, whether there is something in Hill House which takes advantage of that, or whether it is something within the characters which tip them, particularly Eleanor, into madness, I am still unsure. And the genius of Shirley Jackson is that, two weeks later, I am still thinking about it.


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Review: Aja

Aja by Don Breithaupt
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

"Bringing a post-Gershwin compositional gusto to post-Dylan subject matter (and filtering it through the lens of post-Nixon America)."

There is always something for the music-lover to glean from these little books, the 33 1/3 Series, each of which focuses on a 'classic' album. Some of them centre on what the music means to the writer and how it fits into his or her life; some appear only tangentially related to the album in question. Of those that I have read, this one goes deeper into the form of the music and its construction, perhaps a little too deep at times but it does suit Steely Dan and Aja.

Author, Don Breithaupt obviously loves the album and understands music theory and he puts Aja in context, not only with what was happening in the music industry at the time of its release in 1977, but also within Donald Fagen's and Walter Becker's output and their influences with inform the album. There is a large part of the book devoted to the recording of the album and I personally love that kind of stuff although, even for me, the in-depth examination of poetic techniques such as enjambment or the relationship between E9sus4 and Amaj9 chords gets a little too much. Breithaupt is also fond of purple prose such as that quoted at the start of the review but all of this is forgiven when it leads, as this book does, to a fresh listen to, and new appreciation of, the music.

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Review: The Savage Shore

The Savage Shore by David Hewson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Nic Costa, together with Teresa Lupo, Leo Falcone and Gianni Peroni, returns for the first time in seven years in David Hewson’s tenth book in the series. This time the Roman team are well out of their comfort zone having been dispatched to Calabria, in Italy’s toe, in preparation for the defection of a mafia crime boss. While the team pose as holidaymakers in a coastal town, Costa has gone undercover in the ‘Ndrangheta.
It has been quite a while since I first discovered David Hewson’s Italian-set crime series with ‘The Seventh Sacrament’ and I am so glad I got past that novel’s title and cover which, to my mind, were positioned to take advantage of the success of Dan Brown and the like - in truth the series could not be further from that type of thriller. Hewson writes very literate, thought-provoking mysteries with well-drawn, sympathetic characters, and ‘The Savage Shore’ is no exception.
The story is told at a slow, perhaps old-fashioned, pace but that is not a criticism. The prose is beautiful, poetic, and the setting, in one of Italy’s least well-known regions, is brought vividly to life.

“Hands running through dust on the ancient balustrade, they descended and walked out into the empty piazza by the church. The last of the summer sun dappled the snaking, shimmering channel that stood between Calabria and Sicily, a distant necklace of street lights defining the shore. Across the strait stood the mound of Etna, the only clouds around clinging to its side like needy children, the red haze of its volatile summit a dim rim of fire against the darkening sky.”

The book is a mixture of the romanticism and reality of life in an area seemingly forgotten by Italian, and European, politics - on one side, the myths and legends with which each chapter begins and which tell how the Calabrian people came to inhabit this rugged landscape; on the other, the petty crime, the forced servitude of African immigrant sellers of fake luxury items. Despite clear evidence of these realities, Nic Costa is subtly enticed by the ‘idea’ of the ’Ndrangheta, described in the fictional guide as “Criminals ‘full of a strong goodness’”, and it is clear that David Hewson fell for Calabria when researching the novel, but that is forgivable perhaps, given how much I want to see the region after reading about his version of it. I really enjoyed ‘The Savage Shore’ and hope it won’t be another seven years before we revisit the characters.


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Review: Thin Air

Thin Air by Richard K. Morgan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Thin Air is Richard Morgan’s first SciFi novel in eight years. I have to admit that I was unaware of Morgan until the Netflix adaption of his first, Altered Carbon, but, inspired by that, I then picked up the three books in that series. The latest, although set in a different ‘universe’ shares much with the earlier trilogy.
Thin Air is a hard-boiled noir. It may be set on Mars but is as influenced by Chandler, Hammett and MacDonald as it is by Ray Bradbury. The protagonist, Hakan Veil, bio-engineered from childhood to be an enhanced corporate soldier, is much more Mike Hammer than Philip Marlowe. Veil is essentially a thug who solves problems with his fists, always aided by a built-in AI. Having been arrested after one such ‘solution’, Veil is blackmailed into acting as bodyguard for a representative of Earth auditors, sent to interrogate the finances of ‘frontier’ businesses.
The labyrinthian plot involves political and corporate corruption, organised crime, femme fatales, a missing lottery winner and a lot of violence. I admit I got a little lost at times but The Big Sleep is one of my favourites so not being entirely sure of what is going on is not necessarily a problem. Thin Air is no The Big Sleep but it is a good read. Mars is realistically realised and the mixture of science fiction with frontier town lawlessness is fascinating.
On the evidence of Thin Air and the Altered Carbon-series, Richard Morgan is a master of the futuristic, hard-boiled hybrid and I would not be surprised to see Hakan Veil join Takeshi Kovacs on screen.


