What do you think?
Rate this book
The Haunted Woman
The Haunted Woman is a tense, atmospheric novel that questions the nature of reality. Isbel Loment is leading an ordinary, if uneventful, existence. She is engaged to a rather boring man and is just passing through her own life. Everything changes when she and her fiancé rent a remote house in Sussex. In the house Isbel discovers rooms that appear to exist in different realities from her own. Her discoveries in this house will change both her life and her destiny forever . David Lindsay was author of A Voyage to Arcturus, and is considered to be one of the great British fantasy authors. His work forms a bridge from George MacDonald to authors such as C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien, who both greatly admired Lindsay's work.
153 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1922
29 people are currently reading
358 people want to read
About the author
David Lindsay
36 books96 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name.
David Lindsay was a Scottish author now most famous for the philosophical science fiction novel A Voyage to Arcturus.
Lindsay was born into a middle-class Scottish Calvinist family who had moved to London, tho growing up he spent much time in Jedburgh, where his family was from. Altho awarded a university scholarship, he was forced by poverty to enter business, becoming a Lloyd's of London insurance clerk. He was very successful but, after serving in WWI, at age forty, he moved to Cornwall with his young wife, Jacqueline Silver, to become a full-time writer. He published A Voyage to Arcturus in 1920. It sold 596 copies before being remaindered. This extremely strange work was not obviously influenced by anyone, but further reading shows links with other Scottish fantasists (e.g., Geo. MacDonald). It was in its turn a central influence on C. S. Lewis's Out of the Silent Planet.
Lindsay attempted to write more commercially with his next work The Haunted Woman (1922), but this was barely more successful than Voyage. He continued writing novels, including the humorous potboiler The Adventures of Monsieur de Mailly, but after Devil's Tor in 1932 he found publication increasingly difficult and spent much time on his last work The Witch, published posthumously.
He and his wife opened a Brighton boarding house. They did not prosper and their marriage underwent considerable strain. The house was damaged by the first bomb to fall on Brighton in WWII. In his bath at the time, Lindsay never recovered from the shock. His death from infection caused by a tooth abscess was unrelated to the bomb.
A Voyage to Arcturus has been described as the major underground novel of the 20th century. The secret of Lindsay's apparent strangeness lies in his metaphysical assumptions. A gnostic, he viewed the "real" world as an illusion which must be rejected in order to perceive genuine truth. In The Haunted Woman, the two main characters discover a room which exists only some of the time. Together there they see more clearly and express themselves honestly. In The Violet Apple, the fruit is that eaten by Adam and Eve. The description of its effects is a startling, lyrical episode in a novel otherwise concerned with ordinary matters.
Lindsay's austere vision of reality may have been influenced by Scandinavian mythology. After being out of print for decades, his work has become increasingly available. He is now seen as being a major Scottish fantasist of the 20th century, the missing link between George Macdonald and modern writers such as Alasdair Gray who have also used surrealism and magic realism.
Arcturus was produced as a 35mm feature film by William J. Holloway in 1971. It was the first film funded by a National Endowment for the Arts and has recently been re-released.
Harold Bloom has also been interested, even obsessed, with Lindsay's life and career, going as far as to publish The Flight to Lucifer, which he thought of as a Bloomian misprision, an homage and deep revision of Arcturus,/i>. Bloom admits his late-comer imitation is overwhelmed by Lindsay's great original.
Bibliography:
A Voyage to Arcturus, 1920
The Haunted Woman, 1922
Sphinx, 1923
The Adventures of Monsieur de Mailly, 1926
Devil's Tor, 1932
The Violet Apple & The Witch, 1976
A Christmas Play, 2003
Further reading:
The Strange Genius of David Lindsay: An Appreciation by J. B. Pick, E. H. Visiak & Colin Wilson, 1970
The Life & Works of David Lindsay by Bernard Sellin, 1983
David Lindsay's Vision by David Power, 2005
David Lindsay was a Scottish author now most famous for the philosophical science fiction novel A Voyage to Arcturus.
Lindsay was born into a middle-class Scottish Calvinist family who had moved to London, tho growing up he spent much time in Jedburgh, where his family was from. Altho awarded a university scholarship, he was forced by poverty to enter business, becoming a Lloyd's of London insurance clerk. He was very successful but, after serving in WWI, at age forty, he moved to Cornwall with his young wife, Jacqueline Silver, to become a full-time writer. He published A Voyage to Arcturus in 1920. It sold 596 copies before being remaindered. This extremely strange work was not obviously influenced by anyone, but further reading shows links with other Scottish fantasists (e.g., Geo. MacDonald). It was in its turn a central influence on C. S. Lewis's Out of the Silent Planet.
Lindsay attempted to write more commercially with his next work The Haunted Woman (1922), but this was barely more successful than Voyage. He continued writing novels, including the humorous potboiler The Adventures of Monsieur de Mailly, but after Devil's Tor in 1932 he found publication increasingly difficult and spent much time on his last work The Witch, published posthumously.
He and his wife opened a Brighton boarding house. They did not prosper and their marriage underwent considerable strain. The house was damaged by the first bomb to fall on Brighton in WWII. In his bath at the time, Lindsay never recovered from the shock. His death from infection caused by a tooth abscess was unrelated to the bomb.
A Voyage to Arcturus has been described as the major underground novel of the 20th century. The secret of Lindsay's apparent strangeness lies in his metaphysical assumptions. A gnostic, he viewed the "real" world as an illusion which must be rejected in order to perceive genuine truth. In The Haunted Woman, the two main characters discover a room which exists only some of the time. Together there they see more clearly and express themselves honestly. In The Violet Apple, the fruit is that eaten by Adam and Eve. The description of its effects is a startling, lyrical episode in a novel otherwise concerned with ordinary matters.
Lindsay's austere vision of reality may have been influenced by Scandinavian mythology. After being out of print for decades, his work has become increasingly available. He is now seen as being a major Scottish fantasist of the 20th century, the missing link between George Macdonald and modern writers such as Alasdair Gray who have also used surrealism and magic realism.
Arcturus was produced as a 35mm feature film by William J. Holloway in 1971. It was the first film funded by a National Endowment for the Arts and has recently been re-released.
Harold Bloom has also been interested, even obsessed, with Lindsay's life and career, going as far as to publish The Flight to Lucifer, which he thought of as a Bloomian misprision, an homage and deep revision of Arcturus,/i>. Bloom admits his late-comer imitation is overwhelmed by Lindsay's great original.
