A Haunting on the Hill - Elizabeth Hand

You might be thinking - 'Is this the same house that Shirley Jackson wrote about? The answer is yes. Elizabeth Hand's new novel A Haunting on the Hill, has been sanctioned by Jackson's estate.

Hand puts her own spin on things. Scary things...

A playwright rents the run down mansion for two weeks. She's written a play called The Witching and decides that the house would be a good place to rehearse with the three actors involved. Uh huh. Before they even step a foot inside, there are warnings about the past of the house from the real estate agent - but to no avail. 

Hand gives us four very different characters in Holly, Nisa, Amanda and Stevie. Hand fleshes out their personalities, decisions, wants, needs and more. The listener is privy to each player's thoughts. Their personalities affect what happens next in many cases.

And you got it - what happens starts off quietly with small things. Innocuous things that can be easily  explained away. Doors, sounds, echoes, temperatures. But it's not long before there's more...and I shouted to the four to get out!

Okay, so I listen to audiobooks to fall asleep. Less learned. I couldn't get to sleep - I kept hearing things downstairs - creaks and bumps and an echo of something. I ended up finishing it off in the daytime. 

Hand does a fantastic job of drawing the listener into the world of Hill House, with a well written and frightening setting and fresh plot.  

The narrator was Carol Monda and she did a fabulous job of presenting Hand's book. She has the most interesting voice - with a whiskey and cigarette growl. She provides different voices for the other players, making it easy to know who was speaking. She speaks clearly and is easy to understand. That's the characters, but what about the house? The descriptions of the house and what transpires gave me a good case of the  heebie-jeebies. The fear and the unknown are captured in Monda's performance. A really good audio performance of a really good book. 

Hear for yourself - listen to an audio excerpt of A Haunting on the Hill.