Customer Reviews

THE UNINVITED

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I first read this book at about the age of ten, after watching the 1944 film on late night on television (I was enthralled). There are sub-plots and characters which weren't included in the movie version, but Macardle's fluid writing style keeps one's interest until the last page. The story is about strange ghostly disturbances at "Cliff End" (in the movie, the Georgian house was re-named "Windward"). There are wonderful characters: the Fitzgeralds (Pamela and Roderick) who are siblings, Stella Merideth, the young moonstruck girl who's enchanted by the dangers which lure her into her mother's past. Commander Beech is gruff and Miss Holloway is cold and rather heartless (especially towards Stella; her supposed mother was an "intimate friend" of Holloway's). The Spanish Gypsy - Carmel Casada - whom Llewellyn used as a model for his paintings holds the key to the puzzle....Macardle uses plenty of exclaimation marks throughout the book and her writing style is a wee bit dated - but this story has an ingeniously unique twist in which readers of the ghost genre should appreciate. The Irish Ms. Macardle also wrote THE UNFORESEEN, (about a woman with "second sight") DARK ENCHANTMENT (about witchcraft in France) and a non-fiction book entitled THE IRISH REPUBLIC.

For some reason, exceptional ghost stories are almost always found in short story form. Neither M.R. James, F. Marion Crawford, nor Sheridan Le Fanu-all contenders for all-time best writer of ghost stories-ever wrote a satisfactory book-length ghost story. Perhaps the strict form of this genre is too difficult to maintain beyond a certain length. Examples of ghost novels that do not disappoint are few, and they include such masterpieces as Richard Matheson's "Hell House," Shirley Jackson's "The Haunting of Hill House," and Stephen King's "The Shining." Dorothy MacArdle's "The Uninvited" is on a level with these books, and it predated them all. With its classic English setting, generational mystery, and engaging characters, it is the perfect book for curling up by the fireside on a winter's night. And don't miss the terrific 1940s movie version starring Ray Milland.

Good luck in finding the original titled novel anywhere. Copies are hard to come by in any condition. Mine is "The Literary Guild of America," 1942. Hard Cover. The dust jacket has a picture of a house and a tree over looking a cliff to the see. At first I thought it was taken from the scene in the movie by the same name. However that is the description in the book. There is even an edition that was made for the troops during the war. And not any cheaper is the Bantam Books, 1947 Paperback.

Unless you collect screen plays, be careful as the play is also out in book form.

I first saw the movie (1944) that is good in its own right. Staring Ray Milland and Ruth Hussey. You know it will be different but which one is better. In this case they are quite different and both just as good in different ways.

Roderick Fitzgerald and his sister Pamela are in search of a house and find one with some beach front. After negotiation the price they move in and may have found more then the bargain.

The story is refreshing. However the real worth of the book is the writing style of Dorothy Macardle. I was not prepared with my English to English conversion books. She also writes in the time of the time and uses terms local to the England of the 40's If you like this story then she also wrote "The Unforeseen" equally as good.

I will stay away from describing the plot, since that was done well by other reviews posted here. This is a wonderful book, especially if you enjoy British-style country house mysteries, spiced with the supernatural. The writing is superb. Ms. Macardle expertly draws you into the situation with characters that resonate and sparkle with life.

This book will not satisfy horror fans who are looking for an 'in your face' type of scare. Rather, the haunting unfolds very gradually, subtly, and is therefore all the more realistic.

If you are a fan of the classic Ray Milland film that was made from this book (The Uninvited, 1944) you are sure to enjoy the novel. Being novel length, the book has more characters than the film did, and also expands on some of the main character's histories and motivations. The Paramount film was a very faithful adaptation of the 'feel' of this novel...it was just necessarily compressed in length, and given a somewhat trite Hollywood closing that ties all the male/female relationships up a little too neatly (this does not happen in the novel).

Curiously, some scenes and even dialogue of the film are literally lifted word-for-word from this novel. The scene in the Tabacco shop, after the Fitzgerald's first purchase the house, comes to mind as the most perfect example.

It is a shame Dorothy Macardle produced so little fiction during her lifetime. I have heard she wrote a handful of short ghost stories but I've yet to track them down.

On a final note: if you enjoy the writing of Barbara Michaels you will love The Uninvited. I was first tipped off to the existance of this vintage novel through a narrative 'aside' which recommended reading The Uninvited in one of the Barbara Michaels books! (I'm not sure which of her novels mentions The Uninvited as a great book, but it might be Shattered Silk).

This is a wonderful timeless story by Dorothy Macardle. I own a hard back copy of this and try to read it at least once every couple of years. There is a light and breezy feel to this book and it would be the perfect summer read if you are tired of the run-of-the-mill.

