What do you think?
Rate this book
House of Hate
The destructive hatred a family can turn upon itself is the theme of this powerful work, which has, in the words of Margaret Laurence, become "a classic of its kind." Set in the stark, confining atmosphere of a Newfoundland mill town, this semi-autobiographical novel tells the story of the Stone family-caught in relentless poverty and tyrannized by Saul Stone, an illiterate man whose primitive fury warps and twists his wife and children. A brilliant portrayal of existence bereft of tenderness, House of Hate is a tale of human ordeal and of an anguished striving for love in the midst of bitterness. It is, as Farley Mowat has observed, "a book unique in Canadian Literature."
336 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1970
2 people are currently reading
115 people want to read
About the author
Percy Janes
8 books1 followerPercy Janes was a Newfoundland literary icon. Author of the great Canadian classic House of Hate (Margaret Laurence wrote that Saul Stone is “one of the most terrifying and yet tragic father figures in all Canadian literature”), The Newfoundland and Labrador Arts Council presents an annual literary award, the Percy Janes First Novel Award, in his memory.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
July 17, 2018
I adore this quirky rather rare book; its claustrophobic cautionary tale commands me to give it five stars now that I have finally finished its heartbreakingly perfect last page.
I actually did read House of Hate many decades ago, but was too young to really appreciate it as fully as I do now. I'm positively haunted by the negativity that was sowed by the patriarch of the story, Saul Stone, into his five sons (which includes our shadowy narrator Juju), and to a mercifully lesser degree into his one daughter Flinsky (a lesser degree not because Saul was any kinder to her but because of her own strength of character).
Percy Janes has a wonderful way with a sentence; "After an episode in which Mom had once again to intervene personally by going down over the hill and dragging him bodily out of the Humber Pool Room and Billiard Parlour, where he was playing Boston for money, smoking, and also using foul language, Racer restored his prestige among the local bucks by landing in gaol." Not everybody is going to like this sort of writing; some will likely be put off by the style. I find that the sentences always reward, and there is almost never a better way that things might have been told. I also absolutely loved the Newfoundland dialect, and found myself reading passages out aloud, for the sheer delight of it.
Maybe five stars is too generous or too biased, in that I have a fondness for this book the way someone might have a fondness for their own child, or a favourite child, and it's not really fair or realistic to expect everyone to agree. However, House of Hate does what it does very, very well, which is tell an autobiographical tale in fictitious form, of how hatred hardens people and passes down through stunted generations. The book came out in 1970 and I am sure that today any psychologist or counselor or even just somewhat perceptive lay person, can see that there is no great mystery in how poverty plus a lack of love usually equals disaster, creating emotional cripples and substance abusing addicts. In any case, I see House of Hate as the little-known Percy Janes's great cathartic testimony. It may never have reached a huge readership and has in the past few decades slipped into even more obscurity. It's also a downer, despite the pepperings of humour that anything set in Newfoundland is bound to contain. I've never been a fan of happy endings, though I don't generally wish people ill, particularly those who have been through so much hardship and unfairness. For me this was a slice of life, a personal story that may have a lot less reality and a lot more fiction than I think; I can't help but envision it as all being true, all but the names which had to be changed. Our narrator Juju is particularly fascinating because this is HIS story, he's at the center of the storm, and yet we know very little about the details of his life. What we DO know is that he's lonely to the core and has assuaged his pain with books and with world travels, but wherever he went in the world, whatever he read, it strikes one that he had to eventually get HIS story out to the world (or Percy Janes did, at any rate), almost like leaving one's body for science so that the world can be a better place and we can find cures for emotional cancers that stem from hate.
Here's a passage that soothed my soul the way that Juju's was similarly soothed by reading books: "All that I craved was six months of absolute freedom out of the twelve for travelling, and for leisure to read in the world's libraries when I became so weary from foot-slogging over asphalt or so hungry from an austere diet that I could do little except exercise my mind while the aching body found rest."....."I became a mobile speck on the vast globe of this world, having no more intimate connection with my fellow inhabitants than a star; often I asked myself what it was I sought in all these frantic wanderings, but no answer came clearly, not until world-weariness and an abrupt descent into middle age had at last driven me back home again and I came to realize that in these exotic places I had been seeking to prove to myself my passionate childhood conviction that all the world was not like Milltown."
I love this novel story, from the rock of Newfoundland, of the hard-hearted Saul Stone and the family that he makes with his hate. That there is only one picture, that I can find, of its author Percy Janes, and that that same picture is actually from a video, which is available on Youtube, of Janes being interviewed, and yet the sound is not working, it's just a thin man sitting calmly in a seat, talking without being heard by us, looking every bit the skinny bespectacled intellectual (actually a bit like James Joyce, also Irish, who knows, maybe distantly related?) only adds to the endless mystery of House of Hate, and of the human heart, for that matter.
I actually did read House of Hate many decades ago, but was too young to really appreciate it as fully as I do now. I'm positively haunted by the negativity that was sowed by the patriarch of the story, Saul Stone, into his five sons (which includes our shadowy narrator Juju), and to a mercifully lesser degree into his one daughter Flinsky (a lesser degree not because Saul was any kinder to her but because of her own strength of character).
Percy Janes has a wonderful way with a sentence; "After an episode in which Mom had once again to intervene personally by going down over the hill and dragging him bodily out of the Humber Pool Room and Billiard Parlour, where he was playing Boston for money, smoking, and also using foul language, Racer restored his prestige among the local bucks by landing in gaol." Not everybody is going to like this sort of writing; some will likely be put off by the style. I find that the sentences always reward, and there is almost never a better way that things might have been told. I also absolutely loved the Newfoundland dialect, and found myself reading passages out aloud, for the sheer delight of it.