Bibliography:
A Voyage to Arcturus, 1920
The Haunted Woman, 1922
Sphinx, 1923
The Adventures of Monsieur de Mailly, 1926
Devil's Tor, 1932
The Violet Apple & The Witch, 1976
A Christmas Play, 2003
Further reading:
The Strange Genius of David Lindsay: An Appreciation by J. B. Pick, E. H. Visiak & Colin Wilson, 1970
The Life & Works of David Lindsay by Bernard Sellin, 1983
David Lindsay's Vision by David Power, 2005
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 43 reviews
October 28, 2012
Victorian-era romance—stiff-mannerisms and lacquered morality and formalized discourse—curiously carried through to Home County life in post-Great War England; yet, this being a book by Lindsay, endowed with an intriguing blend of supernatural-cum-psychological excavation, spiritual mining, and fugal gnosticism, all overlain with a spectral creepiness and otherworldly texture. It's hardly going to keep me lying awake at night lost in thought or nervously eying the shadows—but it proved enjoyable throughout, at times exquisitely so, while measuredly heightening the suspense and deepening the mystery with every page moved closer to the denouement.
October 8, 2014
The Haunted Woman is in essence a classic haunted house tale. An engaged couple, along with an aunt, hear of a house to let and so visit it to test its suitability. The house has a strange, locked room; a strange music is heard; a stairway appears in a wall, and a room at the top leads into three other rooms, each of which has an uncanny atmosphere; a marvelous landscape is seen out the window of one of these rooms; one's true nature blossoms while in the rooms at the top of the stairs, but all memory of visiting the room vanishes upon descending the stairs. The handling of the marvelous, and especially the nature of this forgetting could not have been handled any better by Lindsay, and is the reason for plodding through accounts of picnics and social dynamics; which in this case is actually minimal compared to his later book (which I am now rereading), The Violet Apple.
Given that one variety or another of spiritual torture - where characters slip into higher realms from difficult mundanity, only to discover that further even more difficult tortures await them there - is at the root of David Lindsay's metaphysical vision, it is entirely appropriate that reading his books can be torturous. His writing his stiff and awkward. Clunky sums it up. But within this clunkiness is an intensely passionate striving to express what perhaps cannot be expressed. It is as if his writing itself embodies this tortured striving, almost against its own best interests, but continues undeterred, pushing on into realms beyond words, attempting to make them intelligible, while seeming to be trying to transport himself into these realms. This cannot help but intensify the impact of his books on the receptive reader. And only receptive readers can have a full appreciation of Lindsay, as his vision, like so many visions that extend far beyond the pale, can only begin to be understood by readers who have within them some corresponding vision of their own. The reader must be a ready receptacle willing to receive. It is this correspondence, this incipient resonance, that encourages the reader to work through not only Lindsay's clunky language, but his clunky characters too. All of these surface faults, however, can also - again to the receptive reader - add a further level of significance, as the act of reading itself becomes this difficult striving toward other meanings we are sure must be hidden within the tortured surface of our reading experience.
This is not meant to be an apology for Lindsay's style, as just as in the painter Henri Rousseau, say, the "amateurism" of the execution only validates the vision, making it that much more authentic and affecting. I would not want Lindsay to write any other way.
The Haunted Woman is one of his attempts to straitjacket his cosmic vision into a conventional novel, and of course he fails in the common regard, as his characters are like pasteboard Victorians walking with unbent knees and talking with wooden lips through an anachronistic story of manners. But miraculously his vision shines through, which I attribute to this pushing toward realization I mentioned above, and also to the writing's unexpected felicity when the realization comes. Lindsay was a man divided, just as his world was. When writing of social dynamics, which is vital to his ultimate design, he is awkward and constrained; but when writing of the "other world" his writing can become graceful, as if some inner shackles fell from his writing mind. This shuttling back and forth between these two realms is the source of his power; imprisonment/freedom running not only through the themes but through the text itself.
But while this freedom brings exhilaration, it also brings with it psychic torture as hand in hand with the realization of a larger, freer world comes the realization of the impossibility of reconciling it with the cramped limitations of the mundane world his characters must continue to live in. To actually move completely into freedom is to die, though what comes then is left as a mystery...
Given that one variety or another of spiritual torture - where characters slip into higher realms from difficult mundanity, only to discover that further even more difficult tortures await them there - is at the root of David Lindsay's metaphysical vision, it is entirely appropriate that reading his books can be torturous. His writing his stiff and awkward. Clunky sums it up. But within this clunkiness is an intensely passionate striving to express what perhaps cannot be expressed. It is as if his writing itself embodies this tortured striving, almost against its own best interests, but continues undeterred, pushing on into realms beyond words, attempting to make them intelligible, while seeming to be trying to transport himself into these realms. This cannot help but intensify the impact of his books on the receptive reader. And only receptive readers can have a full appreciation of Lindsay, as his vision, like so many visions that extend far beyond the pale, can only begin to be understood by readers who have within them some corresponding vision of their own. The reader must be a ready receptacle willing to receive. It is this correspondence, this incipient resonance, that encourages the reader to work through not only Lindsay's clunky language, but his clunky characters too. All of these surface faults, however, can also - again to the receptive reader - add a further level of significance, as the act of reading itself becomes this difficult striving toward other meanings we are sure must be hidden within the tortured surface of our reading experience.
This is not meant to be an apology for Lindsay's style, as just as in the painter Henri Rousseau, say, the "amateurism" of the execution only validates the vision, making it that much more authentic and affecting. I would not want Lindsay to write any other way.
The Haunted Woman is one of his attempts to straitjacket his cosmic vision into a conventional novel, and of course he fails in the common regard, as his characters are like pasteboard Victorians walking with unbent knees and talking with wooden lips through an anachronistic story of manners. But miraculously his vision shines through, which I attribute to this pushing toward realization I mentioned above, and also to the writing's unexpected felicity when the realization comes. Lindsay was a man divided, just as his world was. When writing of social dynamics, which is vital to his ultimate design, he is awkward and constrained; but when writing of the "other world" his writing can become graceful, as if some inner shackles fell from his writing mind. This shuttling back and forth between these two realms is the source of his power; imprisonment/freedom running not only through the themes but through the text itself.
But while this freedom brings exhilaration, it also brings with it psychic torture as hand in hand with the realization of a larger, freer world comes the realization of the impossibility of reconciling it with the cramped limitations of the mundane world his characters must continue to live in. To actually move completely into freedom is to die, though what comes then is left as a mystery...
