The Broken Hours

by Jacqueline Baker

In the spring of 1936, horror writer H.P. Lovecraft is broke, living alone in a creaky old house and deathly ill. At the edge of a nervous breakdown, he hires a personal assistant, Arthor Crandle. As the novel opens, Crandle arrives at Lovecraft’s home with no knowledge of the writer or his work but is soon drawn into his distinctly unnerving the malevolent presence that hovers on the landing; the ever-shining light from Lovecraft’s study, invisible from the street; and visions in the night of a white-clad girl in the walled garden. Add to this the arrival of a beautiful woman who may not be exactly what she seems, and Crandle is pulled deeper into the strange world of the horror writer (a man known to Crandle only through letters, signed “Ech-Pi”), until Crandle begins to unravel the dark secret at its heart. A brilliantly written, compelling and deeply creepy novel, The Broken Hours is an irresistible literary ghost story.

Genres: Horror, Fiction, Historical Fiction, Gothic, Mystery, Lovecraftian, Fantasy

230 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 23, 2014

About the author

Jacqueline Baker is the author of "A Hard Witching and Other Stories", which won the Danuta Gleed Literary Award, the Robert Kroetsch City of Edmonton Book Prize and the Howard O'Hagan Award for Short Fiction, and was also a finalist for the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize. Her first novel, "The Horseman's Graves" won wide critical acclaim and was a finalist for the Evergreen Award. Jacqueline Baker lives with her husband and children in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.

Reviews

[Dan Schwent · Rating 2 out of 5]

When Arthor Crandle is down on his luck, he gets a job as a personal assistant to a reclusive Providence author whose initials are H.P. While getting increasingly vexed by his absent employer, Crandle is haunted by the ghost of a little girl...

I had my eye on this one for a while but the ebook was ridiculously expensive. Fortunately, it went on sale a couple weeks ago. Frankly, I wouldn't mind having my $2.99 back.

Basically, this is both a haunted house story and a story of congenital insanity. Is Crandle losing his mind? Is the house really haunted? Will H.P. Lovecraft ever make an appearance? How much do I actually care about any of this?

Okay, so it has some creepy parts but I have to do some griping about this book. What the hell is the point about a horror story involving H.P. Lovecraft if you aren't going to include any elements from the Cthulhu mythos? It's really misleading. The author character could have been a fictitious author and the story would have had the same impact. Not only that, there would be at least one reader that wouldn't have felt mislead by what was probably a cash grab.

Anyway, nothing much happens. There are a few moments of horror but it's mostly tedium. The big twist was telegraphed and could be predicted by anyone who's ever seen an episode of the Twilight Zone or any movie by M. Night Shamalama-ding-dong.

Two out of five stars, only because I didn't actually hate it and it was well-written. Too bad not much actually happened.

[Aksel Dadswell · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had mixed feelings about The Broken Hours. The book was not at all what I expected, in good and bad ways.

The writing itself was spectacular, scalpel-precise but never too simple or sparse. Every word felt like it was exactly where it was supposed to be. There was a beauty and intensity - and more than a little melancholy - that cut right into my perception and continued its work deep into my brain matter. Lines like the "coldly muscled coursing of the river" provided perfect, delicious moments of imagery so vivid in both what they evoked and the sheer genius of that particular combination of words that I often found myself re-reading them over and over again under my breath until the rhythm became familiar with my tongue.

The story, which was not exactly plot-heavy, opting instead for a gloomy slow-burn character study, was engaging in terms of psychology and atmosphere, but confounded my initial expectations of the cover's promise that this was "a novel of H.P. Lovecraft." I kept expecting - hoping - some eldritch horror would come squirming from the shadows, and was inevitably disappointed when this [SPOILERS] didn't happen. But to judge a book by something it is not - and something that it isn't trying to be, more specifically - is somewhat unfair.

The real problem I had with The Broken Hours was the at once implausibility and predictability of what constitutes the book's major climactic twist. Although the mystery is underplayed quite well at times, to fantastic emotional effect (a particular flashback is brilliantly executed in terms of what it specifically doesn't mention), it became one of those "I really hope they don't go in that direction" contrivances. Ultimately, the author did go in that direction, and although by no means a failure, the reveal fell flat for me. A quiet novel with a quiet ending, all of it laced with melancholy and loss, but with something missing that could have brought some of the disparate elements together and elevated it to great piece of literature.

