”If we find that all our efforts have failed and someone buys the house, we shall set fire to it and burn it down. We will do this at night, before it is occupied. In another time they would have plowed the charred ground and sowed it with salt.

If it should come to that, I do not think we will be punished.

I do not think we will be alive long enough.”


This is the prologue to the book, included on the back cover, and in many ways, I think it is misleading. This Haunted House tale that veers far more towards the literary end of fiction rather than to the action-packed book of scares that you might expect from an author like say [a:Darcy Coates|7734837|Darcy Coates|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1601468603p2/7734837.jpg] (who also has a book of the same name [b:The House Next Door|40209348|The House Next Door|Darcy Coates|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/book/50x75-a91bf249278a81aabab721ef782c4a74.png|55739518]). This is a very slow burn right up to the ending that is haunting me still. It does involve some death and mayhem but mostly it is a character study of an affluent white suburban street and its inhabitants.

A new house is built next door to the main protagonists and despite being beautiful in construction it appears to be affecting its inhabitants and anyone near it. People's worse fears are being exploited. Now the neighborhood being white and wealthy means the worse thing that can happen always seems to involve some kind of social disgrace. I particularly enjoyed the scene near the end of the book when the working-class spectators arrive and jeer at the hoity-toity neighbourhood and its haunted house while littering in with McDonald's boxes. I may not agree with the social values of these 1970’s wealthy suburbanites but I certainly understood how unsettling it would be for them. The character portrayals and their reactions to the events all rang true to me.

Overall a pleasantly told Haunted House tale that I recommend for readers of Literary Fiction.