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Whatever walks there, no longer walks alone . . .
Playwright Holly Sherwin is close to her big break. Having received a grant to develop her new play, all she needs is time and space to bring her vision to life. Then on a weekend away, she stumbles upon Hill House – an ornate if crumbling gothic mansion, near-hidden outside a small town.
Soon Holly’s troupe of actors – each with ghosts of their own – arrive at Hill House for a creative retreat. But before long they find themselves at odds not just with one another, but with the house itself.
For something has been waiting patiently in Hill House all these years.
Something no longer content to walk alone.
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Reviews
Jackson's creation is in capable hands with Hand.
A Gothic treat - hugely atmospheric and lovingly written, this is a fitting follow-up to the original
Like Hill House itself, this accomplished tribute stands alone: disturbing and unforgettable.
Hand unnerves us by inference and restraint...it's a measure of Hand's precision and skill that we have so much fun watching[the characters] put together the pieces that doom them
A brilliant queer reimagining...Hand's work both modernizes and deepens Jackson's setting, pulling readers into the demented halls of Hill House and the minds of its denizens
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
A suspenseful and gripping read
The short chapters, intriguing and complex characters, and beautifully written (yet sinister) descriptions make the novel an irresistible page-turner
A creepy read, featuring fun-to-spot references to other horror classics
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.
I absolutely loved A Haunting on the Hill, which snared me with its terrifying opening and relinquished me only on the very last page. Huge boots to fill, but Elizabeth Hand rose to the challenge with her darkly complex characters and a novel dripping in atmosphere and intrigue.
The lines of paranoia, art, and reality are terrifyingly blurred for our group of hungry and damaged actors cloistered within the mouldering walls of Hill House. Only the brilliant Elizabeth Hand could so expertly honor Jackson's rage, wit, and vision with a 21st century twist. The old place is as creepy, disorienting, and menacing as ever.
A novel with all the chills of Jackson that also highlights the contemporary flavor and evocative writing of Hand. The story stays true to Jackson's vision of "Hill House" while becoming a thing of its own. Indeed, A Haunting on the Hill is strange and wonderful, a frightening foray into the supernatural that will inspire you to go back and reread the original.
Hand has a gift for the sensuous, evocative detail, and her descriptions are often simultaneously seductive and spooky
Eerily beautiful, strangely seductive, and genuinely upsetting: welcome back to Hill House. I recommend reading only in strong daylight, and never alone.
Beautifully creepy with the same claustrophobic intensity and sense of impending doom of the original, but at the same time with a great sense of progression, of the house having evolved over the years. It's so vivid, full of totemic menace and with a heart-in-your-mouth, can't-look-away frisson.
A fitting - and frightening - homage to The Haunting of Hill House
Evocative and unsettling, A Haunting on the Hill captures the essence of the original whilst offering something brand new.
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.
Apparitions, black hares and time warps festoon this fitting - and frightening - homage to Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House, in which Hand mines the source material for structure and storytelling beats rather than relying on superficial similarities
Frightening
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.
An enjoyably atmospheric return to the world of a cult classic - a Halloween treat for fans of genre fiction, haunted-house horror, and things that go bump in the night.
A Haunting on the Hill is as unnerving and disorienting as Hill House itself, a place where evil lurks behind every door. I was completely gripped by this terrifying and original tale.
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, especially Holly and Amanda. Hill House is a spooky place, and Hand delves deep into its darkness and allows it to flourish in almost every chapter.
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.
Suspenseful and gripping . . . the short chapters, intriguing and complex characters, and beautifully written (yet sinister) descriptions make the novel an irresistible page-turner
A Haunting on the Hill is a fever dream of a novel, very much in the same spirit of The Haunting of Hill House, but also entirely its own entity. It's brilliantly imagined, unsettling, cloying and claustrophobic and downright terrifying.
Shirley Jackson fans, rejoice!
The supernatural and psychological terrors of the original work are updated for the present day but echo with the resonance of the original
There are - fittingly - echoes of the original which will satisfy fans but it is Elizabeth Hand's understanding of the folklore threaded through Jackson's work that gives this wonderfully creepy novel much of its power. The story is resolutely contemporary, the world has moved on and the events of Dr Montague's investigation are long forgotten; but Hill House remains unchanged, no more sane now than it was sixty years ago. It's a superb book, a subtle and deeply unnerving ghost story; entirely of itself and recognisably of Jackson's world.
Genuinely sinister and beautifully written, with a real sense of depth to the folklore and theatrical inspiration.