Customer Reviews

The Birthing House (Library Edition)

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(30)
2 star:		(28)
1 star:		(24)

 

 

I'm a social history dork. I also love old houses. AND I love anything medical, especially anything having to do with pregnancy and birth. I thought that this book was going to combine all of those loves and wrap them up into the sort of horror story that you can't put down at night, partly because you keep wanting to know what happens next, and partly because you don't want to turn out the lights. You know those sorts of scary books that leave you as a grown adult afraid to get out of bed at night to go to the bathroom? That's what I was hoping for.

I didn't get it.

There's just not enough back story on the birthing house, for starters. Conrad moves in and the previous owner hands him a scrap book of the house. Conrad spots a picture that looks like his wife - and throws the whole book in the fire. The history dork in me recoiled in horror. That was probably the scariest part in the book for me. We have an old house, built in the 20s. Lots of people buy old houses and find interesting stuff in them. We didn't find a whole lot. Some old keys, some old wall paper. Nothing great. This guys gets an entire album of pictures and clippings - the history of his house handed to him on a silver platter - he freaks out and burns it. Why would he not verify who this woman is? Why would he not research the house? This could have gone somewhere - but it didn't.

Then the story tells you a little bit about weird things that happen to those previous owners - but not enough to really understand anything. Yes, their kids are all deformed. There's references to no one being able to keep track of how many kids there were. WHAT HAPPENED??? It could have been so interesting!

What you do get is a lot of slimy sex scenes, neighbors who don't have a clue, characters you can't keep straight, and a virgin snake birth that doesn't go anywhere. I could not figure out who was going crazy, what was really happening, who was the good guy, who was the bad guy. Someone else mentioned, WHY was he drinking so much iced tea?? Was there a point? What happened to the dead baby in the crib??? Why was all the history of Alma and the doctor and the birthing house crammed in in the last few pages? By then I was so sick of this book I just blew through it to be done, but even reading slowly, I don't think I would have had any idea what really went on.

I'm comforted to see so many others who feel they have no idea what went on. I know a little confusion is what builds a good horror story, but in the end it's supposed to all fall together. This did not fall together for me. The biggest mystery for me ended up being, am I getting dumber as I get older, or was this book just really bad? I think it was the book!

This book just left me puzzled. It seemed like it had such potential - it looked like it was written for ME. Since it seems people can't help but crack puns based on the title, I'll give you one of my own - this book was a false positive.

In every reviewer's repertoire there is always one word they hold in reserve, like saving one bullet in your gun in case you happen to find yourself surrounded by a horde of ravenous zombies, it's a killing word, it's a word that sums up their true feelings on a subject and for me that word is: DUMBFOUNDED. I was literally dumbfounded by THE BIRTHING HOUSE. A complete mish-mash rip that by the close of CHAPTER TWO had me questioning the sanity of both the author and the publisher - just what were they thinking?

THE BIRTHING HOUSE tells the tried and true story of a house "haunted" by the ghosts and gimmicks of classic horror tales and the want of modern writers to take what used to be left best read between the lines and shove it in your face...sex. From the classic interpretation to the internet's excesses it seemed Ransom, like his hero, Conrad Harrison, has no real self control, or will or ability to edit himself - he's merely a cork on water, rising and falling with the swells, but never taking on water, never truly going beneath the surface. He's simply follows Ransom's futile splashing of prose to get him to move, but it never works. Ransom is hopelessly locked into a plot that feels like he's following the floor plan of a carnival spook house, that again, by the end of CHAPTER TWO, you'll realize that you've already read this a dozen times before.

And the house is not just haunted, it's "out, loud and proud" haunted (two snaps). Conrad isn't in the house for more than a moment before he's already being sucked into the house's neatly ordered vortex of evil. And the funny things is...he knows it, right from the start. Again and again when something isn't right he puts the blame squarely on the house and he's right. It is the house. Get out. But Conrad stays, dragging his often gone, cheating wife with him in hopes of finding some peace and starting a family. And it's from here that Ransom moves his plot between the slow boil of a watched pot, to popping a Hot Pocket in the microwave - it's as if he found in the back of his closet a game of CHUTES & LADDERS as imagined by RAMSEY CAMPBELL and CLIVE BARKER. One moment Ransom is dragging it out, when there appears, like a hound on your doorstep with a dead bird in its mouth, a scene of horror that feels exactly like a commercial break...it's not that it matters, it's just what pays the bills. It's what you expect and long before you finish THE BIRTHING HOUSE you'll find yourself peeking ahead, fast forwarding through the chop, seeing the end clearly before you get there and then when getting there, feeling cheated.

In the end, THE BIRTHING HOUSE is the kind of story you write in college, for a grade, for a demanding, but narrow minded teacher who's idea of prose feels like a drawn out text message mixed with poetry (Ransom channels his inner Tolkien towards the end, laying down the italics to help clear up the story) with a plot designed to please the front row only. Avoid.

I'm a fan of supernatural stories, especially haunted house stories and was truly excited at the opportunity to review this latest entry into the genre. Though the story starts off on a promising note, it sort of fell apart towards the end.

The story centers on Conrad, a 30-year-old unemployed guy who is trying to figure his life out. His marriage to successful and driven Jo is falling apart and after inheriting a large sum of money from his deceased father's estate, Conrad decides the best thing to do is to move out of LA and start a new life - far away in a small town in Wisconsin. The house Conrad picks is no ordinary house either - it's a 140-year-old birthing house. From the beginning, the house exerts an unnatural pull on Conrad, but it is only after Jo leaves for a training course in Michigan that Conrad begins to uncover the eerie aspects of the house. Obviously, the house is haunted - there's a strange 'woman' haunting the premises, cries of babies are heard, and Conrad feels like he is losing his mind. Add to that the strange atrraction Conrad feels for Nadia Grum, pregnant and confused next-door neighbor, a 19-year-old teenager who also seems to fear the birthing house. The house apparently seems to thrive on creating life - Conrad finds out his wife Jo with whom he hasn't had any relations with for a while is pregnant [leading him to suspect infidelity], his pet snake apparently has a virgin birth, and even Nadia's pregnancy seems to have sinister origins.

As is typical in such novels, things slowly but inevitably spiral out of control leading to a shocking and twisted climax. I felt that the last few chapters of the book got to be very confusing and the plot basically fell apart. I can't go into details without giving too much away but it did seem like the author tried to tie everything up together, but failed to do so credibly. The writing throughout is uneven - there are some good passages, but on the whole, this is not really literary fiction in the supernatural genre. The characters often feel like stereotypical cardboard cut-outs.

The reason I gave it 3 instead of 2 stars is because I felt it wasn't altogether bad as a first novel, and perhaps the author will do a better job with his second effort, if any.

Those who love a really good haunted house story should check out "The Dwelling" by Susie Moloney. It is highly atmospheric and plain old spooky with a very interesting premise - a house looking for its perfect occupant. There's a British horror writer, Jonathan Aycliffe who also writes really good supernatural stories, and one in particular "Naomi's Room" remains my favorite to this day [I actually had nightmares after reading this book].If you enjoy supernatural literary fiction, then John Harwood's "Ghost Writer" and more recently, "The Seance" are compelling reads. As for the Birthing House, it is an average supernatural read.

The only reason I'm giving this book one star is that despite the wheels falling off the cart in the second half of the book, I think Ransom has great potential as a writer. It starts with a great premise: A young couple having marital problems moves from the sprawl of Los Angeles to a remote home in Wisconsin, that holds it's own dark and twisted secrets. The books rests somewhere between 'The Amityville Horror' and 'The Shining' , but never really reaches either in terms of a horror benchmark. I wanted to get scared, was waiting to get scared, but never really was. To me, this is a tepid ghost story with some graphic sex, and a ridiculous final thirty pages that will have you wondering not only what just happened, by why you even bothered.

