Tag: classic fiction

Review: Hell House by Richard Matheson

E.F. Sunland

Richard Matheson’s Hell House popped up in my Amazon recommendations after I browsed horror classics for my October reading. I dropped the others on my list in its favor because Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend is, well, legendary. What Dreams May Come is also decent (don’t quote me; I read it too long ago to fully recommend now). As for Hell House… not what I expected. It’s suitably eerie, suspenseful, and intense, but it has a weird 1970’s pulp-porn component with an uncomfortable level of sexual violence and humiliation. It’s over the top in a way that verges on camp, but for something to be campy, it ought to be a little funny and this isn’t. read more

Review: The Turn of the Screw by Henry James

E.F. Sunland

I struggled through this one. Henry James’s narrative style in The Turn of the Screw is weak, full of qualifications and tiny details. I had to reread a few sentences to catch their meaning and some content escaped me. (I hate admitting this sort of thing; I worry it makes me sound dense.)

The Turn of the Screw follows a young governess in charge of a large house and two young children. Two ghostly figures appear and the governess believes they’re interested in the children. Both kids act bizarrely when questioned and the governess suspects they’re being used to some dark end. However, it’s just as likely that the governess is mentally unstable. This ambiguity is nicely balanced throughout the novel and, though I felt I wasn’t following the story to the fullest, the conclusion was shocking and still made an impact. read more

Review: The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

E.F. Sunland

I was typing “this book isn’t all that scary,” when my front door rattled and startled me off my chair. Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House is THE haunted house story and has been on my queue for at least a decade. I don’t rush to read books that I expect to be predictable and was skeptical that Hill House would hold any surprises. So often, reading a classic after reading derivative works leaves the classic feeling rote even though it’s the clever original. Hill House doesn’t have this problem. I picked it up with the expectation of pesky, obvious ghosts with a few jump scares, but found a subtle and psychologically disturbing story instead. read more

Review: Grendel by John Gardner

E.F. Sunland

20 Books of Summer 2015: Book 4

I hesitate to call John Gardner’s Grendel a modern Beowulf from the perspective of the monster, though that’s the first description to come to mind. The open secret among English majors is that Beowulf is a snooze despite its historical value. Happily, Grendel is funny and smart, and creates a sympathetic portrait of one of literature’s original villains. This novel follows Grendel’s 12-year war with Hrothgar and his conflicting emotions towards the men he watches from afar. It begins with Grendel’s irritation towards the slow-witted forest creatures who cannot understand his language and mistake him for a monster:

The doe in the clearing goes stiff at the sight of my horridness, then remembers her legs and is gone. It makes me cross. “Blind prejudice!” I bawl at the splintered sunlight where half a second ago she stood. I wring my fingers, put on a long face. “Ah, the unfairness of everything,” I say, and shake my head. It is a matter of fact that I have never killed a deer in all my life, and never will. Cows have more meat and, locked up in pens, are easier to catch. (7-8)

read more

Review: A Separate Peace by John Knowles

E.F. Sunland

20 Books of Summer 2015: Book 2

For those high school students who hit up my blog to “research” their papers: knock it off. You’re reading good stuff, even if you won’t realize it for another decade. Like The Great Gatsby, John Knowles’ A Separate Peace was wasted on me in high school. (Will put this theory to the test when I read Catcher in the Rye in a few weeks.)

From the back cover: Set at a boys’ boarding school in New England during the early years of World War II, A Separate Peace is a harrowing and luminous parable of the dark side of adolescence. Gene is a lonely, introverted intellectual. Phineas is a handsome, taunting, daredevil athlete. What happens between the two friends one summer, like the war itself, banishes the innocence of these boys and their world.

read more