“When are they going to talk about me?” Way over-rated. Eleanor Vance has low self-esteem, a dead mother, fixates on anybody that crosses her path and is a God-mode fantasist. She might as well have a sign above her that says “sees dead people”. While a couple of days with Dr Anthony Clare wouldn’t have gone amiss, Eleanor rocks up at creepy old Hill House along with (obviously, if never specifically defined as) gay Theodora, trustafarian surfer dude Luke and authority figure Dr Montague, who is later joined by his wife; Celia Imrie giving us her Kate from ‘The Taming Of The Shrew’. Theodora and Eleanor spend their time swapping nonsense-talk and fantasia, there’s banging of doors and wu-wu and that’s your lot. Scary? No. Important? Certainly, if you’re writing a Doctorate about psychosexuality in the ghost story. Would it be held up as sexist and a wildly unrealistic depiction of self-loathing women if it had been written by a man? Hell yes. I’ve never read a novel that started as such a safe bet (licking my lips, “this is going to be good”) and which then proceeded to walk off a cliff so spectacularly. I don’t want torrents of ectoplasm but for the record it’s 95 pages of interiority before we get to a spooky cold spot. The lead, if not the heroine, is one of life’s tragedies; a friendless woman with a horrible sister left behind by life as she cared for her dying mother. She’s just the sort of mousey, unfulfilled woman Anita Brookner made a career out of writing well about. These days of course various social warrior/YA authors would never let such a character escape a novel without a hero moment and a late in the day transfiguration and to Jackson’s great credit there’s no such bollocks here but, boy oh boy, does Eleanor and Theo’s baby-talk grate. The low self-esteem is laid on with a trowel. What a pity. I suppose “Hill House” has a place in the history of the literary ghost story, of course it does, but these days I greatly suspect anyone who claims this book is an untainted classic (a certain Mr N. Gaiman, for one…) does so to advertise how right-on they are.
