Publishers Weekly
10/16/2023
This riveting tale from Nebula Award winner Hand (Hokuloa Road) eerily, if sometimes unevenly, updates and riffs on Shirley Jackson’s classic ghost story The Haunting of Hill House. Twenty years ago, tragedy derailed Holly Sherwin’s burgeoning playwriting career, but she’s optimistic about the powerful new piece she’s drafted, so she rents the remote Hill House as a retreat and rehearsal space where she, her girlfriend, Nisa, and two others can prepare for its debut performance. Interpersonal conflicts and uncanny phenomena begin immediately, but the group insists on staying and completing the project. When a sudden storm threatens to further isolate them, they realize the old house is much more than a quirky relic of a bygone age. While the story takes its time getting underway, Hand demonstrates masterful control over the ebb and flow of tension once it does. Lush atmospheric details and sharply observed characterization abound, but occasionally overload the plot to the point that certain elements end up feeling extraneous or underutilized. Still, this chillingly mesmerizing narrative is a worthy addition to the haunted house canon. Agent: Danielle Bukowski, Sterling Lord Literistic. (Oct.)
From the Publisher
Scary and beautifully written, imbued with the same sense of dread and inevitability as Jackson’s original, A Haunting on the Hill is quite extraordinary. It's not pastiche, not ventriloquism. It puts me strongly in mind of a singer you love covering a song by another artist. It's that song but now it's being done by someone else. Remarkable.”
—Neil Gaiman
“Hand is responding to the source material on a deeper level, echoing Jackson’s structure, characterization and storytelling beats rather than relying on superficial similarities…. above all, it’s scary. Hand’s facility with language and atmosphere and use of short, propulsive chapters work their own dark magic on the reader. It’s a compelling and frightening novel, but did it need to take place in Jackson’s universe? Probably not — and that’s why it works…In a landscape of soulless franchises geared toward quick, shallow hits of fan service, she has the maturity and talent to deliver the follow-up that Jackson’s novel deserves (even if it didn’t necessarily need one)… Like Jackson, Hand offers no explanation for Hill House’s malevolence, preserving the original novel’s power and mystery.”—New York Times Book Review
“To join Elizabeth Hand on her journey to Hill House is to be reminded of the slippery dominance of genius, the way it both establishes and breaks its own rules . . . Hand has a gift for the sensuous, evocative detail, and her descriptions are often simultaneously seductive and spooky.”—The New Yorker
“The unsettling atmosphere in this novel builds from the start and never disappoints. Hand deftly layers the history of the house with the past of each character and the things that haunt them. . . . A Haunting on the Hill is a love letter to Hill House and a very impressive tribute to Shirley Jackson. It is also a tremendous addition to Hand's already outstanding, multi-genre oeuvre.”—Gabino Iglesias, NPR
“Hill House is back and haunting as ever in this vividly imagined return to Shirley Jackson’s iconic setting. Elizabeth Hand weaves eerie beauty into the genuine terror lurking in her pages, crafting some of the most striking scares I’ve read in years. This book gave me the best kind of nightmares."—Ana Reyes, New York Times bestselling author of The House in the Pines
“It’s thrilling to find that A Haunting on the Hill is a true hybrid of these two ingenious women’s work — a novel with all the chills of Jackson that also highlights the contemporary flavor and evocative writing of Hand. . . . Strange and wonderful, a frightening foray into the supernatural that will inspire you to go back and reread the original."—The Washington Post
“Honoring Jackson’s story while owning this revival, Hand deploys masterful storytelling to merge the house’s familiar covetousness with witches' tales, feminist themes of repression and unfulfilled promise, and character evolution that subtly matches the house’s growing malevolence. Pitch perfect.”—Booklist (starred review)
“A brilliant queer reimagining…Hand’s work both modernizes and deepens Jackson’s setting."—BookPage
“Pours on the page-turning thrills with elegant glee, delivering everything from slight chills to all-out madness, but this is not simply a haunted attraction full of jump scares and predictable weirdness. No, Hand has also preserved and adopted another key element of Jackson’s fiction: The unanswerable questions always lurking in the margins. With seemingly every page she introduces yet another moment of weird fiction brilliance that might be explained later, or might simply lurk in your consciousness forever, waiting like a trap about to spring. It’s, like the narrative itself, a remarkable balance to strike. And in that balance between reverence and invention, legacy and originality, Hand has done something powerful. A Haunting on the Hill is an instant haunted house classic, a stirring tribute to a horror legend, and a book that, like Hill House itself, will swallow you up with its dark spell. Don’t miss it.” —Paste Magazine