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Review: Going on the Turn

Going Round the Bend by Danny Baker
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I have a friend to whom nothing ordinary has ever happened. His life seems to be full of spur of the moment, sometimes ill-advised, decisions that lead to situations which, at least as he tells them, reduce the listener to tears of laughter. His gift is that he tells these stories in great detail and, despite meandering from one situation to the next, seemingly unconnected, he eventually gets back to the original point and always with a killer punchline. Danny Baker shares this gift.

‘Going on the Turn’ is the third volume of Danny Baker’s autobiography and essentially takes his story from the mid-nineties until late 2012, with many flashbacks. Like in the previous volumes, Baker discusses the absurd and coincidental as his stories crash into each other as it hurtles along at a frantic, and extremely entertaining, pace. The book contains some of his funniest tales - throwing his records in a skip; meeting David Bowie; NOT meeting David Bowie; NOT smoking cannabis - and also the harrowing, honest description of his cancer treatment in 2012. But even the latter is full of wit and humour as is the chapter about his father’s death.

If you like Danny Baker, and I do, then the only thing better than reading his latest memoir is to listen to him read it in the audiobook version. And then go straight to his vitriolic, chaotic and triumphant final show for BBC Radio London following his sacking by homogenising pen-pushers (It’s still on youtube).

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Macbeth by Jo Nesbø
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This was a really good idea - take one of the original noir stories, Shakespeare’s Macbeth, and add a modern master of crime-writing, Jo Nesbo - but, while there are many things to like and admire about the book, it is a little less than the sum of its parts. The parts I enjoyed most are essentially all Nesbo - exciting and visceral car chases, a showdown with drug-dealing gangs, the action scenes, elements that he has inserted into the gaps in the source material where much of the ‘action’, such as Duncan’s murder, famously happens off-stage. Nesbo updates the play to an unnamed, largely Scottish, city in the 1970s - think Glasgow pre-City of Culture - and it gives the story a suitably dark and violent background. Unfortunately, I found the dialogue stilted and a little too much of a homage to the original Shakespeare. The best productions of the play bring the language to life and make it exciting and perhaps that is the biggest problem - the play is meant to be performed rather than read. Perhaps this would work as a dark, Scandinavian series along the lines of The Bridge or The Killing, and I would certainly watch it. Macbeth is not a terrible novel by any means, a worthwhile exercise, but it doesn’t match Nesbo’s best. Nor Shakespeare’s.

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Review: Thirteen Days by Sunset Beach

Thirteen Days by Sunset Beach by Ramsey Campbell
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It has been a long time since I read Ramsey Campbell and I am not sure why - on the evidence of 'Thirteen Days by Sunset Beach' Campbell is still a master of chilling horror. 'Thirteen Days...', originally published a couple of years back but now available in ebook, is one of the creepiest stories I have read in a long time, full of foreboding and hair on the back of the neck tension.

Three generations of a family, mildly dysfunctional in that uptight, restrained way peculiar to the English middle-class, holiday together on a Greek island. Unknown to the rest of her family, except her husband Ray, grandmother Sandra is dying and this is likely to be the last time the whole family shares time together. But, from the start, there are signs that the holiday may not be in the ideal location - the island appears to have more cloud than expected and the nearby resort town of Sunset Beach appears strangely quiet during daylight hours, the few people around unnaturally pale for the Mediterranean. Then several of the family experience shared nightmares of nocturnal visitors…

Ramsey Campbell’s prose is descriptive without being florid, the sort of writing you linger over, until you realise the pace is increasing, the feeling of unease is mounting, and there is something there, in the dark… His characters are well-drawn particularly the older couple, Ray and Sandra, and every family has a Julian, the most uptight of the lot, who clearly does not want to be there and whose, seemingly unconscious, bullying of his stepdaughter is painful.