I'd still definitely recommend the book though; I devoured it quickly and urged myself to read one more chapter, one more chapter with every sitting. Jacqueline Baker writes with a deep sort of Gothic poetry that really gets under your skin and stays there, worming its way into you. Despite my misgivings, its scenes and characters and tangible atmospherics still turn slowly in my head.

[Icy-Cobwebs-Crossing-SpaceTime · Rating 5 out of 5]

Review: BROKEN HOURS by Jacqueline Baker

I have been extraordinarily blessed in the last few years by discovering several "perfect" books. BROKEN HOURS: A NOVEL OF H. P. LOVECRAFT is one. I don't even feel capable of doing this novel justice in my review. BROKEN HOURS should be an award winner, multiple times.

Mike Davis at LOVECRAFT EZINE highly recommended BROKEN HOURS, and I was impelled to pre-order it (even though mire expensive than I usually buy) and it is worth every single penny. I read it in just a few hours and want to read it again, right away.

If you love the Lovecraftian Mythos; if you enjoy fictional biographies of authors; if you want to be stunned by enormously graceful writing; if you are drawn to depth psychology and abnormal psychology, BROKEN HOURS is your book.

[Barry Hammond · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fiction which uses real historical characters can be tricky and sometimes disappointing if the reader knows more about the historical figure than the author. Happily, this is not the case with this novel. Baker uses weird fiction writer H.P. Lovecraft as a character but has obviously done her research. Although she takes a few liberties with facts (as sometimes fiction must) she remains true to the essence of both his character and some of the tone of his stories to weave her own rather creepy tale into which Lovecraft figures. The prevailing tone of a cold spring in Providence provides the setting for a ghostly story which touches on madness, identity, and hints of things otherworldly which captivates the reader utterly. A literary gothic of high quality with an interesting take on one of the masters of horror. - BH.

[Mike Perschon · Rating 5 out of 5]

I dislike giving the impression I'm a literary snob, so let me set the record straight, immediately: I love horror, and I love good writing, and I'm as likely to read Stephen King as a I am to read Shirley Jackson. Nevertheless, there are some who question if modern horror can ever transcend its genre ghetto, and having just finished Jacqueline Baker's The Broken Hours, I'm optimistic it not only can, but already has. Google literary horror, and you'll get lists pointing you toward Edgar Allan Poe, Mary Shelley, Bram Stoker, and Joyce Carol Oates. With rare exceptions, these lists don't contain anything written in the past 30 years, as though literary status is denied to horror until it's aged sufficiently to have lost much of its potency. However, like SF and Fantasy, literary writers are turning their attentions towards horror. And since I finished it with Halloween just a few days hence, it is my recommendation for those who not only appreciate good storytelling, but careful wordsmithing and poetic prose.

Baker's writing has always been haunted. From her short stories in A Hard Witching to her stark vision of Canada's western prairies in The Horseman's Graves, there's always a sense of the uncanny stalking at the edges of the page. In those works, her ghosts are more subtle. In The Broken Hours, they take center stage in a tale about a man who comes to work as a personal assistant for H.P. Lovecraft. In Baker's hands, the setting of Providence, Rhode Island during the Great Depression is haunted enough, and so the first 96 pages read much like her previous work, albeit in a more compelling, concise fashion. It wasn't until that 96th page, when I read the words "It was in my room," that I felt the chills crawl up my spine. But don't expect that The Broken Hours suddenly becomes a Cthulhu-inspired horror-fest at that point. There are no Elder Gods in these pages, no physical portals to worlds of madness, though Baker's creation of Lovecraft's voice feels terribly authentic. Instead, Baker slowly doles out the remaining moments of atmospheric horror in small doses, slowly revealing the presences behind closed doors, in the darkness on the landing, in the garden out the window, or in the blinking lights of the castle-like structure across the city.