"The lines of paranoia, art, and reality are terrifyingly blurred for our group of hungry and damaged actors cloistered within the moldering walls of Hill House. Only the brilliant Elizabeth Hand could so expertly honor Jackson's rage, wit, and vision with a twenty-first century twist. The old place is as creepy, disorienting, and menacing as ever."—Paul Tremblay, author of A Head Full of Ghosts and The Cabin at the End of the World
“Elizabeth Hand's A Haunting on the Hill keeps the scares coming in a creepy, deserted mansion . . . A Haunting on the Hill also is adept at connecting the creepy noises and disappearing objects of Hill House to the psychology of the four characters, each of whom is hiding something….it's a measure of Hand's precision and skill that we have so much fun watching them put together the pieces that doom them.”—Minneapolis Star-Tribune
"If there's a spirit medium gifted enough to evoke the ghost of Shirley Jackson, it's surely Elizabeth Hand, whose startling, original body of work I've long admired. A Haunting on the Hill is not a simple act of ventriloquism, but a true marriage of minds, and I believe Ms. Jackson would have been proud to be the inspiration for this smart and chilling return to the Hill House estate." —Dan Chaon, author of Sleepwalk
“Jackson’s creation is in capable hands with Hand.”—The Week
"Eerily beautiful, strangely seductive, and genuinely upsetting: welcome back to Hill House. I recommend reading only in strong daylight, and never alone." —Alix E. Harrow, author of The Ten Thousand Doors of January
"If there's a writer you can trust with this formidable task, it's the wildly talented Elizabeth Hand. A Haunting on the Hill is an admirable successor to The Haunting of Hill House, alike in spirit but never trying to simply repeat what Shirley Jackson did in her classic novel. Creepy, tragic, and, yes, haunting. I tore through this novel, getting lost in the pages, drawn back into the mysteries of Hill House and enjoying every moment I was there."—Victor LaValle, author of The Changeling
“A Haunting on the Hill is absolutely captivating—a book that you'll want to climb inside and love forever, until the moment you realize it's too late to escape.”—Sarah Gailey, author of Just Like Home
“A timeless, gothic ode that serves up the stuff of nightmares.”—Kirkus Reviews
Library Journal
09/01/2023
Hand's (Hokolua Road) new novel revisits the infamous haunted house from Shirley Jackson's classic The Haunting of Hill House. Holly, a struggling playwright looking to flesh out her witchy comeback, thinks that Hill House, the eerie mansion she's stumbled across in Upstate New York, would be the perfect place to finish her play. She rents the house and takes her partner Nisa, a singer; their friend, sound guy/actor Stevie; and theater legend Amanda along, despite warnings and a disturbing first visit. The house rapidly reveals itself to be a malevolent force, playing on the past traumas and insecurities of its guests with typically devastating consequences. There are interesting side characters and unexpected plotting woven into the lovely prose, along with some nice nods to Jackson's original novel and the recent Mike Flanagan Netflix miniseries that fans will appreciate, although Hand's new novel lacks the subtlety and ambiguity of the original. VERDICT Where Jackson gave glimpses of possibility, Hand purposefully pulls back the curtain on a Hill House in its full derangement, but this haunted-house tale stands on its own very spooky legs.—Lacey Tobias
NOVEMBER 2023 - AudioFile
Elizabeth Hand's riff on Shirley Jackson's HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE, narrated with aplomb by Carol Monda, thrums with tension and dread. When New York City playwright Holly Sherwin stumbles across an eerie mansion in Upstate New York, she's certain it's the perfect place to rehearse her new play. Holly; her partner, Nisa; fading actress Amanda; and sound technician Stevie gather at the house and are soon surrounded by unsettling noises, voices, and smells, plus a knife-wielding neighbor, an oddly evasive owner, and hostile caretakers. Monda's low-pitched, raspy voice captures the characters' growing unease, heightened emotions, and suspicion as they fall prey to their rapidly escalating fear. The production is enhanced by subtle sound effects--creaking doors, footsteps, whispers--and chillingly sung murder ballads that echo throughout. S.A.H. © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
2023-07-13
A struggling band of hopeful artists wander into the malevolent orbit of Hill House in this contemporary restaging of Shirley Jackson’s classic novel.
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.
A timeless, gothic ode that serves up the stuff of nightmares.
