Customer Reviews

Julian's House

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

A husband and wife team of parapsychologists spend the summer in a haunted house in hopes of recording supernatural phenomenon. Hawkes uses evocative language and intricate character developement to make this simple premise come to life. Replete with eerie lights, sceances, and apparitions, this book is probably the best ghost story since "The Shining." Recommended for fans of Shirley Jackson and Barbara Michaels

This is a well crafted, gripping read for those who love ghost stories. Evocative of Henry James' 'The Turning of the Screw', this novel is spellbinding, as the past and the present seem to merge into a new reality.

A husband and wife team, parapsychologists by profession, lease a well known haunted house in order to record all paranormal phenomena which may occur during their tenancy. This, however, turns out to be more than they can ultimately handle. The house begins to overwhelm them, and they personally begin a slow metamorphosis over time. Their marriage begins to undergo a change, as well. Whether this is as a result of ghostly manifestations or not, I leave to the reader to decide.

Suffice to say, I trust that this beautifully written ghost story will not disappoint the reader.

If you are looking for your typical gory, haunted house book then don't read this one. "Julian's House" is much better than the typical book of this kind. I was suprised by the subtlety of it all. Two experts in the field of parapsychology visit a home that has had more tenants than you can shake a stick at. All of the people who have lived in the house report the same phenomena. So Sally and David Curtiss move into the Hawke's home expecting the same. They get so much more. This book is spooky and in a way strange. "Julian's House" makes you think: Do the ghosts really exist? What part of Sally and Davids' expectations explain their experiences?. A thinking man's book-not written from a template. The ending has been debated hotly between my wife and me since we read the book. You read it and see if you can figue out what really happened.

I'll say this for "Julian's House", it certainly ranks as one of the more well researched haunted house stories I've come across. I think therein lies part of the problem; the author spends so much time bombarding us with the details of parapsychology and psychic research that the story itself seems to get lost in the shuffle. While the book is well written and full of evocative language, the thrill element of a good haunted house story is sorely lacking. What's the point of ghosts if not to give a scare or two? Try "The Woman in Black" by Susan Hill for a far better haunted house story.

I enjoyed reading this book because it was interesting to read the scientific theories around parapsychology. Additionally, the characters were well developed and quite human, and the story was interesting. Its best ghost story I have read since House of Echoes by Erskine.

I'll go out on a limb and say that this is the best book of its type since Henry James's The Turn of the Screw. That is, it's an excellent literary novel as well as a genuinely terrifying ghost story. Hawkes's account of the professional and erotic tensions in a young marriage would be worth reading even if it didn't have ghosts in it. But the supernatural elements don't just spice up the story; they're an integral part of it. The ghosts feed off the human tension in the book, and vice versa. It's a beautifully constructed book, too, one of the rare, successful novel-length ghost stories. The only book that comes close is Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House, and this is better.

This is a novel I read and really enjoyed back when it first came out. However, when I picked it up for a second read recently (well over a decade later) it failed to hold my interest; in fact, I couldn't finish it. This is not the case with many mystery novels in my library which I have read over and over every few years.

On the plus side the book has a very subtle haunting, which makes it all the more believable. It also employs a device I dearly love from the golden age of 1920s-1940s mysteries: there is a section where surveys from prior tenants of the house are reproduced in fascimile, and there are clues to the mystery hidden within these documents for the sharp reader.

This book also (in places, not consistantly) has some of the most beautifully descriptive passages I have ever read in a supernatural novel.

So why did it fail to engage me the second time around? I think there are two weaknesses to the story. First off, much more is darkly hinted at than ever actually happens. So those hints lose much of their ability to chill when you know the ending. But more importantly, the book features its male investigator 'David' most prominantly, often telling the story from his perspective, and I found his personality and actions not always all that likeable. His weaknesses were frustrating at points.

Is it necessary to like the main character in order to enjoy a book? For me it is, especially in a long book like this. Reading a long novel is like spending a long time chatting with someone -- you prefer to be in the company of someone you get on well with, and perhaps even look up to. At least I do.

