Houses without Doors [Hardcover]

Peter Straub (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 30, 1990

A spectacular collection of short fiction which includes the seeds of Straub's powerful Blue Rose trilogy.

"You expect the horrifying in the fiction of Peter Straub...and you get it." (New York Times)

"Straub at his spellbinding best." (Publishers Weekly)

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This collection of 13 psychic and horror fictions--seven of them short-shorts--reveals Straub at his spellbinding best. Two tales (first installments of his Blue Rose trilogy), are linked to Koko and Mystery and exactingly probe the consequences of boyhood clashes with evil. In "Blue Rose," sadistic Harry Beevers, 10, hypnotizes and destroys his younger brother; the tale leaps ahead to the ironic verdict in Harry's court-martial for wreaking atrocities in Vietnam. In the outstanding "The Juniper Tree," a novelist relives a harrowing, seductive summer when, at age seven, he was sexually molested in a movie house by drifter Stan, a seedy Alan Ladd lookalike. "The Buffalo Hunter" fastidiously chronicles the fixations of a 35-year-old who numbs his fear of women by sucking his coffee and cognac from baby bottles. In the ambitious gothic thriller/academic spoof "Mrs. God," a fatuous professor is lured to a creepy English mansion crammed with grisly secrets to research the papers of his poet ancestress; dead babies provide a subtheme. Wry and riveting, "A Short Guide to the City" fuses and parodies two genres: the self-congratulatory tourist blurb with a news alert on the "viaduct killer." In addition to having popular allure, Straub's fictions are playfully postmodern, resonating with insights on genre, craft and process. 150,000 first printing; $150,000 ad/promo.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 358 pages
• Publisher: Dutton (November 30, 1990)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0525249249
• ISBN-13: 978-0525249245
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,339,056 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Evocative, But Never Pretentious, April 16, 2004

By 

C. T. Mikesell (near Dallas, Texas) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Houses without Doors (Signet) (Paperback)

This collection of short stories lifts its title from an Emily Dickinson poem ("Doom is the house without a door..."). There is a sense of doom pervading each of the stories, as the major characters are cursed by psychological maladies (psychosis, repression, obsession) or are forced to interact with powers beyond their (and our) comprehension. Some of the stories end with the characters clearly not escaping their doom (most notably in "The Buffalo Hunter"), while others leave it to the reader to guess at the outcome ("Mrs. God," "The Juniper Tree"). All of the stories, including the interludes, work overtime to produce a dark mood and an off-kilter worldview.

"The Buffalo Hunter" and "Mrs. God" were my favorites. The former presents a loner who gets lost in his own imagined relationships and later in the paperback novels he reads. I'm a fan of Raymond Chandler's work, so Straub's pastiche of "The Lady in the Lake" was particularly enjoyable. If I were more familiar with Anna Karenina I might have had a better appreciation for the ending of the short story, but as it was I sensed something bad coming and Straub didn't disappoint. "Mrs. God" felt a lot like Ghost Story to me; particularly nice was the way Henry James and other authors were woven into the piece. I had read "Blue Rose" when Penguin issued it as a stand-alone mini-book in the mid-90's; it's the "oogiest" of all the stories - even the second time through it still creeped me out and made me slightly nauseated.

I enjoyed these stories a great deal. Straub can be crueler and more terrifying than some of his contemporaries, even while his syntax and phraseology are more refined. If you're a fan of Straub's or the psychological/horror genres in general you'll likely enjoy this book. Beyond that, there aren't many to whom I'd recommend this collection of short fiction, unless it would be a student who wants to see how words can be used effectively to create mood and transport readers to worlds they'd not likely find on their own.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A House Can Be Without A Door, But Still Have A Window, December 1, 2002

By 

Tyler Runde "writerpwr" (Illinois) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Houses without Doors (Signet) (Paperback)

What I loved about this collection of stories was that in every one of them it showed the dark side of people who can at least be consisdered kind of normal. Peter Straub holds nothing back when it comes to his characters and it has always been a great rule of fiction to always tell the truth. Straub has told the truth here and may have dove too deep into it for some people's tastes.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great collection of stories!!, April 13, 2002

By 

Patrick m Tinney (Louisville, KY USA) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Houses without doors

I was glad to see that Peter Straub released this short collection of his work. There are some dark & memorable stories here. Blue Rose and The Juniper Tree are the best of the lot. I enjoyed those especially since they tie in heavily to Koko and The Throat. I was sorry to see that The Ghost Village wasn't part of this collection, but, it did appear later in another of Peter's collections called Magic Terror. The last story in the book, Mrs. God is excellent. Since there is a longer, slightly different version of it, in limited release, I would recommend that instead. There are smaller interludes that divide each story and these interludes make up their own short story as well. All in all, anything by Peter Straub is a going to show what a true Master he is at his craft.