August 6, 2011
The Haunted Woman, like Lindsay's previous Voyage to Arcturus, is a haunting novel which, like its predecessor, has to read more than once.
I have included a plot summary in the book's description field. It sounds rather pedestrian and boring and, indeed, the characters in the book are both pedestrian and boring--as, sadly, is Lindsay's writing style when describing the quotidian world.
But, but there is nothing ordinary or boring about what Lindsay is trying to write about here and elsewhere, even though the matter is allusive, his approach only capable of being suggestive.
Several commentators have called Lindsay a gnostic. He is in the sense of conveying the conviction that this, the world of our daily affairs and conventional relationships that we think of as real and the commonsense behind such beliefs is fundamentally flawed, radically false.
Having been to other worlds which certainly seem much more real, much more substantial and much more meaningful than this, I cannot, in my heart, but agree. Whether there is some deep ontological gulf between the true, rarely glimpsed by most, and the false worlds or whether (as Abraham Maslow or Colin Wilson would argue) it is rather a matter of states of mind, of relatively true and of relatively false consciousness, is arguable. My head says the latter, but I know this does not do full justice to the existential difference.
Lindsay writes to the heart, not the head. It is most unfortunate that this, his essential insight into the gnostic truth was so caught up with some of the occultist nonsense of his generation, with Aryan race theories and the like as are evinced in his The Devil's Tor.
I have included a plot summary in the book's description field. It sounds rather pedestrian and boring and, indeed, the characters in the book are both pedestrian and boring--as, sadly, is Lindsay's writing style when describing the quotidian world.
But, but there is nothing ordinary or boring about what Lindsay is trying to write about here and elsewhere, even though the matter is allusive, his approach only capable of being suggestive.
Several commentators have called Lindsay a gnostic. He is in the sense of conveying the conviction that this, the world of our daily affairs and conventional relationships that we think of as real and the commonsense behind such beliefs is fundamentally flawed, radically false.
Having been to other worlds which certainly seem much more real, much more substantial and much more meaningful than this, I cannot, in my heart, but agree. Whether there is some deep ontological gulf between the true, rarely glimpsed by most, and the false worlds or whether (as Abraham Maslow or Colin Wilson would argue) it is rather a matter of states of mind, of relatively true and of relatively false consciousness, is arguable. My head says the latter, but I know this does not do full justice to the existential difference.
Lindsay writes to the heart, not the head. It is most unfortunate that this, his essential insight into the gnostic truth was so caught up with some of the occultist nonsense of his generation, with Aryan race theories and the like as are evinced in his The Devil's Tor.
July 15, 2018
If David Lindsay uses his pen clumsily at times (and he does) it's because he would have rather been carving runes on stone, or incising characters of some more esoteric alphabet in a stranger medium. He's not really out to produce an entertaining novel, in other words, but to give the reader a window (at times, 'a magic casement, opening on the foam Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn') into his tortured spiritual philosophy.
Unlike his Voyage to Arcturus, where Lindsay serves up allegory on steroids, the vision in A Haunted Woman is relatively unforced and straightforward. An old English house with a tower from pre-Christian times called 'The Elf's Tower' hides a mysterious staircase that appears to some people but not others. Those who see it can climb to another level, outside of time, where they become the people they might have been if their real natures held sway. But when they descend the staircase again, they forget everything they experienced in the upper story.
It's a pleasing and apt metaphor for the interaction of the spiritual world with everyday life. Lindsay's characters, when they are 'downstairs', are not very interesting--but that's part of the point. Anyone who knows Lindsay will not be surprised to find those same people, 'upstairs', falling prey to unfulfillable longings, passion, and spiritual torment. I really don't share Lindsay's ultimate vision of the universe, which seems Gnostic or even Manichean--but his own passion is enough to make the reader suspend both disbelief and disagreement, and enjoy the ride.
Unlike his Voyage to Arcturus, where Lindsay serves up allegory on steroids, the vision in A Haunted Woman is relatively unforced and straightforward. An old English house with a tower from pre-Christian times called 'The Elf's Tower' hides a mysterious staircase that appears to some people but not others. Those who see it can climb to another level, outside of time, where they become the people they might have been if their real natures held sway. But when they descend the staircase again, they forget everything they experienced in the upper story.
It's a pleasing and apt metaphor for the interaction of the spiritual world with everyday life. Lindsay's characters, when they are 'downstairs', are not very interesting--but that's part of the point. Anyone who knows Lindsay will not be surprised to find those same people, 'upstairs', falling prey to unfulfillable longings, passion, and spiritual torment. I really don't share Lindsay's ultimate vision of the universe, which seems Gnostic or even Manichean--but his own passion is enough to make the reader suspend both disbelief and disagreement, and enjoy the ride.
January 27, 2022
Bu kitap için karmaşık duygular içindeyim. Okuması oldukça keyifli, sürükleyici, akıcı ve gizem dolu bir kitap olduğunu söyleyebilirim. Çevirisi de can sıkmıyor. Kitap aslında lanetli bir kadın değil lanetli bir ev hakkında. Bu yazdığım sürpriz sürprizbozan olarak algılanmasın. Kitap adında Lanetli geçince kitap korku türünde olarak düşünülebilir lakin yer yer ürküten anlar olsa da kitap daha çok karanlık fantezi türünde diyebilirim. Kitapta bir bölüm var ki insana dehşetli bir huzur veriyor. O bahçenin tasviri beni mest etti. Kitabı okuyanlar veya okuyacak olanlar dediğim yere gelince bana hak vereceklerdir.
Kitapta benim kusur olarak gördüğüm tek şey sonunun çabucak bağlanması ve bazı soruların cevapsız kalmasıydı. Böyle söyleyince kitabın sonu havada kalıyor gibi düşünmeyin. Kitap bir sonuca ulaşıyor lakin bazı sorular havada kalıyor.
Kitapta benim kusur olarak gördüğüm tek şey sonunun çabucak bağlanması ve bazı soruların cevapsız kalmasıydı. Böyle söyleyince kitabın sonu havada kalıyor gibi düşünmeyin. Kitap bir sonuca ulaşıyor lakin bazı sorular havada kalıyor.