I can’t say that ‘Thirteen Days…’ is a return to form, as I have missed so much, but it certainly made me want to revisit ‘The Doll Who Ate His Mother’ and ‘The Face That Must Die’ and then explore the more recent books that I have neglected.


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Review: Inhuman Resources

Inhuman Resources by Pierre Lemaitre
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Pierre Lemaitre’s Inhuman Resources was originally published in France in 2010 just two years after the financial crash but its story, of a man driven to extreme measures by lack of work opportunity, resonates just as well today. Alain Delambre, a fifty-seven year old former Human Resources Manager, was made redundant four years previously and works in menial, part-time jobs to survive. When an altercation with his superior in a packing depot leads to his dismissal, Alain becomes increasingly desperate. So, when a potential opportunity with a huge company presents itself, Alain jumps at the chance to take part in the recruitment exercise, and looks for any advantage, fair or otherwise, which might bring the role his way.

The story is told in three sections, before, during, and after the recruitment exercise, a high pressure ‘role-playing’ hostage situation in which Alain and another HR professional will help choose from the candidates, none of whom know that they are role-playing, while simultaneously competing for the permanent HR role. The novel is satirical and full of implicit criticisms of Big Business, where people are ‘resources’ and senior management earn huge salaries and bonuses while low-paid workers are reduced to living in cars on Paris streets.

To be honest, while I initially sympathised with Alain, who narrates the first section, I became increasingly frustrated with him as a character. He constantly makes ‘wrong’ decisions, driven no doubt by his frantic search for work, but, despite his situation, he seems to believe still in the capitalism which has put him where he now is, constantly quoting management theories. His aim appears to be to get back his position in the system rather than to change it. His self-pity means that the latter chapters of this section start to drag. But then the book jumps into life.

The second and third sections of the novel are excellent. The book transforms into a high paced thriller, the narrative increasingly breathless and difficult to predict. I enjoyed it a lot - there are enough twists to keep the reader guessing, many echoes of the current unbalanced system and uncertain future especially in post-Brexit Europe. A worthwhile read.

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Review: Only to Sleep: A Philip Marlowe Novel

Only to Sleep: A Philip Marlowe Novel by Lawrence Osborne
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

“I just wanted one last outing. Every man does. One last play at the tables - it’s a common wish.”

I approached this, Lawrence Osborne’s, Chandler Estate-authorised, Philip Marlowe novel, with some trepidation and a little scepticism. Raymond Chandler is my favourite writer and ‘The Little Sister’ the first ‘crime’ novel I remember reading. But Osborne’s decision to write about a 72-year old Marlowe was intriguing and, to some extent, prevents the novel from becoming pastiche, keeps it from being just an inferior continuation of what Chandler did so well. In fact, it adds another dimension to the character.

It is 1988. Philip Marlowe is retired, living physically in Mexico and mentally in the past, detesting old age. So, when an insurance company approaches him about a suspected fraud, he is quick to accept the challenge despite the reservations of others.

‘“You have a good life, Philip. You’re too old to knock people out. Stay down there and go fishing. They can’t be offering you that much. Or maybe you’re just bored.”
“There’s that. I never thought retirement would be so sad.”’

A young widow has been awarded a huge benefit on the death of her much older husband whose rapid cremation following his drowning off the Mexican coast has raised the insurers’ suspicions. As Marlowe begins to investigate we sense that his aim is not really to find answers but to recapture the thrill of past cases. Osborne’s take on Marlowe is not Chandler - it really couldn’t be - but he does echo Chandler’s language without trying to compete and delivers a thoroughly enjoyable, if very sad, novel. Sad because Marlowe cannot recapture the life he had thirty, forty years ago. He finds himself falling for the widow but knows it will not be reciprocated. He drinks and suffers for it where before he would shrug it off. He continues to try to live the life of a tough guy despite knowing that it might kill him.

‘Years of this kind of life wears you down and makes you porous. You die off bit by bit. the stale grit of the road gets into your unconscious, a small voice arises and says to you, “This is the last time, there won’t be any more awakenings and thank god for that, eh?”’

I really liked this book despite my initial misgivings. Osborne makes great use of the Mexican locations he obviously knows well. He finds the dreamlike, slightly unreal quality that Chandler was so good at. But the knight errant is jaded, filled with regret, and chivalry is not so easy to maintain. If this is the end of Philip Marlowe, and it probably should be, it is a fitting end.