Maybe five stars is too generous or too biased, in that I have a fondness for this book the way someone might have a fondness for their own child, or a favourite child, and it's not really fair or realistic to expect everyone to agree. However, House of Hate does what it does very, very well, which is tell an autobiographical tale in fictitious form, of how hatred hardens people and passes down through stunted generations. The book came out in 1970 and I am sure that today any psychologist or counselor or even just somewhat perceptive lay person, can see that there is no great mystery in how poverty plus a lack of love usually equals disaster, creating emotional cripples and substance abusing addicts. In any case, I see House of Hate as the little-known Percy Janes's great cathartic testimony. It may never have reached a huge readership and has in the past few decades slipped into even more obscurity. It's also a downer, despite the pepperings of humour that anything set in Newfoundland is bound to contain. I've never been a fan of happy endings, though I don't generally wish people ill, particularly those who have been through so much hardship and unfairness. For me this was a slice of life, a personal story that may have a lot less reality and a lot more fiction than I think; I can't help but envision it as all being true, all but the names which had to be changed. Our narrator Juju is particularly fascinating because this is HIS story, he's at the center of the storm, and yet we know very little about the details of his life. What we DO know is that he's lonely to the core and has assuaged his pain with books and with world travels, but wherever he went in the world, whatever he read, it strikes one that he had to eventually get HIS story out to the world (or Percy Janes did, at any rate), almost like leaving one's body for science so that the world can be a better place and we can find cures for emotional cancers that stem from hate.
Here's a passage that soothed my soul the way that Juju's was similarly soothed by reading books: "All that I craved was six months of absolute freedom out of the twelve for travelling, and for leisure to read in the world's libraries when I became so weary from foot-slogging over asphalt or so hungry from an austere diet that I could do little except exercise my mind while the aching body found rest."....."I became a mobile speck on the vast globe of this world, having no more intimate connection with my fellow inhabitants than a star; often I asked myself what it was I sought in all these frantic wanderings, but no answer came clearly, not until world-weariness and an abrupt descent into middle age had at last driven me back home again and I came to realize that in these exotic places I had been seeking to prove to myself my passionate childhood conviction that all the world was not like Milltown."
I love this novel story, from the rock of Newfoundland, of the hard-hearted Saul Stone and the family that he makes with his hate. That there is only one picture, that I can find, of its author Percy Janes, and that that same picture is actually from a video, which is available on Youtube, of Janes being interviewed, and yet the sound is not working, it's just a thin man sitting calmly in a seat, talking without being heard by us, looking every bit the skinny bespectacled intellectual (actually a bit like James Joyce, also Irish, who knows, maybe distantly related?) only adds to the endless mystery of House of Hate, and of the human heart, for that matter.
May 10, 2013
This is a sad story about family life in Newfoundland at the time of the outport settlements.
Set in a small milltown, this semi-autobiographical novel tells the story of the poverty stricken Stone family, who are tyrannized by the hisband and father Saul, an illiterate but hard working man whose violence is continually directed at his wife and children. Saul is completely unable to express any love and this has terrible effects on his family who are all damaged as a consequence.
Not an easy book to read. It really makes you wonder how children ever emerge unscathed by childhoods such as these.
Set in a small milltown, this semi-autobiographical novel tells the story of the poverty stricken Stone family, who are tyrannized by the hisband and father Saul, an illiterate but hard working man whose violence is continually directed at his wife and children. Saul is completely unable to express any love and this has terrible effects on his family who are all damaged as a consequence.
Not an easy book to read. It really makes you wonder how children ever emerge unscathed by childhoods such as these.
September 12, 2014
The sins of the fathers (and mothers)trickling on down through the generations is a theme that fascinates me and that I've written about myself.
This book is well written, heart-breaking and memorable. Anger is a poison that soaks through everything and in an unenlightened time colours everything.
Well done!
This book is well written, heart-breaking and memorable. Anger is a poison that soaks through everything and in an unenlightened time colours everything.
Well done!
July 26, 2022
'House of Hate' by Percy Janes is an amazing story of intergenerational trauma. An important read for anyone who wants to better understand this huge problem. Written, somewhat autobiographically, by a Newfoundlander who had an incredible grasp of Newfoundland patois. Highly recommend
February 18, 2023
This is an intense book with repulsive, but fascinating characters. The author manages to break free of his dysfunctional family, but relates how the father’s hate permeates the history of his siblings. I am glad the book is finished, honestly.
November 23, 2015
*Read a book based on a true story 12/50
Originally I was sure I was going to rate this book a one star but the second half changed my opinion. While the oppression and abuse really upset me there is something to be said about the honesty. This quote from the book accurately sums up my thoughts " how was it that in all these years in this town our father had come to be known in the mill as an honest, hardworking man ; on Humber Heights as a decent, god fearing neighbor; and inside his own home as an unmitigated son of a bitch?"
Originally I was sure I was going to rate this book a one star but the second half changed my opinion. While the oppression and abuse really upset me there is something to be said about the honesty. This quote from the book accurately sums up my thoughts " how was it that in all these years in this town our father had come to be known in the mill as an honest, hardworking man ; on Humber Heights as a decent, god fearing neighbor; and inside his own home as an unmitigated son of a bitch?"
July 19, 2013
A bleak and total immersion into a sunless world of family without love, this novel's main drawback is its failure to adequately explore the origins of Saul Stone's cold and bitter heart.
July 26, 2012
depressing and drawn out. i was told by CBC radio that this was the best book written in the setting of Newfoundland, im taking it upon my self to call shenanigans on that.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews