 The haunted house genre is a buyer's market with thousands of novels to choose from; however, How To Sell a Haunted House is a piece of prime genre retail and demands a reading from even the pickiest of prospective buyers. How to Sell a Haunted House by Grady Hendrix Publisher : Titan Books (17 Jan. 2023) Language : English Hardcover : 400 pages ISBN-10 : 1803360534 ISBN-13 : 978-1803360539 A Horror Book review by Jim McLeod Grady Hendrix is a fabulous author, and when he is on fire, he burns bright in the genre; How To Sell a Haunted House, his latest novel from Titan Books, sees Hendrix burning bright like a supernova. When you think that nothing new can be done with a haunted house story, Hedrix comes along and throws out the rulebook and rewrites the well-worn tropes into a fascinating, heartbreaking and chilling novel that proves, without a doubt, that when a story is told as well as this, the genre staples are still rich for mining. When Louise, a single mother living in San Francisco, finds out that both her parents have died in a car accident, she has to go back to her childhood home to deal with not only the death of her parents but her spoilt brother and the ghosts of her past. How To Sell a Haunted House, while filled with Hendrix's unique mix of horror and subtle, sly humour, marks a slight shift in tonality; this is a much more personal and thoughtful work, especially when Hendrix focuses on the dynamics of grief and the relationship between Loiuse and her brother. It takes a fair while for the spooky going ons to begin. However, Hendrix uses these set-up chapters to amazing effect; these are two broken protagonists with decades of dislike for each other, and their enforced family connection magnifies that. Resentments burn bright, and while her brother Mark, is painted as the spoilt, thoughtful and more resentful of the two, Hendrix cleverly makes the reader swither between feeling sorry for Mark and thinking that he is the worst brother ever. And when you feel that wounds are being healed, Hendrix rips off the emotional plaster and leaves an open festering wound between Mark and Louise. Having the two main protagonists of this novel as unreliable narrators was a stroke of genius as it allowed Hendrix to play and twist our emotions into one massive knot fully. Once the reader understands that grief and isolation have played an enormous role in the development of Mark and Louise from their earliest memories, both characters quickly become more relatable. The pair are the product of their upbringing, and it is their mother rather than them, which is why they both act out this way. One of the highlights of this look at the damaging effects of your past is a beautiful act set in a local diner where Mark and Louise finally have a proper adult conversation about their past lives. It is a profoundly emotional section of the novel, wonderfully written, with some chilling revelations about the pair, but there are way more chilling things in this book. As is common in haunted house novels, the spookiness of How To Sell a Haunted House begins slowly with subtle hints at the house being haunted, strange noises, things moving around, you know the score; of course, we know that the house is haunted, but by having one of their relations who happens to be an estate agent go slightly Tangina Barrons while accessing the value of the home, was a wonderful addition to the book. I've never been a fan of dolls. I have always hated puppets, so for me, the fear factor of How To Sell a Haunted House was already up at nine before reading this book, and Hendrix, as much as I love him, is now no longer on my Christmas list after, making this book an utterly and chilling experience for me. Nevermind that Louise suffers an injury to a body part that I am paranoid about damage at the hands of an evil doll, that was bad enough, but when we are finally introduced to the source of the haunting, the "malicious and evil" Pupkin, well that had me quivering with fear so much there where times I had to read the book with it flat on a table as my hands were shaking so much. I know very little about the history of American puppets. Still, thanks to the rather grim and horrific nature of many of the puppets that were shown on British TV when I was a kid, I have been left with a lifelong dislike of puppets, hell even the muppets and Sesame Street send a chill down my spine, there is no way you can convince me that Big Bird isn't a serial killer. So thanks to Henrdix and Pupkin, his magnificent monstrous creation, I will never look at any puppet in the same ever again. I can't even begin to talk about the squirrels in this book, I used to love squirrels, but they are now also on my list of things to avoid. As I mentioned earlier, grief plays a central role in this novel's narrative, which simmers under each line of this superlative novel. However, it is when the questions raised about the nature of this haunting are finally revealed that it bursts right through your heart and changes the whole nature of the narrative. You will be hard-pushed not to be affected by the heartbreaking reasons behind the haunting and its effect on the generations of this messed-up family. Despite the grief-laden feel of How To Sell a Haunted House, Hendrix still manages to slip in some of his unique style of humour; for example, the exchange between Maya and Mark, after Mark has a little flesh wound, helps to break the solemn nature of the story. The haunted house genre is a buyer's market with thousands of novels to choose from; however, How To Sell a Haunted House is a piece of prime genre retail and demands a reading from even the pickiest of prospective buyers. How to Sell a Haunted House |
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