April 17, 2012
"The Haunted Woman" is a much more worldly novel than "A Voyage to Arcturus" in every sense, and definitely caters very much to its contemporary early 1920s audience. I don't think this automatically makes it a lesser work, but it's clear that Lindsay probably wanted to sell more copies of this one, and for all I know he might have succeeded in doing so at the time, even though if he's remembered at all today it's for "Arcturus" only. The novel revolves around Isbel Loment, a woman in her early twenties who seems to live a comfortable, but perhaps rather empty, life with her aunt as they trek around Europe setting up quarters in prestigious hotels. At the outset we are told that she has recently been betrothed to the banker Marshal Stokes, a solid man with a good reputation and business backbone. She seems happy enough with the arrangement, and Marshall and the other boons in her life all endeavour to spoil her more than a little, which Lindsay observes with some subtlety, all the while making Isbel quite a likeable character. Marshal is acting as the aunt's agent in procuring a property, and there happens to be a rambling, country estate called Runhill Court that is about to be sold by its recently widowed owner. The master of Runhill Court is Mr. Judge, a middle-aged gentleman who seems to have a way with younger women, given his marriage propensities (there's a hint, I think, that his now-deceased wife was not his first marriage) and who tells Marshal that the house has a secret: a room that only certain people can see and which only manifests some of the time. Of course, Marshal thinks he's crazy, but when isbel first sees the house, she immediately becomes receptive to its strange emanations. Headaches, premonitions, and a staircase that seems to climb to an invisible tower which she can see when she is alone. It transpires that the old servant knows more about the house's history than its owner, and there is a legend surrounding the stout Saxon who built the original structure and how he was "made off with" by trolls after building a tower and carving certain powerful runes upon its walls. Isbel finds the secret chambers (there are actually three), and over a period of many days keeps finding reasons to visit the house, until she encounters Judge in the second room and something unexpectedly passionate kindles between the two. There's something else strange, though: Those who go up into the hermetic rooms cannot remember anything that happened there once they descend.
This really is Isbel's tale, and though she has her faults and hang-ups, which are in many ways typical of her time and class, I would think, Lindsay makes her into one of his "special" creations, possessing of a certain longing and passion for things that exist beyond the known and expected. All through the book there's so much tantalising suggestion that this electric, indefinable something that goes beyond the pleasures of the everyday and mundane is lurking so near, just beneath the surface, perhaps in a mirror, for Isbel (and by extension, the reader) to grasp and hold if they could but strive a little. The tale seems to ultimately tell of Isbel's downfall as she is swept into something that is literally a passion of the moment which will be forgotten as a foot treads on a stair, yet though the memory of events may be erased by time or supernatural means, their sense will always remain; the "damage" is done whether the mind records the events or loses them, leaving two almost-lovers in a state of confused bewilderment. There are physical sides to this as well, events which compromise Isbel to a degree that she clearly sees will destroy her in the eyes of not only her fiancé, but her friends and relations as well. I found myself occasionally irritated because Isbel seemed so concerned with reputation, with place and position, almost to the point of paranoia at times, but really, it's 1921 or so and what's a well-to-do English lady supposed to do? Let herself gain the notoriety of being a tramp and be ostracised by everyone in her "circle"?
And, even though I mentioned "downfall" earlier, this is a David Lindsay novel, and while in the end Isbel seems to lose everything that mattered, there's more than a hint of some of the threads that I think ran through "A Voyage to Arcturus": That a person grows "real" by their experience of suffering and pain, and that Isbel blossomed by the finding of this secret passion: The severing of her loved one, the impossibility of what she would have given Judge and pledged to give him in the secret room created the sense of spiritual longing and aching, terrible beauty and loss that isn't so far removed from the hunger shown by Nightspore as he searches for Muspelfire, or the brief flairing of love Maskull experiences with the woman of Ifdawn, a woman who only exists for six hours and only exists because of him, a woman that is so perfect for him and yet he cannot have her, because he has a greater quest. "The Haunted Woman" ends rather suddenly and there's no telling really whether Isbel is stronger or "better" for having found and lost something wonderful, but the feeling that she receives upon her first visit to the hidden chambers, when she gazes into a mirror in the first room, seems realised:
"Abstractedly she walked over to the mirror to adjust her hat...Either the glass was flattering her, or something had happened to make her look different;
she was quite startled by her image. It was not so much that she appeared more beautiful as that her face had acquired another character. Its expression
was deep, stern, lowering, yet everything was softened and made alluring by the pervading presence of sexual sweetness. The face struck a note of deep,
underlying passion, but a passion which was still asleep...It thrilled and excited her, it was even a little awful to think that this was herself, and
still she knew that it was true. She really possessed this tragic nature. She was not like other girls--other English girls. Her soul did not swim on the
surface, but groped its way blindly miles underneath the water...But how did the glass come to reflect this secret? And what was the meaning of this look
of enchanting sexuality, which nearly tormented herself?...
She spent a long time gazing at the image, but without either changing the position of her head, or moving a muscle of her countenance. Petty, womanish
vanity had no share in her scrutiny. She did not wish to admire, she wished to understand herself. It seemed to her that no woman possessing such a strong,
terrible sweetness and intensity of character could avoid accepting an uncommon, and possibly fearful, destiny. A flood of the strangest emotions slowly
rose to her head..."
A much quieter and less-layered novel than "A Voyage to Arcturus", perhaps, something to be read and absorbed like a piece of music (and music figures prominently in this book), and not endlessly discussed and interpreted as can be done with his debut. I found quite a few haunting passages here like the one I quoted above, and some of Lindsay's startling observations about personality and sexuality are definitely here, often hinted at rather than thrown at the reader's face. There's no mad throbbing sex scene carried on in the confines of the hidden part of the house; there are only gestures, tremblings, words and the faintest of touchings .. and while modern weaders might find this cute and sweet or some such thing, the reality is that it's painful and "drawing", and this is exactly what Lindsay was going for, so while it wouldn't have upset many of his readers' sensibilities (well, she does cast her engagement ring out a window, and figuratively throws herself at Judge's feet) there's definitely a sort of double-entendre to the sexual tension that's suggested. And no, none of the other characters are really important at all .. even Mr. Judge is mostly an accessory to Isbel's tale, and though he has a noble baring and grave charm he ultimately seems a little soft and inconsequential, and, just possibly, up to something seedy. I admit that I don't quite understand what happened at the end (or rather, why it happened), but the ambiguous nature makes conjecture most pleasing.
