A string of tragedies leads a woman in suburban Atlanta to believe that the house that was just built next to her's is irrevocably evil.
Year of publication: 1977
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And now, the fifty-eighth reason I'm glad I read Stephen King's Danse Macabre: If I hadn't, I never would have read The House Next Door. This is a disturbing, probing work that examines the effect the unknown and the unexpected can have on people who are so set in their ways that only something unnatural can get their attention. The way Siddons splits the narrative into several different sections and yet constantly, gradually, increases the pressure the main characters (and the reader) experience is nothing short of a masterstroke. More than any other book I've read, with the exception of The Shining, The House Next Door is about being terrified from the inside; Siddons makes each character experience his or her greatest fear--their own personal hell--in a way that is utterly believable, yet so imaginative and even perverted, that it her narrative is almost sublime. And sublimely twisted. House ends in a macabre twist that makes complete sense, yet caught me completely off-guard--a perfect end to a just-about perfect book. (Oct 16, 2000) | |
In my opinion, this would be the perfect basis for a three-part miniseries, but it has never been filmed.
