Stephen King the Haunting of Hill House Book Review
The Book That Terrified Neil Gaiman. And Carmen Maria Machado. And Dan Simmons.
Nosotros asked 13 authors to recommend the most frightening books they've ever read. Here'due south what they chose.
"The Haunting of Hill House" past Shirley Jackson
The scariest book I've ever read is "The Haunting of Hill House" past Shirley Jackson. I read information technology i night next to my sleeping wife and found myself unable to move, unable to become to bed, unable to do anything except keep reading and praying the shadows around me didn't movement.
— Carmen Maria Machado, writer of "Her Trunk and Other Parties"
[ Read the original Times review of "The Haunting of Hill House." ]
"The Collector" by John Fowles
I never actually recovered from "The Collector," by John Fowles, a work of shattering brilliance and unbearable suspense — every bit well every bit the clear inspiration for "The Silence of the Lambs." "The Collector" presents the reader with a pair of unforgettable adversaries, locked in a desperate withal restrained struggle: Frederick Clegg, the introverted kidnapper, and Miranda Gray, his prisoner. Writing before the F.B.I. created its criminal profiling unit — earlier the term "series killer" had even been coined — Fowles was there, methodically exploring the reasoning of humanity'south most terrifying predators.
— Joe Colina, author of "Strange Weather"
[ Read the original Times review of "The Collector." ]
"Oliver Twist" past Charles Dickens
I think it — 13 years old, in the suburban security of a life I took for granted. "Oliver Twist" snatched all of that away, when the boy was stripped of everything and left alone. I aching over questions I never agonized over before. What if everyone died, leaving me alone? Adults were selfish and brutal, and in the case of Bill Sikes, evil incarnate. Sikes scared me correct down to the bone and still haunts my dreams. I got goose bumps just typing this.
— Marlon James, writer of "A Brief History of 7 Killings"
"The Haunting of Colina Business firm" by Shirley Jackson
The books that take profoundly scared me when I read them — made me want to sleep with the calorie-free on, made the cervix hairs prickle and the goose bumps march, are few: Henry James's "The Turn of the Screw," Peter Straub'southward "Ghost Story," Stephen King'south "It" and "'Salem's Lot" and "The Shining" all scared me silly, and transformed the night into a virtually dangerous place. But Shirley Jackson's "The Haunting of Hill Business firm" beats them all: a maleficent business firm, existent human protagonists, everything half-seen or happening in the dark. It scared me every bit a teenager and it haunts me withal, as does Eleanor, the girl who comes to stay.
— Neil Gaiman, writer of "Norse Mythology"
[ Read the original Times reviews of "The Turn of the Screw," "Ghost Story," "It" and "The Shining." ]
"Pet Sematary" past Stephen King
"Pet Sematary," by Stephen King. I got it as a souvenir when I was 11 or 12. I remember being and then scared reading it that I threw the volume abroad from me as if information technology were a poisonous insect. For the first time I felt a concrete sensation with literature. It's then night, and so cruel. Information technology's also very scary: the utter hopelessness, the way King simply doesn't offer any relief.
— Mariana Enriquez, author of "Things We Lost in the Fire"
[ Read the original Times review of "Pet Sematary." ]
"Come Closer" by Sara Gran
In the fall of 2001, I was working by myself on a weekend afternoon at a mystery bookstore in Greenwich Village. Traffic was tedious and I had some reanimation to read Sara Gran's "Come Closer," which i of the bookstore's co-owners recommended highly. I generally shy away from horror — gore on flick doesn't do it for me, and my imagination runs wild with the print versions — but once I began Gran'southward novel, about a young adult female named Amanda who begins to behave in strange, inexplicable ways, I could non stop until I reached the very concluding line: "And that's all I've ever wanted, really: someone to love me, and never leave me alone." A common wish transformed into monstrous deed made me shiver in fear, a feeling that persisted until the end of my shop shift, and in the years thereafter.
— Sarah Weinman, author of the forthcoming "The Real Lolita"
"A Reaper at the Gates" by Sabaa Tahir
The scariest book I've read in a long fourth dimension is "A Reaper at the Gates," by Sabaa Tahir. Though it has terrifying, fantastical monsters (picture the kind of face up that would earn the name "Nightbringer"), the scariest part of this volume for me comes in a hauntingly visceral portrayal of domestic abuse. Some scenes were and so terrifying and hard to read I became physically nauseated!
