A Haunting on the Hill

This authorized retelling of Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House (1959). A Haunting on the Hill (HOTH) by Elizabeth Hand is a startlingly contemporary and frighteningly vivid take on one of the most well-known haunted house novels of the twentieth century. The Haunting of Hill House (THOHH) begins " No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met nearly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone".

Hill House is still not sane.

Kirus Reviews summaries thus "Looking to escape New York City in the wake of the pandemic, Holly Sherwin and her partner, Nisa Macari, enjoy exploring charming “little towns long since colonized by self-styled artists and artisans.” Holly, once a promising playwright, is now teaching English at a private school but has recently won a grant to produce the witchy play that may just revive her career. When she stumbles upon a creepy old mansion on an isolated hill, she knows she’s found the perfect place to hole up with the small cast for two weeks of intensive rehearsals. Never mind that the owner is shady; never mind that the one neighbor threatens her with a knife as she drives by; never mind that the caretakers refuse to spend the night, ever, in the house—Holly knows it’s going to galvanize her cast into the performances of their lives. When they all gather for a run-through of the script, she can feel the magic, the electricity in the air. But maybe the house’s energy reflects more than the power of her words; there are also unexplained bloodstains on a tablecloth, an unearthly field of cold by the nursery, and mysterious voices at night. Not to mention the horrible black hares that keep popping up. Are they real or imaginary? Yes, and yes. While the novel doesn’t draw any kind of straight line between Jackson’s characters and Hand’s, other than some “echoing” voices on a recording, clearly this novel is shaped around Jackson’s legacy, not only in the setting, but also in the characters, specifically the relationship between Holly and Nisa. What she offers, then, is not merely retelling or update, but almost palimpsest".

I confess I had to go back a reread some of THOHH while reading HOTH to appreciate what an outstanding achievement Hand has in, as it describes on the front of the novel 'return to the world of Shirley Jackson' her propulsive writing style with a clever ability to immerse the reader in her worlds. The short chapters and intense scenes were genuinely chilling. With retellings, the original always casts a long shadow—especially with a book like this—but not only was this compulsively readable, but it felt unique and appealing as its own novel, which is a challenging balance to strike.

Holly is a playwright turned private school teacher who has refused to give up on her ambitions of writing a standout drama. After she receives a grant to develop Witching Night her latest play. I was entranced by the play within the story based on a feminist retelling of an old play in which a woman was accused of being a witch and consequently murdered for it, has a lot of potential. The novel is scattered with the songs composed and in the novel hauntingly sung by her partner Nisa a singer-songwriter who has been adapting classic murder ballads for the play.

The propelling force of this text is the horror elements, which were genuinely disturbing and frightening. A Haunting on the Hill is the perfect blend of horror and literary fiction without being overlong or drawn out. The characters—one of which is inevitably Hill House—were perfectly complicated and their shifting allegiances/motivations made the novel that much more interesting.