This really is Isbel's tale, and though she has her faults and hang-ups, which are in many ways typical of her time and class, I would think, Lindsay makes her into one of his "special" creations, possessing of a certain longing and passion for things that exist beyond the known and expected. All through the book there's so much tantalising suggestion that this electric, indefinable something that goes beyond the pleasures of the everyday and mundane is lurking so near, just beneath the surface, perhaps in a mirror, for Isbel (and by extension, the reader) to grasp and hold if they could but strive a little. The tale seems to ultimately tell of Isbel's downfall as she is swept into something that is literally a passion of the moment which will be forgotten as a foot treads on a stair, yet though the memory of events may be erased by time or supernatural means, their sense will always remain; the "damage" is done whether the mind records the events or loses them, leaving two almost-lovers in a state of confused bewilderment. There are physical sides to this as well, events which compromise Isbel to a degree that she clearly sees will destroy her in the eyes of not only her fiancé, but her friends and relations as well. I found myself occasionally irritated because Isbel seemed so concerned with reputation, with place and position, almost to the point of paranoia at times, but really, it's 1921 or so and what's a well-to-do English lady supposed to do? Let herself gain the notoriety of being a tramp and be ostracised by everyone in her "circle"?
And, even though I mentioned "downfall" earlier, this is a David Lindsay novel, and while in the end Isbel seems to lose everything that mattered, there's more than a hint of some of the threads that I think ran through "A Voyage to Arcturus": That a person grows "real" by their experience of suffering and pain, and that Isbel blossomed by the finding of this secret passion: The severing of her loved one, the impossibility of what she would have given Judge and pledged to give him in the secret room created the sense of spiritual longing and aching, terrible beauty and loss that isn't so far removed from the hunger shown by Nightspore as he searches for Muspelfire, or the brief flairing of love Maskull experiences with the woman of Ifdawn, a woman who only exists for six hours and only exists because of him, a woman that is so perfect for him and yet he cannot have her, because he has a greater quest. "The Haunted Woman" ends rather suddenly and there's no telling really whether Isbel is stronger or "better" for having found and lost something wonderful, but the feeling that she receives upon her first visit to the hidden chambers, when she gazes into a mirror in the first room, seems realised:
"Abstractedly she walked over to the mirror to adjust her hat...Either the glass was flattering her, or something had happened to make her look different;
she was quite startled by her image. It was not so much that she appeared more beautiful as that her face had acquired another character. Its expression
was deep, stern, lowering, yet everything was softened and made alluring by the pervading presence of sexual sweetness. The face struck a note of deep,
underlying passion, but a passion which was still asleep...It thrilled and excited her, it was even a little awful to think that this was herself, and
still she knew that it was true. She really possessed this tragic nature. She was not like other girls--other English girls. Her soul did not swim on the
surface, but groped its way blindly miles underneath the water...But how did the glass come to reflect this secret? And what was the meaning of this look
of enchanting sexuality, which nearly tormented herself?...
She spent a long time gazing at the image, but without either changing the position of her head, or moving a muscle of her countenance. Petty, womanish
vanity had no share in her scrutiny. She did not wish to admire, she wished to understand herself. It seemed to her that no woman possessing such a strong,
terrible sweetness and intensity of character could avoid accepting an uncommon, and possibly fearful, destiny. A flood of the strangest emotions slowly
rose to her head..."
A much quieter and less-layered novel than "A Voyage to Arcturus", perhaps, something to be read and absorbed like a piece of music (and music figures prominently in this book), and not endlessly discussed and interpreted as can be done with his debut. I found quite a few haunting passages here like the one I quoted above, and some of Lindsay's startling observations about personality and sexuality are definitely here, often hinted at rather than thrown at the reader's face. There's no mad throbbing sex scene carried on in the confines of the hidden part of the house; there are only gestures, tremblings, words and the faintest of touchings .. and while modern weaders might find this cute and sweet or some such thing, the reality is that it's painful and "drawing", and this is exactly what Lindsay was going for, so while it wouldn't have upset many of his readers' sensibilities (well, she does cast her engagement ring out a window, and figuratively throws herself at Judge's feet) there's definitely a sort of double-entendre to the sexual tension that's suggested. And no, none of the other characters are really important at all .. even Mr. Judge is mostly an accessory to Isbel's tale, and though he has a noble baring and grave charm he ultimately seems a little soft and inconsequential, and, just possibly, up to something seedy. I admit that I don't quite understand what happened at the end (or rather, why it happened), but the ambiguous nature makes conjecture most pleasing.
June 21, 2019
First of all, if you have yet to read A Voyage to Arcturus, you need to. Not necessarily before this one, but at some point in your life. I feel about that book how I feel about hallucinogens: the world would be a better place if everyone did it at least once.
This book has a similar enchanting quality, not as mind-blowing owing purely to the more mundane subject matter, but just as singular and absorbing. Much better written as well.
An estate was built atop a Saxon holy site which may or may not have belonged to goblins or elves, and which manifests in a magic staircase which leads to the original, long-destroyed wing of the building, a staircase that only appears to those noble enough of spirit. It's a fairly original idea in itself, and Lindsay's execution does it justice, all with the backdrop of a betrothed woman having second thoughts about her life choices.
If I have a complaint, it's only that some of the threads aren't resolved completely enough for my taste. I would have liked more explanation of the deaths that occur, and also of the mysterious figure that appeared in the "dream" world. It's a small complaint though. The whole book is magical -- in the two of his books I've read, Lindsay has shown himself to be a master enchanter, creating an atmosphere that is as difficult to describe as it is to forget.
I read a pdf for free but I'm definitely going to hunt down a copy to keep. I'm also going to be checking out every other Lindsay novel I can find. Highly recommend.
Not Bad Reviews
@pointblaek
This book has a similar enchanting quality, not as mind-blowing owing purely to the more mundane subject matter, but just as singular and absorbing. Much better written as well.
An estate was built atop a Saxon holy site which may or may not have belonged to goblins or elves, and which manifests in a magic staircase which leads to the original, long-destroyed wing of the building, a staircase that only appears to those noble enough of spirit. It's a fairly original idea in itself, and Lindsay's execution does it justice, all with the backdrop of a betrothed woman having second thoughts about her life choices.
If I have a complaint, it's only that some of the threads aren't resolved completely enough for my taste. I would have liked more explanation of the deaths that occur, and also of the mysterious figure that appeared in the "dream" world. It's a small complaint though. The whole book is magical -- in the two of his books I've read, Lindsay has shown himself to be a master enchanter, creating an atmosphere that is as difficult to describe as it is to forget.
I read a pdf for free but I'm definitely going to hunt down a copy to keep. I'm also going to be checking out every other Lindsay novel I can find. Highly recommend.