— Tomi Adeyemi, author of "Children of Blood and Os"
"The Hot Zone" by Richard Preston
Possibly the scariest volume I've ever read was Richard Preston's nonfiction thriller "The Hot Zone," nearly outbreaks of the Ebola virus and the efforts to place and contain that sort of hemorrhagic fever. I like Stephen King's comment that he read "The Hot Zone" betwixt his splayed fingers. There are times when the elementary listing of factual events can be more frightening than fifty-fifty the best works of imagination a novelist can concoct — although Shirley Jackson's classic "The Haunting of Loma Business firm" comes in a very close second to "The Hot Zone" on my personal read-through-splayed-fingers list.
— Dan Simmons, author of the forthcoming "Omega Canyon"
[ Read the original Times review of "The Hot Zone." ]
"The Autobiography of My Mother" by Jamaica Kincaid
The scariest volume I've ever read is "The Autobiography of My Mother," by Jamaica Kincaid. It'due south categorized as literary fiction, merely it's a horror novel, too. It's narrated by a woman whose mother dies giving birth to her and death is the book's obsession. The book is bleak and venomous and nonetheless it'south written with such spare beauty. It'south her masterpiece.
— Victor LaValle, writer of "The Changeling"
[ Read the original Times review of "The Autobiography of My Mother." ]
"Parable of the Sower" by Octavia E. Butler
The scariest book I've ever read is Octavia E. Butler's well-nigh-futuristic "Parable of the Sower." Much of Butler's work is frightening because it feels so plausible and true, fifty-fifty when she'due south writing about aliens or vampires. Just this volume'southward dystopia of walled-off communities, useless government, unchecked violence and corporate slavery feels similar the waiting headlines of tomorrow — and as well many of our headlines today. When I first began reading information technology, I could take glimpses of the teenager Lauren Olamina's world simply a few pages at a time. But Butler forced me to abound stronger equally I read. Despite the horror of its prescience, the stubborn optimism that burns at the cadre of "Parable of the Sower" helps me face our truthful-life horrors. Equally Butler wrote, "The only lasting truth is Change."
— Tananarive Due, author of "My Soul to Keep"
[ Read the original Times review of "Parable of the Sower." ]
"Helter Skelter" by Vincent Bugliosi
I came of historic period reading pulp fiction similar Iceberg Slim and V. C. Andrews as well as truthful-criminal offense books similar "In Common cold Blood." One summer when we were staying in a firm in the country — I must have been 14 — I read "Helter Skelter," by Vincent Bugliosi, and began my lifelong obsession with murderous cults. I developed terrible indisposition and lay awake with visions of Manson and his girls lurking behind the trees outside my window, waiting to become me — or maybe for me to join them.
— Danzy Senna, author of "New People"
[ Read the original Times review of "Helter Skelter." ]
"In the Cut" by Susanna Moore
"In the Cut," by Susanna Moore. I am not usually drawn to detective or murder mysteries, and am ambivalent about books that hinge on erotics and violence against women. But this is such a deft and smart book. I gulped it down in my dorm room subsequently teaching in Vermont during the twenty-four hours and could not slumber for the rest of the night.
— Marina Budhos, writer of "Watched"
[ Read the original Times review of "In the Cutting." ]
"Expiry in Spring" by Mercè Rodoreda
"Death in Spring," by Mercè Rodoreda, is a terrifying book for me both psychologically and metaphorically speaking, making any dystopian or scary novels written today seem like a placidity, tranquil stroll through America's nigh festive beachfronts. Her images were so highly ferocious and then controlled that any misguided readers could hands mistake her brilliance for capricious oversight or chaotic overintoxication or abuse of symbolism. I honey how she uses language in a poetic fashion to penetrate the horrors of fascism and the horrors of survival or of wanting to survive in a debased system that abuses human basic need: to merely be.
— Vi Khi Nao, writer of "Sheep Car"
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/16/books/review/author-recommended-scary-books.html
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