All I'd ever read of Shirley Jackson's, all I ever knew she'd written, is the oft-anthologized story, "The Lottery" which I can hardly bear to type, let alone re-read. Jackson ruined state-run gambling for me; I didn't want to hear the word "lottery" for a long time.
A colleague teaches Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House and recommended it. Originally published in 1959, this is a well written novel that I enjoyed--until I got creeped out. Good stuff.
Using many of the conventions of the haunted house story, Jackson starts off with an interesting, if slightly weird protagonist. Eleanor leads a stunted life: at thirty-two her only occupation has been caring for her ill mother. When the mother dies, she moves into the home of her sister, where she is relegated to a cot in the baby's room. When Eleanor is sought out by a Dr. Montague to participate in a "study" of a haunted house (due to a past experience with a poltergeist), it feels as though her destiny has finally arrived.
As one of a group of four, Eleanor goes through a number of changes upon her arrival and there are several "incidents" of a paranormal nature. I'll say no more about plot. Overall, I found this reminiscent of The Turn of the Screw in its atmospheric creepiness and the ambiguity of the situations. The claustrophobia and weirdness that Jackson evokes in her prose made me uneasy while reading. Is the house haunted, or is it the inhabitants? Is Eleanor the catalyst or merely more sensitive than others to psychic vibrations? Who, or what, exactly, is doing the haunting?
Just have to say, I am so with you on "The Lottery." I participated in a Junior Great Books program in 5th and 6th grade where we read all these disturbing stories like "The Veldt" and "All Summer in a Day" and "The Lottery," all of which totally traumatized me.
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