One of my favourite passages in The Broken Hours speaks to the desire for horror, but also demonstrates what sets reading Baker's horror from writers like Dean Koontz.

"What is it about the darkness which draws us? At once inward and outward. I had always been too easily drawn, too easily, Jane would have said, too easily enveloped. I, who feared once, as a child, not the witching autumn, but spring, that clear-lighted season of ghosts when Jesus rose from the tomb, bloodless and terrible, rolling away the stone in the sunlight with his own deathless hands. I imagined Jane's shock at hearing such a confession.
Oh yes, the darkness drew me. Had drawn me always.
There was something in me, I knew, something perhaps in us all which, no matter our rational selves, was haunted."

It is this beautiful prose, this beautiful terror, which makes The Broken Hours my top literary recommendation for the Halloween season. While the chills of The Broken Hours are admittedly slow in coming compared to King or Koontz, once they arrive, they are the kind that creep up to leech the warmth and light from a bright autumn afternoon, an experience I was shocked to have on my way to pick my children up from school. Scaring a reader in the night watches is relatively easy - scaring a reader in broad daylight, especially one who cut his horror teeth on King's Pet Semetary is another. And yet there I was, reading while walking, the hair on my arms standing on end, the sun shining down on me. And unlike recent King or almost all Koontz, Baker knows how to end a book, leaving me lingering over the last page, reading it over several times, to let it sink in, beneath the skin.

[Peter Darbyshire · Rating 5 out of 5]

Delightfully eerie.

[Amy H. Sturgis · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a delicious slow burn of a reading experience. And "experience" really captures it for me; the haunting prose kept me in the moment, fully engaged with disbelief suspended. I purposefully did not try to anticipate where the mystery was going or what the end point would be, and I think that's the best way to enjoy this dreamlike and deeply psychological book.

If you're looking for non-stop action, you'll be disappointed. That said, I was riveted the entire time.

The more you know about the life of H.P. Lovecraft, the more you will appreciate this novel. I felt especially connected to Jacqueline Baker's masterful descriptions because I have walked those streets in Providence and seen that house, that library, that cemetery, etc.

I won't say much more, because this really needs to be experienced, not spoiled. The novel is disturbing in a good way. I finished it a couple of days ago, and it's been following me around ever since. I know I'll be thinking about it for a good while to come.

[Annie · Rating 3 out of 5]

H.P. Lovecraft is experiencing a revival. The strange author of even stranger stories had a life, it seems, that was crying out to be turned into fiction. Within the last year, I've seen Lovecraft turned into a character in stories based in his fiction. His settings have been revived for even more novels. Jacqueline Baker's The Broken Hours is a literary turn on this little renaissance. Her novel is set in the last year of Lovecraft's life, when he was furthest down on his luck and dying of cancer. The Broken Hours sent me scurrying to Lovecraft's biography more than once—and, consequently, had me wondering what was fictional and real more than once, too...

Read the rest of my review at A Bookish Type. I received a free copy of this book from Edelweiss for review consideration.

[Emma Catanzaro · Rating 3 out of 5]

I gave this book three stars because I liked the style of writing. However, I don't know what happened! I was so confused and the end didn't really clear it up for me.

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

i will admit to some initial surprise at the lack of what one comes to expect from a novel of H.P. Lovecraft... but that hardly seemed to matter, as i tore through this book in one sitting (OK, i got up to make tea, so two sittings technically)... the writing for this tale was period perfect, and full of wonderful phrases and word choices... just grand... definitely an odd literary trip, but quite enjoyable... one was consistently left to wonder what was happening, and what one might have missed, or what was not being said/told... a palpable sense of dread or wrongness or doom threaded throughout, all that though it's not even that kind of story at all... one might think that would disappoint, but not so, it simply adds to the strength of the author's talents that such a misdirection, brought solely by the reader, as one is never told The Old Ones will be seeping from the void in any way, so it seems to merely take the mention of Lovecraft to make one assume certain things... ultimately an unsettling story, and one that asks that you think and feel, and possibly suspend rationality just a little... darkness is closer than you expect...