The Birthing House starts really well. After the first few chapters, I was really into the whole story and thinking to myself how great it will be to read something that's a bit different from a new and exciting author. The first half of the book is fairly good. We learn a lot about the main character, and a little more about the house. However, it seems the second part of the book just fizzled. The ending was rushed, and like many others, the I have only my imagination as to what happened at the end. Maybe that's the way it was intended, but just seems like everything had to be wrapped up in 10 minutes and he ran out of time. On the positive side, the author does show great promise, and I think we will see some great books from him in the future. This was a decent book, but your expectations are much higher, so you are left disappointed. That's the crazy part! The first half of the book is so good, you are all excited and can't wait to finish it. Then, it starts getting faster and faster, and before you can blink the end has come, and you are left unsatisfied.

Sometimes weird is good. I really hoped for a good, weird supernatural story in the vein of Stephen King's Duma Key: A Novel, Dean Koontz's Odd Thomas or the movies The Others (Two-Disc Collector's Edition) or What Lies Beneath in this one.

This story IS bizarre, but I just didn't find it all that good (and really had little interest in reading the end).

SUMMARY: A man impulsively buys a historic house in Wisconsin, and relocates his strained relationship with his wife there from Los Angeles. Immediately bizarre things begin to happen. Is he crazy or is it haunted? Or both? Or neither?

Upsides:

- The premise is good and certainly intriguing during the first half.

- The author is actually a pretty good writer with the ability to create scary tension on occassion, and there's hope that since this is his debut novel his plotting and characterizations will get better.

Downsides:

- None of the characters are sympathetic, and I found most of the choices the characters make unbelievable and not well explained.

- Another reviewer said there was little sex in this book. But, the entire theme and action is driven around sex and getting pregnant (thus, the name). That's not bad. But, the way it's told - it seems kind of slimy weird.

- The story is disjointed. Can't decide if that's the writing or the editing. Somehow the dots never really connect as the story moves along, and even when it's explained towards the end (in an odd fashion), I was left with this feeling of "Huh??, Okay. Next".

Bottom Line: For only the most devout fans of haunted house stories - and even some of them may find this is not quite up to their expectations.

I like some horror. I'm a fan of Koontz, King, Langan, and Saul. I've read Clive Barker and Scott Sigler so I'm not a newbie to the genre. That said, I have to admit that I'm not sure what the heck this book was about!

It grabbed me right away -- man on way back from dad's deathbed takes a wrong turn and ends up buying a restored Victorian in Black Earth, Wisconsin. Now that's intriguing. The man, Conrad Harrison, moves his possibly unfaithful wife Jo with him to this small town and almost immediately she leaves him to go to a training seminar for a new job. The husband, left on his own, apparently descends into some sort of madness. Now is this insanity induced by the house? Is the house haunted? And if so, by whom? Seems there is a gravid spirit about -- and that pregnancy and healing are part of the aura that lingers within the walls.

Subsequent chapters detail bloody murder and abandoned infants -- is it really happening? Who is behind it all? Who is Alma? What does she want?

This was a fast paced read that left me staying up far too late, turning the pages as I rushed to the end. At times reminiscent of true classics such as The Shining, but at others it tended to lose momentum and just ultimately left me hanging; it left me with many unanswered questions!

Conrad Harrison found the last home he would ever know by driving the wrong way out of Chicago with a ghost in his car. -- And so it begins, THE BIRTHING HOUSE. Conrad, stops at a restaurant, while there he checks the classifieds and sees an ad for a restored Victorian that used to be a birthing house, a place where unwed mothers came to have their children. Why, he's not sure, but he checks out the house and buys it, hoping that if he and his wife Joanna move there that it'll ease the strain on their struggling marriage.

But it doesn't.

