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21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
This one delivers the shivers!, July 22, 2005
I thoroughly enjoyed this novel, about an unquiet house, and its effects on a procession of occupants. For one thing, it's far more character-driven than any other haunted house tale I've read, and it hooked me in the sense that I wanted to find out what would happen to the very flesh and blood people Moloney portrays. Of course the main character is the house, and it has something different in store for each set of new buyers as they take possession. Instead, the house takes possession of them, and they experience various horrors as the house's manifestations go about exploiting the new owners' particular weaknesses, insecurities, frailties, and fears. In various ways, the characters who come to inhabit the house at 362 Belisle Street lead comfortless lives due to difficult personal problems. Combine their resulting anxieties with what the they must endure because of the house, and you have characters whose lives are all the more harrowing. Moloney does not string you along with cheap shocks or false tension builders such as cats jumping out of dark corners or windows banging in the wind. If a door opens by itself, it's because there's something supernatural behind it. Moloney's narrative keeps you in a continual state of tension because the story is unpredictable -- you might know something bad is going to happen soon, you just can't predict what it will be exactly. And sometimes the scares come when you don't fully expect them. The characters and their lives are drawn in detail, and while this contributes to a plot structure that is somewhat digressionary, Moloney always stays in control of the narrative and avoids overly extraneous detail. Such story development makes for a very satisfying read, and allows for necessary breaks between the more intense sequences. It also keeps the horror effect keen-edged, from dulling due to over-exposure and over-experience on the part of the reader. Moloney's novel is reminiscent of the mounting sense of dread found in the works of Shirley Jackson. That being said, it's fair to say Moloney has given new life to the horror genre. She's dealt thoughtfully with what might actually cause a house to become haunted, and the concrete experiences real people might face were they to take up residence in such a place. To her credit, she gives us a story that is at once credible, chilling, horrifying, and unsettling.
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Outstanding And Original Haunted House Masterpiece, February 15, 2006
Even without the haunted house elements the stories of the various characters in "The Dwelling" - the circumstances in their lives leading up to their moves and the paths they begin to take thereafter, along with extremely well-realized subplots, could have made for a great book. And even with less compelling characters and with many of the best 'outside-the-supernatural' subplots eliminated, just the superbly written tale of the haunted dwelling - perhaps inhabited by more conventional 'stock' characters - could still have been a great book. But put the two elements together: the deep, personal storytelling involving the people before, during, and after their time at 362 Belisle; and the enormously high-quality tale of that eerie and enchanting house, and you come up with an absolute masterpiece. "The Dwelling" excels on multiple levels and may well be the greatest novel of its year, 2003. The house on 362 Belisle Street is a haunted place unlike any I've before encountered in any kind of tale (and I've read and watched quite a few 'haunted house'-type stories), an enigmatic place that one is at first hard-pressed to understand if its nature is malevolent or benevolent. In ways it seems to be the culmination of elements of both from hundreds of years of haunting tales. The house fascinates, but so do the human characters. Over the course of time, more than one group of people pass through this house, which begins the book as a for-sale property, and some are only in the house and the story briefly, others for extended periods. Some exit the narrative flow of events only to re-emerge later. All of the players who have any legth of page time are interesting, and most of them are people I came to care for. It's here that Moloney's skill as a writer shows perhaps most brilliantly: while there are certain characters who are overtly likable and would be so under the guidance of almost any author, there are others who seemingly should - by nature of their attitudes and/or actions - come off as gratingly unsympathetic but are written here in such a way that, while not hiding their shortcomings, allows the reader to go beyond their less desirable traits and deeply like them in spite of these things. Or failing that, at least to understand and be intrigued by them in spite of those things. That's most of the characters. Others, pure villains, pass through these pages who are bereft of any redeeming or likable value, and yet they still add to the book. The casual cruelty of a couple of characters one encounters comes off as more disturbing and unnervingly realistic than most planned malevolences would. I liked it that the central characters ranged in age from young children to over sixty, and were equally well-done. Sometimes in a book's ensemble cast the very young and/or older characters (such as those inserted neatly into the 'grandparent' slot) seem to have received less care in their crafting and to come off almost as props to the characaters between about fifteen and about fourty. As an ardent comic book fan I also appreciated having one of the lead characters in the role of an ex-advertising artists turned struggling comic artist - very cool. As for the house itself - through some uncanny magic, even the oldest and most used 'haunting' aspects come off fresh and real. Footfalls in the night, doors that be either open or shut but instead are the opposite, that sort of thing. And these lead up to more inventive manifestations, such as walls that were recently repainted a new color having returned themselves to their original color the next time a new character notices them, as if the house molds itself to its own liking. A lot of things in the early going seem small, or could be coincidence or imagination, except for the fact that so many of these 'things' are happening. And the fact that the book has so many characters means that one character can note a couple of things that a different person in the book (someone they maybe even don't come into contact with) doesn't observe, but instead takes note of different curiosities, means that there can be a constant, almost staccatto, stram of odd and bizarre occurences, but no one person has any idea how many of them are happening, sometimes practically one on top of another. It all makes for a wonderfully mysterious and eerie atmosphere. I think "The Dwelling" is a strong contender for best haunted house story ever written. It's a trememendous tale, essential for all fright fans and so superb in its writing style, descriptiveness and characterization that it might even encourage some non-fans who come into contact with it to take a closer look at the whole horror field.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
This one delivers the shivers!, July 20, 2005
I thoroughly enjoyed this novel, about an unquiet house, and its effects on a procession of occupants. For one thing, it's far more character-driven than any other haunted house tale I've read, and it hooked me in the sense that I wanted to find out what would happen to the very flesh and blood people Moloney portrays. Of course, the main character is the house and it has something different in store for each set of new buyers as they take possession. Instead, the house takes possession of them, and they experience various things, depending on how the house's manifestations exploit the new owners' individual weaknesses, insecurities, frailties, and fears. In one way or another, the characters who come to inhabit the house at 362 Belisle Street lead comfortless lives as they deal with various immediate threats. Combine those all-too-common human anxieties with what the they must face because of the house, and you have characters whose lives are all the more harrowing. Moloney does not string you along with cheap shocks or false tension builders such as cats jumping out of dark corners or windows banging in the wind. If a door opens by itself, it's because there's something supernatural behind it. Moloney's narrative keeps you in a continual state of tension because the story is unpredictable -- you might know something bad is going to happen soon, you just can't predict what it will be exactly. And sometimes the scares come when you don't fully expect them. The characters and their lives are drawn in detail, and while this contributes to a plot structure that is somewhat digressionary, Moloney always stays in control of the narrative and avoids overly extraneous detail. Such story development makes for a very satisfying read, and, if anything, allows for necessary breaks between the more intense sequences. It also keeps the horror effect keen-edged, and from dulling due to over-exposure and over-experience on the part of the reader. Moloney's novel is reminiscent of the mounting sense of dread found in the works of Shirley Jackson. That being said, it's fair to say Moloney has given new life to the horror genre. She's dealt thoughtfully with what might actually cause a house to become haunted, and the concrete experiences real people might face were they to take up residence in such a place. To her credit, she gives us a story that is at once credible, chilling, horrifying, and unsettling.
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