[Monica]

Given by the fact that H.P. Lovecraft was known for having many pseudonyms and by Arthor Crandle's constant need to lie about being Lovecraft throughout the novel, the ending can only be surmised that Lovecraft is Crandle. There are several instances throughout the book that supports this theory:

1. Crandle was estranged from his wife, and we were led to believe they were no longer together, yet still married. Lovecraft, in real life, was separated from his wife, Sonia, in 1936. They were no longer together, but technically still married since Lovecraft failed (or chose not to) sign the final document to legalize the divorce.

2. Crandle was drawn to the cats sunbathing across the way on the shed, and fed one of the cats the spare food that he had saved for Lovecraft, but that Lovecraft never came to eat it. Lovecraft was in reality inordinately fond of cats.

3. In one scene, in which Lovecraft and Crandle actually interact for some time, Lovecraft talks about a curiosity he had as a boy about a gravesite behind his childhood home. He almost dug up the grave once, but stopped because it wasn't right. The following scene, Crandle decides to do the very same thing of digging up the grave, and even begins to feel the same sort of wrongness about it as Lovecraft had felt. Yet, Crandle does ultimately unearth what is buried and grows fanatic while he does so.

4. Prior to the gravesite scene, Crandle finally comes to realize his appearance by seeing his reflection on the Van Wickle Gates, and notes how gaunt he has become.

5. At one point, Crandle's wife sends him a telegram that she will show up to see him, but at the appointed date, she never shows up. Crandle therefore sends her a wire. Upon the arrival of Annie Phillips from the hospital, Crandle tries to introduce himself, but Annie admits there is no need. Crandle reveals thereafter that he is waiting for a wire from his wife, but upon saying this, he realizes the statement didn't sound correct at all.

6. This could also very well explain why when Flossie went into Lovecraft's study to see what Crandle was 'hiding' from her, Lovecraft was suddenly gone (he had been sick and bedridden in that room the whole novel) and had never appeared again.

All these points, of course, could be me trying to make sense of the whole thing, or it could mean the very genius behind The Broken Hours.

[Jeff Raymond · Rating 4 out of 5]

I guess it was only a matter of time before Lovecraft himself started winding his proverbial tentacles into the New Weird as a character, but here we are with The Broken Hours, a quiet, creepy affair.

The story is mainly about a man who takes an assistant position in an old house in Providence. He never meets the man he works for, communicating only in letters. The house is believed to be haunted, there is unexplained phenomena throughout, and the book follows these reveals slowly throughout.

The most frustrating part of reading this book is that Jacqueline Baker makes a conscious decision to place all quotes within italics instead, which is something I never got used to and really drew me out of the story instead of perhaps drawing me inward as intended. The result is that the narrative itself, while an interesting, slow burn, feels more than a little stilted as one tries to get back into the tale. Other readers might not have the same issue, though.

There's not a lot of obvious mythos here, and the payoff isn't what I personally expected, but this is still a fun read. Things are just uneasy and creepy enough to keep the reader engaged, and the Providence of this book feels appropriately Lovecraftian (even though people aren't fornicating with the sea monsters as far as we can tell), so there's a lot to love here for those interested in weird fiction or Lovecraft in general. There's just too much here that doesn't quite work that keeps The Broken Hours from being great instead of the very good that it is.

[MKF · Rating 3 out of 5]

I got this book expecting a frightening story about H.P. Lovecraft. It was a good story that easily captured my attention but H.P. Lovecraft made few appearences in the story besides letters written to the main character Arthor. The beginning I thought set the stage for the rest of the book with its atmospheric description of the house in which Lovecraft lived. Instead it was replaced by odd occurences that were suppose to be frightening but really weren't. Upon finishing I was curious as to why this is listed as horror because to me horror is scary or frightening and this book read like an old ghost story written to amuse more then frighten the reader.

[Tom Cork · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this little novel. The ever-shifting narrative reminded me of House on Haunted Hill by Shirley Jackson. As the story progresses, little clues from the outside world begin to seep in, leading you to question what you've assumed to be true.