Joanna's job takes her back to California, leaving Conrad alone in the house. Well there is the pregnant neighbor girl, Nadia Grum. It's kinda creepy the way our hero lusts after her, his own wife being pregnant and all, wait, he doesn't know that. Actually this whole book is a bit creepy, but I mean that in a good way. I wasn't far into the story when I started looking around for the creepy crawlies. Do you know what's under your bed? I do, because I kept checking throughout this story.

Strange things happen in the house, strange going ons. Infants crying who are not there, carpets ripping themselves up showing the bloodstains beneath, shades of that hotel Stephen King wrote about. Then there is Nadia, who is bewitched by the house and there are snakes and all sorts of horrors that will just plain scare the holy heck out of you. Sex, violence and really scary stuff abound throughout this story. Brrr, I just loved it.

This story begins with our main character, Conrad, who happens upon an old house for sale while driving through rural WI, and seems inexplicably drawn to it. He purchases the house immediately, pays in full with an inheritance check from his late father's estate, and moves right in. We learn fairly early on that Conrad's marriage is on the rocks and that he is hoping this move will give him a fresh start with his life. We learn that there are mysterious elements to Conrad's past, and we start to uncover his story through his introspection and his relationships with those around him.

The author definitely does a good job laying the foundation of the mystery. There is this great build up - the characters have a dark history, the house has a dark history. You can't help but look forward to the "aha!" moment when you finally connect the dots and solve the mystery. The only problem is, I feel like we got cheated out of our moment. I thought the author could have done more with the previous owners and revealing their experiences with the house. The photo album was great but it was tossed out of the story way too soon. And while I felt like the author tried to wrap everything up in the ending, it felt rushed and confusing.

As a ghost story, this had promise. There were some tense, Amityville-like scenes, but it felt like I was watching a balloon inflate and waiting to hear the pop but instead having the air just slowly leak out. It was a let down.

Overall, I give 3 stars. It was a great idea but more could have been done with it.

Fans of the horror genre know that there are bad houses just as there are bad cars and bad dolls. Gentle readers, I'm here to tell you all about a bad book. A very bad book indeed. It's called The Birthing House.

The general premise of a building that may be evil itself isn't new nor is the concept of the failed writer with too much time on his hands. In the hands of a writer like Shirley Jackson, Richard Matheson, or Stephen King such a setup means hours of satisfying chills. And one doesn't need blood dripping from the walls to deliver the scares as John Harwood, Dennis MacFarland and Patrick McGrath have recently shown. The narrative can be untraditional like The House of Leaves and still pack a wallop. But you do need a coherent plot and a lead character whose actions inspire a modicum of human sympathy. Alas, this book has neither.

Others here found at least the first half of the book enjoyable. For me it went downhill around page 10 when main character Conrad shows off the death benefit insurance check he received for his father who died less than a week before. This lead to two unscary questions: an insurance company payout in less than one week? And in check form instead of a direct deposit? I expected to suspend disbelief in this story but not over the finances. Unfortunately the stupid has just started rolling. Conrad is regularly confront with "eerie" happenings and he generally reacts like someone who awakes to find that the deliveryboy failed to get the paper on the front porch again. When you think you've had sex with a ghost or you've hallucinated having sex with your wife the usual response is not to fire up another ice tea, just as a for instance. Conrad and his stick figure wife Jo aren't believable or likable and the rest of the characters are actually worse.

Ransom doesn't seem to understand that less is more (especially where snakes are concerned), that the characters' fear is what delivers the fear to the reader and that the words "what the hell just happened" is not what happy readers utter at the conclusion of a well-crafted story. While I wouldn't want to make a bet on this but I think the ending had something to do with a reverse birth. Yeah, I don't really know what that means either but it's the best I can manage since the ending not only makes no sense it isn't clear either. "He was nothing." And yet he's still hanging around getting on my nerves. The only good thing I can say about the ending is that Ransom gave the ellipses - his "go to" for creating suspense - a much needed rest.

The book reads as if the author sold it based on an outline and then had to actually write the darn thing. On a deadline. In the dark. With crayons.