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The Black House (1996)

The Black House (1996)

Book Info

Author
Genre
Rating
3.13 of 5 Votes: 3
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ISBN
0140087923 (ISBN13: 9780140087925)
Language
English
Publisher
penguin books

About book The Black House (1996)

Did not really enjoy. It had a good lead in and did a fair job of pulling me into the story but left me wanting after that. And not in a good way...Spoilers follow.Basically the gist of the book is that it's sometime in England, I don't remember if they specified the exact year. Irish bombs are going off and people are driving cars but the countryside is still the countryside with fox hunts and complaints about oil derricks being installed locally instead of in the North Sea. Our hero and his sickly, weak wife comes back from doing a 10 year + anthropological study of African peoples. He was forced to return (aren't they all?) due to a heart diagnosis. The couple promptly moves to the countryside to write a book (don't they all?). The house, it is black, is described, both vividly and exquisitely, as a place of foreboding and depression based upon the sensed presence of some unnamed horror or entity. The local folk are aloof and rude but not Lovecraftian in their oddity, and the couple pine away bitching and moaning about their life, and not writing one bit of a book.This is where it all breaks down. Basically the protagonist is a self centered twit who can't get over himself. I say that because for half the book he fawns and mourns for leaving Africa and the people, who he regards in a much more positive light than other British folk of his time do, but then when the African student that got a university scholarship in London because of his recommendation comes to visit our hero is too ashamed to take him into town and instead detours his tour of town into a 'country walk' that ruins his companion's attire, which was more suited to a few drinks in a pub than slogging through cow pastures and open fields and mountains, on purpose no less.Then there is the other woman, I forget her name so we'll just call her Sultry Emotional eXtra, or SEX for short. They meet a New Years Eve party and the wife is bewitched by her and made to feel ill and exit stage left while (don't they always?) the man and SEX begin a sultry affair front and center.I basically gave up long ago but somehow the other woman is a ghost that is the presence in the house the entire time and eventually our hero realizes he's either been fucking a ghost or just mentally masturbating the whole months they've been in the house but now he's happy with his wife all of a sudden. Fin.PS - There was something about some skinned dogs in local farmer A's backyard and somehow someone's hunting dog was stabbed with one of our hero's artifact African daggers. But cognizance really wasn't a key feature of the plot so why expect it now.Would not read again. Wtf Stephen King, I guess there's some reason this is far enough up your alley to make you recomend it but I can only see bits and pieces of why.

Do You like book The Black House (1996)?

So, this is the kind of book that if I was reading it to study, I would find things to say about it - especially good things. But since was reading it for pleasure (pleasure which was pretty lacking, frankly), no such luck. Firstly, this book is in the character study style of storytelling, so not much of interest actually happens. There's bits of older racial attitudes, how village life is universal, and the link of the supposed prescence in the house and Munday's affair borders on interesting but since the ghostly goings on are implied, and personally I see it in context more as a metaphor than an actual thread of the plot. And since I initially decided to read the book hoping it might be somewhat supernatural, that was disappointing. However, I often do enjoy character studies - Remains of the Day, for example - but I didn't care about anyone in this book and I was very glad to finish it. I put it down for a time while I read something more interesting and was very tempted not to pick it back up again.
—Kylie

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