The House Next Door

This book was Fan Freaking Tastic Our narrator, Colquitt, is a hoity toity lady of society in Atlanta in the 1970 s She and her husband Walter live next door to a beautiful wooded lot with a creek and their life is nearly perfect Until the lot is sold to a couple who plan to build a beautiful modern home with lots of glass and chrome Once the house goes up, perfection leaves their lives forever I normally don t get into the plot in my reviews, and I m not going to delve too deeply here, but ther [...]

Another book where I really dug the first third and then became progressively and annoyed Narrated by a woman with the improbable name of Colquitt forgive me if this actually IS a popular name Down South I m clearly an ignorant Westerner Yankee, yo , this is a haunted house story that I d heard was fantastic from several sources, includingStephen King not in his usual, I ll blurb anything fashion, but in long passages of Danse Macabre, the title of which GoodReads seems determined to not let m [...]

WARNING THE FOLLOWING REVIEW CONTAINS PLOT SPOILERS YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED Trin s review was right on I, too, picked up this book after reading Stephen King s rave review in Danse Macabre And while I loved the beginning Pie s miscarriage was truly horrific , my admiration turned to disbelief as the house made everybody in town stray from their spouses and have sex with somebody else Just so you know it s really a curse and not plain ol horniness that s gotten hold of these people, the author has t [...]

What is the point of a haunted house In a story, it s there to scare the bejabbers out of a reader Clear enough.But here s a conundrum I found myself puzzling over early in my spooky reading career Haunted houses that are too good at what they do won t have anyone to haunt If a house earns a reputation for being scary as all get out, people will steer clear of that house And then what will it do for fun I genuinely used to wonder about this I still do This being What s a haunted house s idea of [...]

This was not really what I was expecting, but I liked it quite a lot I was expecting something along the lines of a traditional ghost story, but, instead, I got something similar to Shirley Jackson s The Haunting of Hill House but better, in my opinion The two books share quite a bit of ambiguity, in that we re never truly sure if there is something going on, or if it s all just in their heads, but I felt like this story just worked a bit better for me Almost from the start, I was kind of drawn [...]

When compiling a list of vintage horror books to read and review this month, my first and best source was Stephen King s Danse Macabre Invaluable was it in determining which novels I wanted to take a chance on it In Danse King spends three or four pages dissecting this Anne Siddons s 1978 release, The House Next Door, one of the smartest and most atmospheric haunted house tales I ve read yet Told from the point of view of Colquitt Kennedy, an upper middle class woman living in an upscale Atlanta [...]

One of four iconic American Haunted House novels This book is like nothing Siddons ever wrote before or since Her milieu is generally the contemporary New South, Old South social drama Set in suburban Atlanta think Buckhead , the modernist upper middle class shack that goes up next to the Kennedy s home is going to do than ruin their view As time goes on there is evidence that than just a few bad vibes are coming off the new neighbor s house The New Old South is still the backdrop for the nove [...]

This book was great I loved the setting, loved the writing, loved the plot This was the first Anne Rivers Siddons book that I ve read, but it will not be the last She has a way with words that made this book something special I believe this is her only book that has a supernatural element, which is unfortunate, as she did such a great job with it, but regardless, I m excited to read from her.

Colquitt and Walter Kennedy enjoy a life of lazy weekends, gathering with friends on their quiet, well heeled street and sipping drinks on the patio But when a beautiful new house is built on the vacant land next to theirs, the easy friendships and relaxed get togethers are marred by strange accidents and inexplicable happenings Though Colquitt is rational and balks at the idea of the house being haunted, she cannot ignore the endless tragedies associated with it As time goes by, it seems as tho [...]

Colquitt Walter Kennedy are a comfortable couple living out their dreams in an affluent suburb and then the lot next to them is sold It has some very sinister undertones and I m looking forward to discovering what happens next.Later This was a great book I remember picking it up because it was on Stephen King s recommended reading list in Entertainment Weekly a few years back It s a story about a group of upper class people who have lived charmed lives until construction begins in a previously [...]

2.5 starsI struggled a bit rating this one Sometimes it was 2 stars, sometimes 3 stars and then sometimes it fell in between I don t think there was a point where I didn t like it, but the narrator, Colquitt, and even some of the neighbors got on my nerves plenty of times Colquitt, for the most part, sounded so pretentious that I wanted to slap her I believe the author wanted to make her and Walter relatable characters, but instead they came off as upper middle class snobs with their gin and ton [...]

Very good psychological horror novel It starts out so bland, you wonder if it s going to be scary at all But slowly the tension builds At the half way point I was so creeped out by it, I couldn t read it at night A house emanating evil, causing worse and worse tragedy to each new family that lives in it I also liked the book because it doesn t blatantly show there is a supernatural connection, leaving you to decide for yourself Subtle, well written and worth reading.

Spooky without being gross Interesting book from an author that I ve always loved.

This is the first Anne Rivers Siddons novel I ve read, and the only one that she wrote in this genre being a haunting suspense story.It was not known to me at the time, but Stephen King had mentioned this book as one of the best haunted house stories of the 20th century.Upon finishing it, I was set on giving this book 4 stars It s been a few days since I ve been able to write up a review, and having given the story time to sit in my head for a while, I think it s worthy of 5 Thinking back on the [...]