Roderick and his sister Pamela leave the hustle and bustle of modern London looking for that perfect house on the English coast. What they find is the beautiful Cliff End overlooking the sea. From their first meeting with the sweet and lovely young Stella Meredith, whose grandfather owns the house, we know there is a larger mystery here. This is a good novel that slowly unfolds as we learn of Stella's mother Mary, and the beautiful Spanish girl Carmel who was seduced by Stella's father.

Who is the appiration that appears at the top of the stairway and why does the sickening cold always precede it? Why are there moans of anguish coming from the room that used to be the nursery? What is the real mystery of Mary's death? What about that Mimosa scent that comes with the moaning? And why do things get more stirred up every time young Stella is there? Roderick has fallen for the sweet Stella just as the reader has and both must find out.

What makes this such an excellent read is that it treats this as a straightforward story of ordinary people thrown into extraordinary circumstances, slowly unfolding as Roderick and Pamela attempt to solve this maddening riddle to an otherwise wonderful house they don't want to leave.

Both the mystery and ghost story all takes place in an entertaining day-to-day life in the English countryside kind of way, with a growing romance inching its way towards the center. Go out to your garden or your patio, pour yourself a big glass of iced tea, and enjoy something truly origional. This is a great light summer read and inspired the finest film of its kind ever made in The Uninvited, starring Ray Milland the lovely Gail Russell. You don't want to miss either.

It is a great pity that modern audiences are so unfamiliar with Dorothy Macardle's first-class 1942 ghost novel, "The Uninvited." The 1944 film based on the novel, with Ray Milland and Gail Russell, is probably more well-known, which is too bad, because, although the film adaptation was good, Macardle's book is far better.

What sets this story apart from so many others of the same genre is expressive writing, well-developed characters, a romantic atmosphere, and the touching nature of the relationships underlying the haunting. The novel brings up themes of loss, anger, cultural prejudice, and, albeit very obliquely, homosexuality, as it uncovers the reasons for the disturbances that have made a house on the Cornish coast uninhabitable for fifteen years.

London critic Roderick ("Roddy") Fitzgerald and his younger sister, Pamela, decide to join forces and buy a house outside London. Roddy feels burnt out and is exiting an unhappy love affair, and Pamela has been drifting aimlessly after years of caring for their ill and bitter father until his death. At the end of a weekend looking at properties, all of which are too expensive, Roddy and Pamela discover Cliff End, on the Cornish coast, built on a cliff facing the sea. They fall in love with it, and find, to their amazement, that its price is within their means. The reason, of course, is that no occupants have been able to remain in it for more than a few months at a time.

The owner of the house is a frosty formal naval officer, Commander Brooke, whose aristocratic blonde daughter, Mary, once lived in the house with her husband, a Welsh artist named Llywellyn Meredith. Mary and her husband are both dead, and Commander Brooke is the guardian of their beautiful, 18-year-old daughter, Stella Meredith, who is the real owner of the house, but who has not been inside it since she was three years old. The Commander has never approved of Stella's Welsh blood, and has tried to stamp its "influence" out of her with a strict, no-nonsense upbringing, keeping Stella at boarding schools and away from the tragedies that unfolded at Cliff End, and that led to her mother's death. Stella, however, is greatly attached to the idea of Cliff End, because the only memories she has of her beloved mother took place there. Although the Commander reveals, out of honesty, that other owners have left the house due to "disturbrances" there, he gives Roddy and Pamela no background on the events that might account for the disturbances.

As Roddy and Pamela begin refurbishing the house, they are determined to make friends with Stella, despite her grandfather's disapproval, and invite her to visit them and to their first dinner parties. However, Roddy and Pamela soon find their joy in Cliff End dwindling as it becomes apparent that something IS wrong with the house, something that becomes worse whenever Stella visits. The room that had been Stella's nursery will not get warm and causes depression and tortuous self-doubt in all who sleep in it; a woman's heartbeaking sobs can be heard at odd hours of the night; the housekeeper's cat, Whiskey, will not go near the stairs to the second floor; and, occasionally, the overpowering scent of mimosa (a flower not native to Cornwall) fills the house.

Slowly, from local townspeople, storekeepers, and servants, as well as their neighbor, Dr. Scott, Roddy and Pamela begin to piece together the background of the house that Commander Brooke withheld from them - the story of Mary and Llywellyn Meredith's strange marriage; the presence in the house of Carmel, Llywellen's Spanish gypsy model, and his sometime lover; the influence of Mary's dearest "friend", the obsessive, cold, Miss Holloway; and how these four lives came to intersect in tragedy.

