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23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Transportational, Luscious and Atmospheric Gothic Horror, December 10, 2000
Straub, an American, does an astonishing job of conveying British culture and scenery in this novel. This is perhaps his greatest strength as a novelist, as similarly and yet so differently achieved in other novels, such as Shadowland and If You Could See Me Now. This novel opens with the protagonist, Julia Lofting, an American heiress, impulsively purchasing a fading mansion. We learn she has just been released from a mental institution proceeding the untimely and accidental death of her daughter. As tormented as she is by the death, Julia realizes it has finally broken the spell of enchantment of her domineering and brutal husband. She feels the purchase of the mansion, where she plans to live alone and reevaluate her life and its direction, will symbolically mark her first step down the road of independence and personal will. Ironically, it is the house which chooses her for its own expression of will. Julia runs into an eerie little girl in the park across the way who bears an uncanny resemblance to her own daughter. However, unlike her own sweet child, this girl is prone to mutilating small animals and terrorizing the other children of the park. Soon, the malevolent girl begins to appear in the bizarre black and red mirrors of the upper floors of the mansion. As a reader, we are uncertain at this point whether the sightings are strictly the hallucinations of a distraught and nervous woman, the spectre of her daughter come to haunt her or some demon, eminating from the mansion, toying with her. The rest of the novel delivers the answer in a tense and unrelenting series of climactic events. The characterizations and conspiring of the characters puts one in mind of Iris Murdoch. While characters bind together to make plans and imagine themselves engineers of events and perceptions, they are in fact being manipulated by outside forces of which they have no knowledge. DON'T READ THE FOLLOWING--SPOILER--IF YOU HAVEN'T READ THE BOOK: While the ending may seem unsatisfying, it in fact contains the entire theme of the novel. We realize that this story was not really about Julia, after all, but about the price of her husband's unchallenged reign of cruelty and callousness. Julia, never really a central figure in her own life, turns out not to be the central figure even of this novel which primarily features her. Her husband Magnus, "king", is seemingly born with a commanding and irresistable personality to which his entire family kowtows. Similarly, his first daughter, Olivia, is born with such an inherently unfeeling and dominating personality. However, being illegitimate and poorly treated by her mother, she has no checks on her own expression of the temperament. The force of her evil is something which cannot be stopped even by death. And she intends to focus her energies to wreak vengeance upon Magnus by destroying everyone close to him, one by one, before going after him personally. After Julia's death, Magnus and his spinster sister Lily are feeling smug and certain of themselves. They sneer at their new-agey, socialist adopted brother for running off to Los Angeles. And now, not only do they have complete control over Julia's money but they are no longer burdened with the problem of Julia herself. They fancy themselves the king and queen of their own miniature dynasty. Yet, it is clear from the final paragraphs of the novel, that Olivia is not finished with them. Lily spots her right outside her own window and is suddenly gripped with fear, realizing that the ghosts were real and now there may be more than one who is upset with them.
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18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Come meet Julia Lofting. You'll never forget her., July 16, 2000
One summer day, Julia Lofting buys a lovely home in a quiet street on the fashionable borough of Kensington, in London. This is the first house she sees, so it's rather hasty, isn't it? However, who could blame her? In Julia Lofting, Straub gives the first foray on the exquisite architecture of characters that has been a trademark of his craft. Julia, in a way, opens the path for other memorable Straub women, like Alma Mobley (in "Ghost Story"), Laura Allbee and Patsy McCloud (in "Floating Dragon"), Sarah Spence (in "Mystery") and more clearly, Nora Chancel (of "The Hellfire Club"), who in more ways than one seems a sister entity to Julia. Too wealthy for her own good, Julia is a troubled soul who seems to solve every situation by fleeing. She fled America for England, then she fled an unbearable freedom for marriage to charismatic yet voracious Magnus Lofting, a barrister with a name but no money and a few secrets in his past, then, she fled in tragedy and grief that marriage and an unhappy household in search for solace and the freedom she shunned, but in this lovely Georgian house, Julia finds she won't be able to run anymore, but rather will have to face multiple ghosts, from within and from the past. Perfectly written, well settled, with an unforgettable climax, "Julia" is Straub's first foray into the supernatural and it suceeds where other novels merely tried. The elements of melodrama and grand-guignol, which seem like recquirements for stories of this type, are schewed and in exchange, Straub follows the rule of the classic gothic novel (all the narrative elements are there, including the heroine, the castle and the ghost)-- including the obsessive fact that the past will become ever more important than the present itself, leading to the atmosphere of ominous angst that is one of the best effects of this memorable novel, that was first published in 1975. Definitely a novel worth reading; inspiring, haunting, and in more ways than one, unforgettable.
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15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Rich And Idle, August 19, 2000
It's hard to sympathize with a character who seems as bent on her own destruction as the title character in Peter Straub's "Julia." The story opens with rich, harmless, and seemingly brainless, Julia Lofting in the process of leaving her brutal, domineering husband Magnus (With a name like that you'd hardly expect him to be the timid, sensitive type.) after the death of their daughter in a dining room tracheotomy gone wrong. Understandably distraught, she buys a stupendous, eight-bedroom house in London. No sooner does she gain possession of the keys than she spots a little girl who reminds her of her own dead daughter, and becomes obsessed with this child who, we subsequently learn, makes The Bad Seed look like Anne of Green Gables. Julia's new home, once the scene of a horrific murder, starts manifesting curious occurrences right away. The depiction of the haunting is genuinely frightening and ambiguous. The way that Straub upends the cliché of the cold that traditionally accompanies ghostly visitations was particularly effective in that it gave the house an oppressive, soporific atmosphere that almost (but not quite) explained Julia's inertia. Although this multi million heiress experiences a plethora of weird phenomena including ghostly voices, regular sightings of that god awful little girl, and a the death of a psychic friend, she resolutely stays in that wretched house. It all ends badly, as these things invariably do. Alas, it also ends in total confusion. Perhaps it was Mr. Straub's intention that we should share Julia's growing disorientation. If so, success was his. By the end of the story I wasn't sure of what was going on. There was no resolution of things that had gone before. No reason was ever given for the ghost child's malign nature and a totally, unnecessary main character ended up working as a janitor in LA! HUH? For me confused and unresolved endings are a no-no. I may have to accept them in life but I will not have them in my fiction. For those of you, however, who like evil blonde children, dead cockney psychics, and rich people so idle that they will not even save their own lives, I highly recommend "Julia."
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