This is a completely different haunted house story than I have ever read before The occurences are so subtle, you can easily brush them away as normal happenings, coincidence, etc But it all piles on, one thing after another.until you can no longer deny it And the ending completely blew me away What lost it a star, maybe 1 and a half stars, is how dated it is Just in the lives the main characters live, you are completely emmersed in the 70 s Is this a bad thing Maybe not, but to me, it s not a v [...]

This is a very well written book from an author who has apparently only ventured into the horror genre this one time and produced a classic This is essentially a haunted house book, but what is unique is that it is not the typical ancient haunted house It s a newly built modern house that apparently has some kind of evil presence The writing was great, the plot was creepy, and the atmosphere created by the author was masterful My one complaint It had a completely unnecessary two page epilogue th [...]

If you know me at all, you know that anything my boy Stephen King has approved of will be something I devour just as ravenously as I do his own books And with THE HOUSE NEXT DOOR, the King of horror did not lead me astray.The house is evil At least that s what Colquitt Kennedy, who lives next door, believes The interesting part is that this house isn t the spooky, decrepit, 100 year old haunted mansion that you are picturing It is a brand new designer home, an architectural marvel of pure genius [...]

Written in 1978, there is a nice period vibe in this oddly pleasant horror story Colquitt and Walter, who are constantly referred to as middle aged although only being in their thirties which may be correct but makes me feel so old have a delightful house in a wealthy suburb Perfectly suited for each other,they spend their time drinking martinis on the porch, socialising with equally well adjusted neighbours and going to Ingmar Bergman matin es Yet they do not annoy me They re perfectly nice peo [...]

After 100 pages, I have no choice but to abandon No sense of place, mood, the characters by the author are basically labelled as boring, normal people in the beginning, and she seems to try to keep them this way To the character s credit, barely anything happens in the first 100 pages, and finally there is a minor shock at the end of the first section The book was published in 1978, so standards may have been different But for a horror book, if you can t create a strong sense of foreboding, or p [...]

This was not an in your face typical horror book There was no gore, no extreme levels of violence, just an all around level of uneasiness and dread each time someone moved into the house next door and you waited to see what would eventually happen to them It reminded me of the horror books of old and this sort of slow and imperceptible build up oftentimes makes for a disturbing story.Recommended.

This is a great period horror piece basically set in a well to do Atlanta neighborhood Siddons does a masterful job juxtaposing the horror with the affluence of the characters experiencing the traumatic events This novel seems as much a character study to me as it does a haunted house tale But it s BOTH, and Siddon s pulls it off in marvelous fashion What a fine, unique book

What a satisfactory, creepy read Totally crawled under my skin and I could see and believe every word.

Darn good, edge of your seat type of haunted house story Really spooky.

wow, this was so close to being a really amazing book still pretty damn good, just not legendary good but hey.i love haunted house books, and that s what this is, only stripped of all the usual genre crap there s no ancient decaying victorian, no history of ghosts and weird noises, no creepy old lady peering out through the blinds it s a thoroughly modern, realistic, SANE and not tongue in cheek account of a middle aged couple and the events that transpire when a new house goes up next door and [...]

Colquitt and Walter Kennedy live in a nice, friendly, safe American suburb They re a little put out when the empty lot beside their nice, friendly, safe home goes under construction and POOF a new house is in its place They re grumpy, but reach out to their new neighbors and get to know the house next door And when the new neighbors have a tragedy pushing them from the house, and new neighbors move in, Colquitt and Walter try to reach out to them as well It soon becomes evident that the problem [...]

I downloaded this book because I read somewhere how much Stephen King loved it While this story of a haunted modern house is written in lavishly lavender prose, I couldn t put the damn thing down until I finished it in two days Besides shivering at the schlocky shock value of how each family who lives in the house is systematically destroyed, I very much enjoyed picking out the details that marked this book as being published in 1978 There are lots of parties thrown with hostesses wearing silky [...]

I had a lot of things to do today but instead I sat on the porch and read this whole thing, cover to cover I couldn t stop I was gripped in the fiendish hands of an unholy obsession to find out just what was going to happen to these mid 70s upper middle class people and the House of Doom Modern architecture It is evil It will reach out and get you, particularly when it s been created by the fevered brain of a young architect who isn t really from the upper middle class No, he is gasp adopted And [...]

There is a popular tendency, following Stephen King s passages in Danse Macabre to treat this interesting title as the making of a haunted house However, and I do not talk up King lightly, this is probably a mistake and one that King does not himself make Looking at Shirley Jackson s famous work, I think both women share the practice of treating their famous houses as live organisms, but in Siddons there is no traditional haunting that follows perhaps not in Jackson s work either and not even a [...]

I really enjoyed this book The fact that you could just never tell what form the horror would take on next was so unsettling This is definitely one that I can see myself re reading in the future My only minor complaint was that I was tired of hearing Colquitt explaining how they were just average people, even though they clearly lived an above average lifestyle But the uncertainty these people faced day to day, not knowing what new disaster would unfold, made for a very strong, gripping storylin [...]

I barely was able to bring myself to finish this novel because it was so problematic incredibly homophobic and anti Semitic and classist but I m sort of glad I did finish because the ending is totally twisted and actually surprised and horrified me The last few pages do not make up for this author s prejudices however, and because of those, I don t think I would recommend this to anyone Too bad, because it could have been an interesting dissection of rich white society s fear of modernity, chang [...]