I'm very glad this wasn't just fan fiction for a particular author. The prose is delicious and stands on its own. If you find yourself reading a novel on the way home, trying to walk and balance the book on your arm while holding up an umbrella in the strong winds of a thunderstorm, chances are it's a keeper. I want to read Baker's other fiction!

[Joe Kilmartin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not bad at all - a deftly written, literary deconstruction of life on 66 College St., where HP Lovecraft spent his last days. Very DEFINITELY a ghost story, and one that speaks to the HPL one finds in his letters and his much more sympathetic biographies. Recommended for those looking for a slow steady creep, rather than the somewhat clumsier work that Lovecraft wrote himself. Very satisfying conclusion.

[Laura Jones · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the most tightly written Gothic horror story I’ve ever read. That’s a seriously impressive feat for a book that relies heavily on atmosphere. It’s probable that my lack of knowledge about H.P. Lovecraft had a effect on my enjoyment of the novel. This a worthwhile read. I liked the protagonist, but I didn’t really care about him, and that’s what kept this from getting a higher rating. Given the opportunity. I would love to read more from Baker.

[Will Mayo]

An excellent biographical novel concerning the American horror writer Howard Phillips Lovecraft in which three characters merge, become two and then one. I could see the ending coming but I followed it through to the end enjoying the read while remaining sympathetic to a long dead recluse whose stories delighted me when I was but a boy. Superbly written, this was a feast for my eyes.

[David · Rating 2 out of 5]

I couldn't figure out where this story was going, which can be good or bad. In this case, it felt like the entire book was one long setup for a reveal at the very, very end of the book. When I got there it was like "Oh, that was it?" That said, it did keep me on the hook till the end, so I didn't hate it.

[Mae ❀ Paper Rêveries · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 flickering lamps out of 5

“When I crossed the room and shut the door, the hair stood on end all up the back of my neck. Though it was light outside, the shadows hung heavily in the corners. I felt a thickness in my throat, as if I could not swallow: that presence I had felt always on the landing and the second floor, it had followed me inside.
It was in my room.”

I remember, when reading the collection of works on Cthulhu, being caught up in the mystery of H. P. Lovecraft. Such a somber, misunderstood man he seemed to be— as most famous literary types, I suppose.

This was a delicious read indeed, albeit intensifying that curiosity more than satisfying. Its deeply melancholic atmosphere, accompanied by a quick-witted and nearly frenzied dialogue, is reminiscent of The Great Gatsby. So much so that I wonder if Baker has Fitzgerald on her list of favourite authors. He most definitely figures on mine, so it’s no wonder why I was instantly entranced by her writing style.

To those looking for a gentle thriller with a relieving ending should put The Broken Hours down at once. This cast of characters, all mourning a loss of their own, is desperate for importance, for luck, for a colorful future that will outshine their bleakly grey lives. Toying with the reader’s understanding of imagination and reality, Baker reminds us that the worst kind of ghost is the living kind.

The reason it did not receive 5 stars is because I was truly hoping for some answers regarding two specific characters that were introduced. I feel their presence left me confused, their reactions/motives not justified. Though maybe that was the point, I feel like I would’ve better grasped the ending had I received more information on them in those final pages. If you’ve read this book and would like to discuss it, message me! :)

[Monique · Rating 4 out of 5]

Over the past few years, I’ve come to appreciate H.P. Lovecraft as one of our truly great horror writers. This book reads like a surreal love letter to his freakish madness, written so eloquently in a Lovecraftian voice, it almost could have been written by the author himself. I admit, I stumbled through a few scenes, almost feeling like I should have been reading it alongside a collected works of H.P. Lovecraft and a comprehensive biography. But even though not every vision was crystal clear, I admire what Baker has done to imaginatively put together the broken pieces of such a complex “monster.”

[Rod Lee · Rating 2 out of 5]

The back cover says the book is an “irresistible literary ghost story”. I’m not sure what a literary ghost story is, but it’s certainly not this book. (Do imagined ghosts make a ghost story?) I didn’t find the main character appealing because of his weakness and flaws but wanted to finish the book because of the atmosphere (at least in parts of the book) and the other characters. And to see where the plot was going. In the end I felt let down and was pretty disappointed.

[kvazimodla · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved the anatomy of madness approach.

[Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I haven't read a lot of H.P. Lovecraft's writing, nor do I really know much about his personal life, so when I stumbled upon this book in the store, and was captivated by the cover, I knew I had to give it a shot. Once I got it home, it stayed on my bedside table for a few days, but once I picked it up, I was lost in a world of Gothic madness and fear.

If you have seen the movies Thr3e or Dream House, you will quickly catch on to what's going on, and you will definitely get a good understanding of the title of this book. If you haven't seen those movies, I'm not going to spoil the book, or the movies for that matter, by explaining what they all have in common. Just know this, even though I was able to figure out the twist of this book about half way through, it didn't take away from my enjoyment of it, nor did it keep me from buying into the story of Arthor Crandle and his employer. The clues are there for you to pick up on. As long as you are paying attention to the side characters, and how they interact with Arthor as he encounters them, you won't stray too far into the woods.

This is one of those books where the atmosphere is everything. This is a book that you feel enveloped in from the moment you first crack it open. It's heavy and oppressive. You feel like you are drowning underneath a layer of unease and tension. From the moment Arthor appears on the page, you know he is not going to have a an easy time of it, and that he is hiding from his life The tension and unease all stem from him, like a miasmatic fog wafting over a fetid swamp, you know he is the source of it all.

Of course, like any good Gothic story, the house plays a big role in the tone of the book. It's falling apart, full of memories and ghosts, and presents the perfect backdrop for Arthor and his secrets. It's a a confusing labyrinth of secretes and misdirection, all built around the goal of playing games with Arthor's, and the reader's, mind. It's hard to put a finger on what's real, and what's not. But, as long as you follow the trail of bread crumbs the author leaves behind, I'm sure you will be able to figure it out for yourself. If you can't, I'm sure Arthor will help you feel at home.

[Sharon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read for the "Read the States" Challenge for: Rhode Island
Actual rating: 3.5 stars

This book is not what you are expecting to read. Do not come into this with any amount of presupposition or you may be disappointed.
This is not a Lovecraft mythos story; it's a Gothic ghost story.

The good: The writing is amazing. I just loved the way the words fell on the page, the right balance of description and thought to form, if not a scary story, a very atmospheric, thoughtful novel.

The bad: I have no idea what the purpose of Flossie Kush was to this story, but it was not achieved.
Flossie is a young, Jewish actress who sublets an apartment in the same building as HP Lovecraft. But, because she and Lovecraft never interact, there's no discourse on his racial prejudices or antisemitism. Not only is her religion tangental at best to the story, she a.) openly compares something to Christmas and b.) brushes on the thought of Hitler in 1936, the year this story takes place.
While I cannot say for certain what Baker does or does not know, American Jews were highly aware of the ghettoization of European Jews well before 1936, and I cannot see how Flossie would be so general or flippant about it.

The ???: Like I mentioned, there was no interaction between the Jewish character and Lovecraft, but there was also no commentary on Lovecraft's general extreme racism and xenophobia. Which honestly doesn't make any sense - in this day, I genuinely don't understand how you can interact with Lovecraft without commenting on his stance on these issues.
It was honestly kind of bizarre reading and waiting for it to come up - but it never did.

All that being said, while the general stance of the book was a bit innocuous, I really do recommend reading this for the writing alone - I found it quite lovely and captivating.
Just, you know, maybe get it from the library or something like I did.

[Tarl · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is one of those books where you go through it and are trying to figure out what is going on, and then at the very end it all hits you, blowing your mind.

I have to say, Baker has crafted an engaging book that contains a lot of elements that are beautiful in nature. Though this story deals with Lovecraft (and fyi, I am not a fan of including Lovecraft in stories), the overall feel of the book isn't one of cosmic horror, but rather gothic. This is a wonderful take and suits not only Lovecraft as a character, but also the era in which he lived.

The overall story itself is interesting, though a bit drab, which is the only reason this didn't get 5 stars from me. The protagonist goes through his daily life while slowly discovering more and more about his employer, Lovecraft. Each setting and the characters within are suitably creepy and the overall sense of unease in the novel is masterfully crafted and a pleasure to read. But as mentioned, the ending is superb and makes me want to reread the novel, now knowing what I know, just to see how Baker pulled it all together.