Not Bad Reviews
@pointblaek
May 26, 2023
Doğaüstü gizem ile aşk hikâyesinin bu ilginç karışımının bazı yerlerde sıkıcı olduğunu kabul ediyorum, ama şu fantastik mimari fikri o kadar hoşuma gitti ki, romanın kusurlarını görmezden gelebilirim. Aslında sıradan bir hayalet romanı değil bu; cinsel gerilim / bastırma gibi açılardan okunabilecek bir metin. İşte bu yüzden, adı "The Haunted House" değil, "The Haunted Woman".
Çevirinin "eksiksiz yapıldığı" kısımlarda akıcı ve hatasız gittiğini söyleyebilirim. Fakat çevirinin eksik bırakıldığı kısımlar da var: Diyaloglardaki 3-4 cümlenin ve bölüm başlıklarından birindeki bir kelimenin çevrilmesi unutulmuş veya baskı hatasına kurban gitmiş. Ben bunu kendi mantığımla buldum; belki benim fark etmediğim aksaklıklar da vardır. Yazık, o kadar güzel kapak resmi tasarlatmışken, böyle özensiz son okuma mı olur?
Çevirinin "eksiksiz yapıldığı" kısımlarda akıcı ve hatasız gittiğini söyleyebilirim. Fakat çevirinin eksik bırakıldığı kısımlar da var: Diyaloglardaki 3-4 cümlenin ve bölüm başlıklarından birindeki bir kelimenin çevrilmesi unutulmuş veya baskı hatasına kurban gitmiş. Ben bunu kendi mantığımla buldum; belki benim fark etmediğim aksaklıklar da vardır. Yazık, o kadar güzel kapak resmi tasarlatmışken, böyle özensiz son okuma mı olur?
July 21, 2016
This novel, like Lindsay's first, The Voyage to Arcturis, is essentially allegorical, though set in modern-day England (circa 1920s), with more fleshed-out, interesting characters, who are forced to explore the question: how is one to take the sense that life is filled with significance? Is the sometimes overpowering beauty of nature, art and human relationships simply a subjective phenomenon produced automatically by our sensory interactions? Or does it betoken a transcendent reality which we could, or will be someday, more a part of? The realism makes it a bit dull at the beginning, but when the subject matter -- the dual nature of reality -- kicks in, it becomes fascinating.
April 3, 2021
I would be inclined to give this 4.5 stars because it didn't quite stick the landing, but it is still worth a look, especially for those of you who are fascinated by ghost stories and weird fiction. Published at the exact moment when new and exciting modernist texts such as Ulysses were exploding onto the scene, it combines pagan elements that reminded me of Arthur Machen with elements of the ghost story, a razor sharp narrative voice, and a fascinating exploration of psychosexual dynamics that also had me thinking about Iris Murdoch's early fiction ~35 years later. I'm glad I discovered this (and the Newcastle Forgotten Fantasy Classics) while doing some work on H. Rider Haggard. Certainly a book that would be a great addition to a syllabus on decadent modernism (or modernist decadence). Check it out, folks!
March 5, 2024
An excellent slow burn ghost story, not surprisingly as Lindsay is the author of "Voyage to Arcturus" this had an element of psychedelic sci-fi that enlivened it quite a bit. At first, there's an almost mellow romanticism to the plot but then there's several satisfying jolts towards the end which made it one of the better ghost stories I've read and thankfully the central mystery is never fully explicated.
The one downside although I found it kind of charming is the book is very talky in a victorian way but also has a lot of funny dialogue that sounds very proto-freudian about "the hidden savagery of women" and that sort of nonsense which I found amusingly quaint but also kind of irritating.
The one downside although I found it kind of charming is the book is very talky in a victorian way but also has a lot of funny dialogue that sounds very proto-freudian about "the hidden savagery of women" and that sort of nonsense which I found amusingly quaint but also kind of irritating.
January 15, 2026
Not quite as 'out there' as the other Lindsay novel I have read, Voyage To Arcturus, then again I don't think anything is :). Voyage to Arcturus blazed a trail that no one followed. The Haunted Woman is much more restrained and straightforward, but still quite good in its own way. The scenes outside the House can drag a little bit, especially at the beginning, but the scenes inside the House and especially up the staircase are wonderfully eerie and uncanny.
Although it is not without its faults, I did enjoy it.
Although it is not without its faults, I did enjoy it.
November 4, 2019
This was a delightfully bizarre book. Part ghost story, part portal fantasy. Not for everyone, but it was for me.
May 18, 2019
A haunted woman would be incomplete without a haunted house and this one is called Runhill Court. Dating from around the sixth century it was called Rune-Hill after the saxon "runes" which were engraved letters to keep off trolls. Lindsay shows a refreshing minimalism in number of main characters with Isbel Loment and her aunt Mrs Moor who have been hotel hopping rounded out by her fiancé Marshall Stokes and the owner of Runhill Court Henry Judge along with a scheming widow Mrs Richborough. The house features a staircase that appears and disappears leading to long gone rooms that seem to exist now in another dimension. The missing rooms and the original house were built by a man named Ulf. "When Ulf built his house, Miss Loment, it was on haunted land. Run Hill was a waste elevation, inhabited by trolls--which, I figure, were a variety of malevolent land-sprites. Ulf didn't care, though he _was_ a pagan. He built his house. I gather he was a tough fellow, away above the superstitions of his time and country. And--well, one day Ulf disappears and a part of his house with him. Some of the top rooms of the Tower were clean carried off by the trolls; it happened to be the east end of the house, the nearest to their happy hunting-grounds. That was the very last that was heard of Ulf, but all through the centuries folks have been jumping up to announce that they've caught sight of the lost rooms...That's the fable." For the ones who can see the appearing staircase, for not all are so sighted, ascending the stairs leads to rooms in which you can visualize your true self, the true self of others, and peer into the world of the sublime a springtime world where Ulf or some agent of the numinous and sublime plays a fiddle like instrument that beckons the hearers to a real life that has all but been smothered in our modern day world of sham and pretense. This is certainly a mysterious novel which is the least you can say about a narrative that at one point has a ghost riding in a car but this is not a ghostly depiction of the sublime world by Lindsay as he said in some philosophical notes of his "The sublime world must not be imagined as thin, incorporeal, and grey -- a land of ghosts and phantoms, but as far more real and solid than this coloured, cubic, and heavy world of ours." One thing Lindsay's "The Haunted Woman" makes certain -- Not all can look on the face of the sublime and live and none can remain unchanged.
April 23, 2023
Suppose a cosmic accident crossed House of Leaves with The Sun Also Rises or The Great Gatsby.
The soon-to-be married Isbel visits a house that her aunt might want to purchase, finds a secret room, and has a spiritual experience that she can’t remember afterwards. And yet it changes her life.