David's character is not unlikeable, he just wasn't as engaging as I would have preferred in a main protagonist. But I still give the novel three stars for its various beautifully descriptive passages, and its subtle and very realistic account of a serious inquiry into a fictional haunting.

I am a reader with a lifetime passion for ghost stories, and Julian's House is one of my all-time favorites.
This one is not to be missed.

Sally and David Curtiss, a young married couple with some unresolved issues between them, lease the house of the title to conduct psychical research. While both are scientists, Sally herself is also psychic; David suspects that she senses something in the house despite the failure of their equipment to record anything tangible. Deep down, he is envious of her ability and wishes desperately to share in the experience of a true haunting.

The narrative shifts seamlessly between viewpoints, and as the mystery of the house's tragic past unfolds we are not sure whose perspective is accurate. The house itself is almost another character - Hawkes weaves the language like a master and creates a place that resonates with past events; an incredibly evocative setting that almost lives and breathes.

The conclusion of the story is intensely satisfying - by then, we know what happened to poor Julian all those years ago. What we do not know is precisely what took place today, in the present. That is Hawkes' genius: the elusive quality of what David and Sally experience in that house is echoed by what the reader is experiencing. The book's impact of quiet terror hits on some deep, almost subliminal level, after having stolen up behind you some time before so that you're not quite sure why you are so afraid.
This, of course, is the very nature of a haunting. I cannot recommend this book highly enough.

This was a difficult book for me to rate - it wasn't bad, by any means, but it didn't really hold my interest until the last 50 pages or so.

Beyond that, I didn't find the characters to be particularly likable. The main characters are relatively newly-married, but their relationship has some serious problems; problems they don't really talk about (in fact, they seem to tacitly agree to ignore them), much less try to fix. David becomes pretty obsessed with the house early on, and his professionalism goes out the window all too quickly, as does his ability to notice how unsettled and upset the house makes his wife. Sally, for her part, spends quite a bit of time not telling David about what she experiences or how the house makes her feel. In short, there's a real lack of communication between them that becomes fairly repetitive and a bit boring (and frustrating) after a little while.

Then there's the house itself. It certainly has an interesting backstory, and reading the questionnaires that were filled out by some of the previous tenants was enjoyable. That said, aside from a couple of compelling sittings with a medium, and some of Sally's experiences, the book didn't offer much in the way of scares or action. It was much more about Hawkes creating an ever-building sense of impending doom, which she quite skillfully did. The problem is that the story just sort of plods along, with a lot of repeated experiences and little in the way of new developments.

Plus, a vast majority of the book is chock-full of the lectures that other reviewers have mentioned - we learn quite a bit about psychology, parapsychology, physics, etc., and while some of that information is intriguing, for the most part, it only serves to slow the book down even more, particularly since this is another area in which there is a fair amount of repetition.

Another issue I had was with the fact that the story is told from three different third person POVs- first David's, then a secondary character's, and finally Sally's. I tend to not prefer when stories are told in that manner; for me, it makes stories seem a bit too disjointed for my tastes, and some things get lost in the shuffle (there are some loose threads that are never fully explained).

I know it sounds like I really didn't enjoy the book, but the last several chapters were actually very good - tightly plotted, with some disturbing events, and the reveal of pertinent information. Hawkes does offer up the question of whether or not certain things are really happening, or if they're merely all in Sally's and David's minds, which was certainly an intriguing point to ponder.

For me, what it boils down to is that the book was quite slow and repetitive, and had a disappointing lack of scares and chills. That said, it did offer a somewhat different take on haunted houses, so for anyone who enjoys reading books in that particular genre, I would say that this book is worth reading.

This is a modern classic ghost story that is just about as good as Shirley Jackson's "Haunting of Hill House."

I own the hardback of Julian's House and read it every few years and am about to read it for the 4th time. A true classic.

Sadly, nothing Ms. Hawkes wrote afterward cast the same spell and I believe she now teaches here in NYC.