A Haunting on the Hill: A Novel

From award-winning author Elizabeth Hand comes the first-ever novel authorized to return to the world of Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House--an "eerily beautiful, strangely seductive, and genuinely upsetting" (Alix E. Harrow) new story of isolation and longing perfect for our present time.

**Named a Best Book of the Year by The New Yorker, The Washington Post, and Harper's Bazaar**

Open the door . . . .

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, 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 Holly 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 find themselves 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 . . .

"A fitting--and frightening--homage." --New York Times Book Review

"It's thrilling to find this is a true hybrid of these two ingenious women's work--a novel with all the chills of Jackson that also highlights the contemporary flavor and evocative writing of Hand." --Washington Post

"Only the brilliant Elizabeth Hand could so expertly honor Jackson's rage, wit, and vision." --Paul Tremblay

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336 pages

Average rating: 5.2

20 RATINGS

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Community Reviews

Codeliusthe2nd
Sep 04, 2024
4/10 stars
There’s an interesting concept here, but I found the story to be severely rushed, resulting in an ending that feels as abrupt as it does underwhelming. I couldn’t connect to any of the characters, since most of them felt one-note. Even though we didn’t get to spend a ton of time knowing the characters of the original novel, they felt fully realized, where these characters had some backstory, but felt underdeveloped. It was an interesting concept for sure, but it just didn’t necessarily feel like we took a trip to Hill House, but rather went to a random house that happened to be similar. I wish I enjoyed this more, and I might end up giving it another chance in the future, but it’s definitely not for me at the moment.
Anonymous
Feb 14, 2024
6/10 stars
I was close to giving this book four stars, but the ending of it was a little disappointing. It was a slow start, with short chapters that almost made it feel choppy; they would’ve been better had they been combined. It picks up “spooky” wise more than halfway through the story, which was a bit of a letdown (I would’ve liked to see the scary stuff sooner). However, after it starts getting scarier, it’s pretty good, but the ending leaves you with so many unanswered questions. I wish it had gone a bit more into what exactly was the “terror” at Hill House, why it “took” certain people, who Melissa, Ainsley and Evadne really were and who/ what the hares were. I would have also liked to see the apparitions explained.

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