The Haunting of Hill House

The horror of this book is subtle and it popularized the concept of haunted house horror. Because the character exploration is its focus, it is more sad than scary.

Welcome to the Hill House, not sane, alone, might stand for another 80 years or so.

The writing style is odd and dream-like, purposefully hiding information, also it's a book from the 1950s, so in general, the way the characters interact can put people off. The novel takes away a lot of things you might want to know like character descriptions, only leaving you with the color of their sweater, the descriptions of the Hill House itself, you only vaguely understand how it is supposed to look. It sometimes jumps the scene forward, disorienting.

The atmosphere, the characters (the main character especially) are lovely. However, some characters that are introduced later on do not serve the plot. The ending is great, there's a build-up to it and it's bold.

There's something very familiar with the horror and sadness in this book for me, so it really worked. A lot of it is spent on the characters simply anticipating the horror and not a whole lot happening, but you also get to find out about the characters when they simply chat.