At first, the story seems a quite plausible explanation for the unpleasant haunting: a philandering husband, a betrayed wife, a loyal friend, and a foreign gypsy hussy who was no better than she ought to be. But, as Roddy and Pamela and Dr. Scott soon perceive, some of the pieces do not align so neatly with the the small village's popular view of the story, at least not in a way that offers a solution to the hauntings. If Mary Meredith was so virtuous and good, and she is longing for her daughter, why does her ghost cause such coldness and terror when Stella is near - and if Mary's spirit is so cold and terrifying, whence comes the occasionally overpowering, yet not frightening, scent of mimosa in the house?

One night, the little group attempts a seance in the house, using a Ouija board, and its terrifying consequences make clear to all that something in the house poses a real danger to Stella, and that she must be kept away for her own safety. But Stella is angry and griefstricken at the expulsion from nearness to her adored, but little-known mother.

At last, Roddy, Pamela, and Dr. Scott, with some help from the unseen, discover the missing piece of knowledge that completes the picture and clarifies the nature of the struggle going on within the house, and especially inside the old nursery. The revelation of the truth, in a touchingly written scene, brings Stella's mother peace, allows Stella to express her love for the mother she has missed and longed for all her young life, and gives Roddy and Pamela back their home.

This story is filled with charm, beautifully written, with vivid portraits of life in a small Cornish village more than 50 years ago. The ghostly scenes are frighteningly rendered, and, at the last, the story is genuinely moving. Perhaps a refilming would resurrect interest in this lovely novel, which certainly merits renewed attention.

I have been reading this book for about twenty years and have enjoyed the film for about thirty years! Both are fantastic, but the book goes far beyond the characters and plot of the film, and gives us fully developed personalities and complex plotting. If you are a fan of mysteries, especially English mysteries, you will not be disappointed in this puzzler. As you read along, you can almost feel the wind on the cliff, hear a mournful sigh, and smell the mimosa!

When Roderick and Pamela Fitzgerald (brother and sister) move into an old house called Cliff End on the north Devon coast, they are not worried by the rumors of strange occurrences in the past. However, it is not long before their nights become sleepless nightmares. And when Stella, a new young friend, visits the house, the horrible manifestations intensify. She had lived here as a baby, and her saintly mother died in a fall from the cliff, possibly pushed by a wild young Spanish girl who served as a model for Stella's artist father. Soon it becomes apparent that there are two spirits in the house, one warm and the other terrifyingly cold, and they seem to be battling over Stella. So it becomes a case of abandoning the house or taking extreme measures to determine the truth of the cause of the hauntings and of that tragic occurrence from Stella's infancy. The suspense and the terror build as the brother and sister, with the aid of friends, try to solve the mystery and to protect Stella from unknown dangers. This is one of my top 3 all-time favorite books, and I have reread it every couple of years since I was a teenager. Oh, I don't suppose that it is a classical masterpiece, but it is as believable a ghost story as ever was written. The handling of characters and atmosphere are exquisitely done. The movie is all right, but it cannot begin to capture the intensity of this excellent suspense novel.

If you've seen the movie and know the plot twist, you'll still enjoy the book. Some interesting sub-plots were dropped from the screenplay and they add to the supernatural atmosphere of the story. Picturing Ray Milland as Roderick, Ruth Hussey as Pamela and Gail Russell as Stella as you read helps, since the three actors were perfectly cast.

The story follows a brother and sister who buy an old seaside house in England and begin to investigate the spooky occurances they experience. They delve into the history of the house and its past inhabitants as the haunting becomes more intense, figuring that by discovering the reason behind it, they can lay the spirit to rest. The story unfolds as both a neat little English mystery as well as a chilling ghost story.

Be sure you are buying the novel and not the play by Tim Kelley. That's okay in itself, but is nowhere as good as MacArdle's book; sometimes it's not easy to tell here on this site which version you are reading about.

After writing a review for the movie version in which I recommended that viewers read the book as well, I was disappointed to come here and find that the book is so hard to find that it's making the asking price (understandably) very high. My own hardback copy I ordered some years back, and I also have an old dog-eared, falling apart paperback copy that my mother had (it was one of her favorites also). I have seen it a few times in the past in large and small used book stores, and it's definitely worth a search. Much more atmospheric than the movie, in my opinion (none of the comic relief that Ray Milland brought to the character), and there were so many good side characters that were left out of the movie. In the book Roddy (rather than "Rick") is a theater critic and hopeful author rather than a composer, and a play that he is writing may be relevant to the ghost story. There is a sort of sequel that was written by the same author, "The Unforeseen." While there are other characters and the mystery is not as interesting in the latter, it does let you know what happened to the main characters in "The Uninvited" after that book ended.