In the end, I highly recommend this to any reader looking for a well done psychological horror. Don't go into this looking for your standard Lovecraftian fare, or you will be disappointed. Instead, sit back and prepare to enjoy an extremely well crafted tale.

[Durand Welsh · Rating 3 out of 5]

I like Lovecraft's work, but I knew very little about the author himself before starting this novel. Perhaps I would have enjoyed it more if I was more familiar with Lovecraft's life, because I felt I was constantly missing sly references and allusions.

That said, I really enjoyed the first three-quarters of the novel, but after that I started to realise that the plot was likely not going to tie up in a way that made any sense to me. I just wasn't finding toeholds in what I suspected were fictionalised descriptions of parts of Lovecraft's life, but from the point-of-view of someone other than Lovecraft. All in all, to be honest, I got a little lost in the woods.

Still, the prose is great, and it's all engaging enough in a slow, easy fashion. Basically, the plot involves a young man who takes a job assisting a reclusive horror writer. Shortly thereafter he meets a young downstairs boarder named Flossie, and much of the novel involves their sometimes fraught interactions. There are the usual family secrets and ghostly children, but by the end I wasn't really sure what had happened.

[Charlie Moses · Rating 2 out of 5]

Adult .... fantasy? Or not. I admit I read half of it, and skipped ahead to the end to see if I actually wanted to go there - and decided I didn't. 1) It's skillfully written. 2) It's wonderfully atmospheric. Truly creepy and on the verge of frightening. As the author meant for it to be. And it may not be a fantasy, because all of the creepy things that happen may have only taken place in the viewpoint character's head. Or not. The ending didn't make that clear in the least. 3) The premise was interesting, but it didn't turn out to be the book I thought it would be, and while that isn't an unforgivable crime, and sometimes that turns out to be a wonderful surprise, in this case, not. 4) What, in my opinion, this book actually is: Literature. Notice the capital "L". That means it was written to the standards of the modern Literature establishment, which adheres to the "ugly or unhappy story beautifully told" rule. And while it was, in fact, beautifully told, I have a personal aversion to the ugly or unhappy, or better said: unredeemed story, no matter how good a job the author did in writing it.

[Aster · Rating 1 out of 5]

1.5

I’m not gonna say this book was completely terrible: the writing was good, for one, it was fairly quick to read, and Flossie is a ray of sunshine in the middle of all this gray. I also can see other people liking this if they’re interested in Lovecraft and for some of the clever narrative devices used.

But y’all, I was so bored. All the time. I just didn’t care about the characters or what they were doing. Arthor was an asshole and I didn’t even feel pity for him, and Lovecraft is worse than the dirty beneath my shoe, so there’s that. I just genuinely didn’t care about a single thing that was going on in this book, and that obviously ruins the whole experience. The ending was confusing and left me with a bunch of questions I didn’t even really bother to see answered. All in all, very yikes.

Book club pick for December.

[Connie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jacquline Baker is not the first to portray author H.P. Lovecraft in a horror novel, but she does so with a great deal of talent. The sense of the surreal when reading her novel is not unlike that when reading one of Lovecraft's own stories. Lovecraft's contention that humans can only know of the universe what little they can perceive by their physical senses and the filter of the mind is evident in this novel. Combining what is known about Lovecraft's nature and personal history with a suspenseful story that contains elements of what may be evidence of the supernatural or a psychiatric disturbance, Ms. Baker weaves a tale that raises goosebumps and keeps the reader engrossed until the very end.

[Gail · Rating 2 out of 5]

Atmospheric and dark, this book is long on words and short on action. The protagonist, Arthor Crandle, accepts a position as personal assistant to an elderly author (H.P. Lovecraft, writer of horror stories) who lives in a shabby old house. He communicates with his employer by hand-written notes for the first half of the book, then finally meets him in his room and decides he is harmless. Throughout the book Crandle sleeps little and is made nervous by what he perceives to be frightening auras and occurrences in the house. I was not similarly affected. Yawn.