#Spooktober-‘The House Next Door’ by Anne Rivers Siddons

About the book…

Thirty-something Colquitt and Walter Kennedy live in a charming, peaceful suburb of the newly bustling Atlanta.

Life is made up of enjoyable work, long, lazy weekends, and the company of good neighbors. Then, to their shock, construction starts on the vacant lot next door, a wooded hillside they’d believed would always remain undeveloped.

Soon, though, they come to realize that more is wrong than their diminished privacy. Surely the house can’t be “haunted,” yet something about it seems to destroy the goodness of every person who comes to live in it, until the entire heart of this friendly neighborhood threatens to be torn apart….

I think I first came across this book in a list of recommended reading, tucked away at the back of Stephen King’s ‘Danse Macabre’, so I picked up a copy…..and then it promptly got lost in the book stacks!

Wish I had read it sooner…this is the only ‘horror’ novel that she ever wrote and ,as such, she has an outsiders view of what does and does not constitute the unsettling feeling of dread which settles over you like a spell as you dive deep into this story of a haunted house.

At the very start, Col and Walter are about to do something so outrageous, so outside their comfort zone that they are prepared to risk everything to do so. And the everything they are risking? Their comfortable life, their social standing and close knit circle of friends.

And how will they do this?

By telling the tale of what they have witnessed to ‘outsiders’…

It starts off ignominiously enough, you have such a clear notion of exactly what kind of society these people live in. It is deep deep South, and the notions are embedded within this community so that when newcomers, the oddly named Pie and Buddy show up, uninvited, to introduce themselves, Col and alter are fair taken aback.

The empty lot next to their house is to be made into a new build-again, not the done thing in 1970’s Atlanta-their necks bristle and their outrage begins to rise. But, on being shown the blueprints of the house, by architect Kit, they concede that this house will organically ‘rise’ from the land and be a wonderful family home.

Overseeing the construction, and becoming friendly with Kit, Pie and Buddy, our narrator is taken aback by how much she actually gets on with them.

And then, the strange things begin to start, things which could be brushed off to begin with, and put down to animal attacks. Bad timing. Unfortunate health. Excuses can be made for these, but when Kit, with this his first and only designed house, in a career he had to fight his father to take up, begins to lose his artistic vision, hope, weight and confidence, the feelings of unease plant themselves in your bones.

He feels the house is wrong, somehow soured, and that things will never be the same again.

And he is right.

The notion of a haunted house, one which has no history, no previous owners or ghosts being haunted is such a refreshing notion. It rises up from the ground as a monolith to extravagance, a singular vision and a testament that Pie can arrange something and do it well.

One of the characters even jokes that they should check if it was built on a burial ground, because in this society, the idea that the bad luck could be bought into the house and take root there is, after all, the most modern of hauntings.

You would expect pretty much any of the other houses, which are, according to Claire the local estate agent, never vacant for more than a week, to be the residence of spirits and yet it is this one, the brand new house that creates this palpable sense of unease in the residents and in the readers.

As each new couple takes up their place next door, as you turn the page from one family and greet the next, you steady yourself, as Col and Walter do, to what could possibly come next.

I don’t want to spoil anyone’s pleasure of picking this up for the first time (I grabbed this on ebay for about 2 pounds) so I’ll delve no more into what happens under the roof of this uneasy house but I would highly highly recommend reading it!

About the author…