Customer Reviews

Black House (Coronet Books)

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Paul Theroux is remarkable among contemporary novelists for his stylistic range. He's written a range of unique travelogues, short stories, semi-autobiographies, science fiction, essays and with The Black House, a ghost story that evokes the feel of the great ghost stories of the Victorian era, but in a thoroughly modern setting.

The Black House tells the story of a middle aged couple, the Mundays, recently returned from nearly a decade in Africa where the husband was an anthropologist studying a tribe called the Bwamba. They've returned, ostensibly because of his heart trouble, to a dreary cottage in a small and not terribly friendly town where he can work on his book. Disturbing things began to happen almost immediately; figures are seen peering in windows. A Bwamba spearpoint dissappears from a collection passed around at a public lecture. And Munday's wife begins to suffer from unexplained maladies.

To tell more would be to reveal too much of this wonderfully dark and horrific tale. If you're a fan of the ghost stories of M. R. James (as is Theroux) or such classic tales as "August Heat" or de Maupaussant's "The Horla", read "The Black House" for a treat.

English anthropologist Alfred Munday has returned to his homeland for health reasons after a decade in Uganda studying the Bwamba tribe. Frustrated by this forced change in his life, Munday finds himself unable to begin preparing his research for publication. His marriage sits on precarious ground, and he and his wife have just taken on a domestic disaster: the home they leased site-unseen--Bowood House, "the Black House" to locals--is ruinous, inhospitable, and apparently haunted. Munday's superior, intellectual airs quickly alienate the couple from their neighbors in the town of Four Ashes. Then the beautiful Caroline appears, and she initiates a torrid, reckless affair with Munday, whose old troubles are quickly exchanged for new ones.

There is a prevailing tone of despair, even damnation, to Paul Theroux's ghost story, THE BLACK HOUSE. Munday is a pathetic creature, a surly egoist unable to make or keep friends or to fill his roles as husband and scholar. He allows the trappings of his identity slowly to be stripped away until he is only a shadow of his formerly serious and professional self. He invites an African acquaintance to Four Ashes for a visit, but Munday, under the influence of this growing malaise, becomes suddenly embarrassed by the very sight of the man and abuses him at every turn. Though clearly he needs no help at it, some of his new neighbors are more than willing to aid Munday's decline: while giving a presentation at a local church about his anthropological work in Africa, a valuable and dangerous Bwamba artifact is stolen from him; the theft drives Munday to distraction, sensing that if he should ever see the object again it will not be under happy circumstances. The great irony which unfolds over the course of the novel is that this anthropologist, who considers it his vocation to make one African tribe comprehensible to the outside world, cannot himself adapt to the simple community of Four Ashes. In placing himself above small town life, Munday rejects the basic principals of social integration, thus making himself ideal prey for the mysterious Caroline.

The quality of Theroux's writing and the dark mix of psychology, intense sensuality, and metaphysical unease place THE BLACK HOUSE in the estimable company of Richard Adams' THE GIRL IN A SWING and Robert Aickman's "strange stories." This is a territory in which unexpected and inexplicable episodes drive the narrative: Munday glimpses two mutilated dogs under a tarp in a local man's garden; a woman applying for a maid's position at Bowood House leaves information leading the Mundays to the wrong address; the scorching eroticism of Caroline's surprise visits threaten to leave the Mundays' home in flames. Such incidents accumulate over the course of the novel, tempered by Theroux's cool but entrancing prose. From this grows a palpable tension that--perhaps in keeping with its nature--never actually resolves. One almost anticipates the novel's vague, indecipherable ending, a point at which Theroux compels his readers to share, for a moment, Munday's banishment to a maddening limbo.

As a great Theroux fan, I approached The Black House with enthusiasm which soon faded. The prose is ponderous and the main characters are dull. An anthropologist returned to England after ten years in Uganda, the haunted Munday (a bad-tempered, stuffed shirt if ever there was one) becomes an incongruous partner in a steaming affair with the apparition, Caroline. Their clandestine meetings are occasioned by Caroline's invasion of the conscious mind of Munday's wife, Emma. She finds herself compelled to send her husband off on irrational errands which culminate in more sexual encounters with a waiting Caroline. (Difficult to swallow? Yes, indeed) The promised horror and haunting don't really make the grade and the most entertaining portion of the book, in my opinion, was the unwelcome visit of the African Silvano to the English village where the Mundays were not regarded kindly. This, at least, was worth an occasional chuckle.

I love Paul Theroux, I've read most of his work, but this cruelly disappoints. He can write great fiction : look at The Family Arsenal, but this is not great fiction. I couldn't get into the book at all, the characters didn't grab me, the plot seemed forced, and the sex scenes towards the close of the book seemed almost to be there to encourage the reader to actually finish the book. Disappointed.

I could only bear the first 110 pages. I can't stand reading anymore. Argh! I gave it this much time of my life because he is a renowned author and deserved some respect, but, one can only take so much boredom. Sorry to all the Theroux lovers.

This is the first book that I have read by Paul Theroux. I am generally a Stephen King reader but unfortunally my English teacher does not allow him for a book report. Anyways, I had an oral presentation to do today on The Black House, and since this book didn't catch my intrest, I only read to page 25. Come on! I was falling asleep. I still give all regards to the author but I just couldn't stand the boring lit.

achilles heel -not truly the black hous