From that moment onward, she’s like, “Right. Who do I have to f—- to see God again?”, and promptly embarks on a campaign to manipulate her aunt into buying the house, and its widowed owner, Judge, into selling it. This involves flirtation.
On her second visit to magic room Judge is also there, and a secret connection is formed between them — secret even from themselves, for as they descend the staircase, they forget everything — and from that point on the room becomes a metaphor for forbidden intimacy forged along some unconscious sexual-spiritual axis:
“Each day she found it harder to keep away from him. It was not his person, it was not his intellect, it was not his character; it could not be compatibility…
Then what was it? What was this subtle attraction which was proving so increasingly overwhelming? Was it that, underneath person, intellect, character, there was something else — something which never came to the surface, but disclosed itself only to the something else in her? And was all love of this nature, or was [theirs] exceptional?”
This novel holds clues for interpreting A Voyage to Arcturus (which is orders of magnitude more strange and challenging).
Everyone picks on the writing for being “bad” but my only complaint is that, while the mundane parts of the story are often quite funny, I couldn’t always tell whether they were funny on purpose or by accident. We are treated to descriptions like this one:
“Isbel, rather reluctantly, took the opportunity to of bringing her correspondence up to date — a task she cordially detested. Half a dozen laconic epistles, sealed and addressed in her large, sprawling handwriting, already lay piled on the table…”
Evidently our spiritual heroine has the handwriting of a 10-year-old.
As for the ending… well, it definitely surprised me. I’ll just leave it at that!
The soon-to-be married Isbel visits a house that her aunt might want to purchase, finds a secret room, and has a spiritual experience that she can’t remember afterwards. And yet it changes her life.
From that moment onward, she’s like, “Right. Who do I have to f—- to see God again?”, and promptly embarks on a campaign to manipulate her aunt into buying the house, and its widowed owner, Judge, into selling it. This involves flirtation.
On her second visit to magic room Judge is also there, and a secret connection is formed between them — secret even from themselves, for as they descend the staircase, they forget everything — and from that point on the room becomes a metaphor for forbidden intimacy forged along some unconscious sexual-spiritual axis:
“Each day she found it harder to keep away from him. It was not his person, it was not his intellect, it was not his character; it could not be compatibility…
Then what was it? What was this subtle attraction which was proving so increasingly overwhelming? Was it that, underneath person, intellect, character, there was something else — something which never came to the surface, but disclosed itself only to the something else in her? And was all love of this nature, or was [theirs] exceptional?”
This novel holds clues for interpreting A Voyage to Arcturus (which is orders of magnitude more strange and challenging).
Everyone picks on the writing for being “bad” but my only complaint is that, while the mundane parts of the story are often quite funny, I couldn’t always tell whether they were funny on purpose or by accident. We are treated to descriptions like this one:
“Isbel, rather reluctantly, took the opportunity to of bringing her correspondence up to date — a task she cordially detested. Half a dozen laconic epistles, sealed and addressed in her large, sprawling handwriting, already lay piled on the table…”
Evidently our spiritual heroine has the handwriting of a 10-year-old.
As for the ending… well, it definitely surprised me. I’ll just leave it at that!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 1, 2023
Lindsay’s skill here is in creating a set of conventional and moral principles that lulls the reader into a false sense of security amid the mundane goings-on of Runhill Court, an old country house in the Downs.
Be assured, unpleasant and disturbing things will happen.
Isbel Loment has a boring husband, and in an effort to squeeze some fun from life takes off travelling with her aunt. Runhill takes her fancy, at first she declares that she hopes it is haunted, a statement which she goes on to regret.
She meets the owner, a strange man, with whom she forms a disconcerting relationship.
Isbel seems to have what we call now, dissociative identity disorder, but this was the 1920s. She behaves as if she is two different women, in two different wings of the house, and Lindsay presents the plot in that regard also, as if it is written by two different writers.
It’s a book with themes well ahead of its day in other regards also, a theme is whether the protagonists able to control their sexual urges, made even more difficult in that their encounters are forgotten about when they leave the hidden room in which they occur.
Though Lindsay overdoes the mundanity, there are passages that grip and disconcert. It’s a fascinating piece of literature for anyone who enjoys reading the vast genre of fantasy and haunted house stories that were to follow, for which it acts as a cornerstone.
Lindsay himself was born to a Scottish Calvinist family and grew up in the Borders. After serving in the First World War in the Grenadier Guards he began to write as a profession, but struggled to make much money. With his wife, he opened a boarding house in Brighton. The first bomb to fall on Brighton in the Second World War hit the house while Lindsay was in the bath. He never recovered from the shock, and died from a tooth abscess shortly afterwards.
Be assured, unpleasant and disturbing things will happen.
Isbel Loment has a boring husband, and in an effort to squeeze some fun from life takes off travelling with her aunt. Runhill takes her fancy, at first she declares that she hopes it is haunted, a statement which she goes on to regret.
She meets the owner, a strange man, with whom she forms a disconcerting relationship.
Isbel seems to have what we call now, dissociative identity disorder, but this was the 1920s. She behaves as if she is two different women, in two different wings of the house, and Lindsay presents the plot in that regard also, as if it is written by two different writers.
It’s a book with themes well ahead of its day in other regards also, a theme is whether the protagonists able to control their sexual urges, made even more difficult in that their encounters are forgotten about when they leave the hidden room in which they occur.
Though Lindsay overdoes the mundanity, there are passages that grip and disconcert. It’s a fascinating piece of literature for anyone who enjoys reading the vast genre of fantasy and haunted house stories that were to follow, for which it acts as a cornerstone.
Lindsay himself was born to a Scottish Calvinist family and grew up in the Borders. After serving in the First World War in the Grenadier Guards he began to write as a profession, but struggled to make much money. With his wife, he opened a boarding house in Brighton. The first bomb to fall on Brighton in the Second World War hit the house while Lindsay was in the bath. He never recovered from the shock, and died from a tooth abscess shortly afterwards.
January 31, 2021
(Read in the Gutenberg Australia transcription, which has a number of typos.)
A promising set-up (an old building has rooms that vanish early in its history) unfortunately became stodgy romance with characters that talk and talk and talk. (And talk and talk.) That "Ulf's Tower" becomes "elves' tower" to the locals over the centuries is a nice touch, but that's about it: we gots three rooms up a set of stairs that appear and disappear in a couple spots in an old house; and we gots two people who meet in two of those rooms, but daren't open the third because mysterious, I guess; and they talk and talk and talk; and when they do open the third room, we have one of those exasperating scenes you get in early-20th-century stories, where I suppose it's intended to be magical and filled with wonder, but it's actually tedious and just this side of twee. Then we get more talking and an ending that's convenient for a couple people in the book, but not so for a couple others. Bleh.