‘My dreams were of ships in gales, decks swept by relentless waves, and the threat of being lost at sea. Waters rushed past me and the ship heaved and sank; the bottom of the ocean clamoured with falling coins, glasses and sextants, and cocktail shakers. And there I drifted down among them until I came to rest upon a vast bed of silver and sand and fell asleep like a capsized bosun filled with water and salt.’

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Review: Stone Free: Jimi Hendrix in London, September 1966–June 1967

Stone Free: Jimi Hendrix in London, September 1966–June 1967 by Jas Obrecht
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

As the subtitle suggests, "Stone Free:Jimi Hendrix in London, September 1966–June 1967" concentrates on a very specific period in Hendrix's life, from his 'discovery' in New York by ex-Animal, Chas Chandler, until his triumphant appearance at Monterey Pop in June 1967. The nine months between these events, when Jimi left his native USA to come to London, form the Experience, record his first music under his own name before returning to America on his way to global superstardom, are covered in great detail by Jas Obrecht, former editor of Guitar Player magazine. The book takes us on a month-by-month chronological journey as the unknown Hendrix takes 'Swinging London' by storm. The author is thorough if a little dry. He covers the Jimi Hendrix Experience's first gigs, where the guitarist's technique astounded contemporaries such as Eric Clapton and Pete Townsend, the mismatched package tours, with the likes of Englebert Humperdink and the Walker Brothers, which took him around the UK and into Europe. Obrecht lists the recording sessions, locations and numbers recorded, which produced Hendrix's first singles and his debut "Are You Experienced?" album. We also learn where Hendrix lived during the period.

The writing is a little 'matter of fact' but never tedious. The book does appear to be aimed at the 'Guitar Player' crowd rather than a general audience although, strangely given the revolutionary guitar sounds on that first album, Obrecht seems a little unsure how much 'technical' detail to include. There is a detailed analysis of whether the left-handed Hendrix used a right-handed Fender Telecaster on 'Purple Haze' ("the second overdub, at 1:08, is a repeat of the previous motif...") which would certainly appeal to a guitar player but the author only very occasionally revisits HOW Hendrix was playing. Elsewhere, the author touches on potential financial mismanagement by the group's handlers. He also mentions drug-taking. But, by limiting himself strictly to the period in the title, many things are never followed to a natural conclusion.

I enjoyed the book but suspect the readership is going to be fairly limited. It will not attract those new to Jimi Hendrix's music and will not entirely satisfy those familiar with his work. As a fan and a guitarist, I would love an extended examination of the recordings.

Thanks to NetGalley and University of North Carolina Press for the advance review copy.

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Review: Redemption Point

Redemption Point by Candice Fox
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Candice Fox’s Redemption is the second in her Crimson Lake series about mis-matched Australian PIs, Ted Conkaffey and Amanda Pharrell. I have not read the first but that in no way hindered my understanding or enjoyment of this novel. In fact, it feels like the first in a series.

To get the blurb out of the way first, the publisher compares this book to Jane Harper’s The Dry and, while there are similarities - Australia, murder, suspicion thrown on the protagonist - The Dry uses the environment almost as a main character, the oppressive heat is palpable and integral to the story; Redemption is not that novel. But, it is a very good thriller with interesting characters.

Having been aware of the first in the series, I was under the impression that the suspicion of child abduction and rape hanging over Conkaffey would have been dealt with in Crimson Lake, but the crime and its aftermath still follow him and he finds it hard to escape despite moving away from Sydney in an effort to escape those who deem him guilty despite the collapse of his trial. I have to admit, I didn’t particularly warm to Ted. His, first-person narrated, sections of the novel read almost self-serving; he seems to be trying hard to convince the reader that he didn’t do what he was accused of while, at the same time, telling us that he tries to ignore the support he is getting from podcasters championing his innocence. Not particularly liking him is not the same as not enjoying reading about him; I did and the touches such as the podcast are very well done.

Amanda, I did like. Unconventional, a one-off, a little bit weird, she is a convicted murderess, who did do it - although she got the wrong person. I really preferred the sections of the story that tell Amanda’s tale, and that of the police officer, Phillipa Sweeney, with whom Ted and Amanda become involved when investigating the local murder of two late-night bar staff when the father of one of the victims hires the pair to balance his mistrust of the police.

The stories of the local murder and of the attack of which Ted is accused intertwine and overlap and each is brought to a satisfactory conclusion by the author. Redemption is a very good detective novel and I will go back and read Fox’s first book in the series.

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