A promising set-up (an old building has rooms that vanish early in its history) unfortunately became stodgy romance with characters that talk and talk and talk. (And talk and talk.) That "Ulf's Tower" becomes "elves' tower" to the locals over the centuries is a nice touch, but that's about it: we gots three rooms up a set of stairs that appear and disappear in a couple spots in an old house; and we gots two people who meet in two of those rooms, but daren't open the third because mysterious, I guess; and they talk and talk and talk; and when they do open the third room, we have one of those exasperating scenes you get in early-20th-century stories, where I suppose it's intended to be magical and filled with wonder, but it's actually tedious and just this side of twee. Then we get more talking and an ending that's convenient for a couple people in the book, but not so for a couple others. Bleh.
November 29, 2021
Supernatural gothic story featuring characters whose actions make no sense. The main character demands complete transparency, no secrets, from her fiancee and immediately betrays him by keeping secrets. And the secrets kept make no sense to keep! What do you do when a set of stairs mysteriously appear. Of course, you investigate by yourself and tell noone, even when bizarre things happen. It's what any sensible character would do, eh? Of course, if everyone acted sensibly there'd be no story.
The story has a pleasant pace but also has ridiculous things like:
"If you have feelings which refer to me, they are my property, and I have a perfect right to know what they are."
Oh really? I don't think so.
Some will find mysticism or spirtuality to be at the base of the story with different planes of existence, and which is more 'real'. That didn't work for me.
A pleasant quick read that doesn't hold up to close scrutiny.
The story has a pleasant pace but also has ridiculous things like:
"If you have feelings which refer to me, they are my property, and I have a perfect right to know what they are."
Oh really? I don't think so.
Some will find mysticism or spirtuality to be at the base of the story with different planes of existence, and which is more 'real'. That didn't work for me.
A pleasant quick read that doesn't hold up to close scrutiny.
November 26, 2023
Maybe an extra 1/2 star for the occasional brooding sense of mood, but frankly the entire fantastic element is neither necessary to the story, nor well worked out. In essence, this is simply a tale of an engaged women who feels that she only finds her true self when she's with a different man, in this case within the safe haven of a magical suite of rooms atop disappearing stairs. But it could as easily have been a rented cottage by the sea where the illicit assignations took place, and the story would have been little different. As to the handling of that simple tale of secret love versus societal expectation, it is unfortunately neither convincing nor engaging, nor for that matter are any of the characters even particularly likeable. All in all, Lindsay himself accurately sums up the entire book when he says, "It savours more of melodrama."
At least it is not a lengthy commitment in the reading.
At least it is not a lengthy commitment in the reading.
July 5, 2024
[Canongate Classics] (1987). #9. PB. 193 Pages. Purchased from ‘Julies Bookshop’.
Introduced by J. B. Pick.
A well-written, strange and unsettling short allegorical novel.
I found myself yearning for misfortune to befall Isbel Loment - a vacuus, scheming, parasitic, spoilt, supercilious twit. Her infidelitous romantic machinations form a backbone to the exploration of central themes. They’re stilted and absurd - much undermining an otherwise fascinating premise involving duality, time displacements, revenants, internal schisms, memory discontinuity etc.
Introduced by J. B. Pick.
A well-written, strange and unsettling short allegorical novel.
I found myself yearning for misfortune to befall Isbel Loment - a vacuus, scheming, parasitic, spoilt, supercilious twit. Her infidelitous romantic machinations form a backbone to the exploration of central themes. They’re stilted and absurd - much undermining an otherwise fascinating premise involving duality, time displacements, revenants, internal schisms, memory discontinuity etc.
May 17, 2020
David Lindsay is such an interesting writer. His Voyage to Arcturus was admired by C.S. Lewis and Harold Bloom, the latter of whom even wrote a fiction homage to it. I listened to it a few years ago and found it fascinating and confusing. I really ought to re-read it, but I don't know if I ever will.
The Haunted Woman hit me even harder, maybe as a result of going in with an open mind, no expectations, and almost no knowledge about it. What is this book about? The differences between the sexes, romance vs. duty, the nature of the true self, the houses of the soul? I'm not sure. I would love to listen to smart people discussing it, but that seems woefully unlikely given how unknown Lindsay is these days. This is a short and energetic read, so let me encourage my friends to try it and then let me listen to them talking about it.
Now re-reading from chapter 14 on.
The Haunted Woman hit me even harder, maybe as a result of going in with an open mind, no expectations, and almost no knowledge about it. What is this book about? The differences between the sexes, romance vs. duty, the nature of the true self, the houses of the soul? I'm not sure. I would love to listen to smart people discussing it, but that seems woefully unlikely given how unknown Lindsay is these days. This is a short and energetic read, so let me encourage my friends to try it and then let me listen to them talking about it.
Now re-reading from chapter 14 on.
June 11, 2022
A most unusual story (a distant ancestor to House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski) in which a very old part of a old house seems to have rooms accessible by way of staircases that ascend and descend in different directions but end up in the same place -- sometimes. It's well written and is as much a story of unfulfilled love as a fantasy about the supernatural aspect of the house.
July 26, 2018
A wonderful, amazing, book. That in many ways reminded me in tone of House of Leaves. I wonder if this book was read by Mark Z. Danielewski. Still it was an enjoyable romp, that was beautifully written and was haunting and melancholy at the same time. This is a book worth checking out.
July 31, 2021
I liked the idea of the staircase that only a few people can find, leading to a region where a nobler version of yourself is free to emerge. The ending is enigmatic, with a feeling of opportunities missed.
August 4, 2017
Everything was great if you like chit chat about men and women being different.
The ending was great, I just didn't like the very ending, it left too many unanswered questions
The ending was great, I just didn't like the very ending, it left too many unanswered questions
December 30, 2019
Very curious little ghost novel, much atmosphere and poetry.
January 13, 2020
3 stars
June 17, 2020
It is uniquely descriptive.
January 17, 2023
I few very good story lines but the pattern to form the whole knitted sweater was disappointing. At its time it was surely a wondrous read but even then a Poe or Verne adventure is much better.
August 19, 2023
Slow build…not a lot happens, aside from lying in the grass or walking up stairs, but the way the tension is built & the McGuffin developed is top notch.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 43 reviews