My novel, The Clocks in This House All Tell Different Times, tells the story of a girl who walks through a dark forest to a big house. The forest was treacherous, but the house was even worse—a pseudo-sanctuary inhabited by fallen nobles, drunk and noisy, just a step away from the filthy and filthy.
As I wrote this story, I realized that I was foolishly breaking into a long and glorious tradition of writing about houses of horror, just as I had foolishly broken into many unsightly, unfamiliar houses over the years. Maybe I love these places in fiction because I hate and fear them in real life.
The places you try to avoid in real life have become attractive temptations in the pens of writers ranging from Dickens to Daphne Dumurier to Richard Adams.
Below is a good book list of bad houses. These houses are different from each other, or frightening, or disturbing, or comical—but they all inspire increasingly intense panic and uneasiness, just as we (or maybe just me) arrive at a strange place and instantly realize that we cannot adapt, and will never adapt, and the best we can hope for is to avoid the terrible gaffe we feel. In these houses, the flush toilet is broken, the doorknob is taken off your hand, you say the wrong thing, and then the owner decides to hate you accordingly.
Sorry Sartre, but I think he got it wrong slightly. Hell is not someone else's house, but someone else's house.
1. "Rebecca", Daphne Dumurier Rebecca
Rebecca, the first Lady Winters, died in a ship accident but remains haunted by the lavish MADELEY estate off the coast of Kanish. The house remained the same as it had been when she left. Her housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers, stubbornly remains as if she were a messenger from the ghostly world. The second Lady Winters knew she would never be up to that capacity. All she could do was stagger forward.
2. The Haunting of Hill House, Shirley Jackson
At the beginning of her unparalleled novel, Jackson sends a four-person team of horror lovers to a remote American Indian mansion for a paranormal experiment. We are told that the mountain house is "evil" and "sick.". The trouble is that the woman who informs us of this is the shy, reclusive Eleanor, who may not be entirely sound and stable. In this way Jackson hinted, the most frightening of the houses were some sort of Rorschach inkblot, or even a blank canvas. We carry the fear ourselves and let it sit next to us on the couch.
3． The Castle, Kafka
In 1922, Kafka, suffering from tuberculosis, sat down to write the story of K, a land surveyor who, in order to eliminate a mistake by the bureaucracy, desperately wanted permission to enter the formidable castle. Reports indicate that Kafka had planned for his protagonist to eventually die in a nearby village, while his case was still ongoing and his legal identity was still pending — but unfortunately the author could never have let it get there. His death leaves the mystery of The Castle unanswered forever.
4. The Hospice, Robert Aickman
Ekman was a respected Englishman (president of the London Theatre Society and co-founder of the Inland Shipping Association) and wrote horror novels. "The Shelter" is probably the purest disturbing short story I've ever read, although (or, because) I'm not entirely sure if anything truly terrible is going on. It's about Maybury, a traveling businessman, spending the night in a mysterious house, which could be a hotel, or a hospital, or some sort of purgatory. Inside the house, guests sleep in pairs in a room because they hate being alone. At the same time they devoured a lot of food while their ankles were locked on the table. At some point in the night, there may have been a murder. But the room was too dark, the temperature of the thermostat was too high, and it was impolite to ask embarrassing questions. And eat a big meal, and then rest well.
5. "Long Days Leaving Traces", Kazuo Ishiguro
Kazuo Ishiguro is a master of dramatic side-eyeing, and as a writer, he tends to place himself at a distance from the center of the plot, quietly working on creating an environment that almost forces us to look away. "Long Days" is the memoir of Stevens, the loyal and dutiful butler of the luxurious Darlington House. But it is also (essentially) a story of passion that threatens his straight and strong collar, a story of an unbelieving aristocrat who became a quasi-traitor during World War II. Stevens clearly felt that some gates were not allowed. Kazuo Ishiguro very gently invited us to pry them open.
6. House of Leaves, Mark Z Danielewski
How does one begin to tour The Hall of Literary Mirrors of Denilisky, let alone explain the damn event? Ostensibly, it's about the Navison family returning home only to find their house in Virginia completely changed. The inside of the house is bigger than the outside. An aisle that popped up out of nowhere. It looks like an endless spiral staircase. At the same time, the book boldly mutated. Denilisky intersperses mentions of films and essays that do not exist. His footnotes lead to new ones, which lead us down into wormholes. I'll reread it one day, but it makes me nervous again.
7. Watership Down, Richard Adams
Before anyone raises an outcry, please look at my defense: a) the rabbit hole is simply the rabbit's dwelling; b) the enduring "Watership Heights" is a book that looks at the world from the height of the rabbit's eyes; and c) the rabbits in the Cowslip rabbit farm are the most human among the beasts. How creepy it is that a bunch of lazy, uneconscionable aesthetes can hang out like royals all day long, as long as they turn a blind eye to meatless farmers. Adams's wandering warriors initially thought the rabbit farm was a refuge. But it was a place of horror, a terrible house where sleepwalking residents walked toward the trap.
8. "Great Prospects", Dickens
When Pip visits the eerie Sartis mansion (apparently named after a real mansion in Rochester, Kent), Dickens's novel reaches its climax early. This was Miss Havisham's house, still wrapped in her wedding dress, placed an untouched multi-layered cake on the table to let it mold, and made sure that all the clock hands were pointed at eight forty. There is no doubt that Dickens wrote the great ghost stories of his time. But I don't think he's ever summoned such a tragic, so creepy ghost as magically.
9. The Magus, John Fowles
At an age when I was easily impressed, I stumbled upon this novel, and the experience was like walking into the middle of a fireworks display: dazzling, gorgeous, and a little scared. Fowles wrote a gripping story about seduction and betrayal: the arrogant Nicholas Joffi was cursed by a greek hermit who loved to play pranks. The estate on the island is a laboratory where Nicholas Jölfi stays with the rats. Fowles not only teased his protagonist, he also teased us beautifully.
10. Lucky Jim, Kingsley Amis
For anyone who has misjudged the atmosphere, ruined a dinner party, or done something humiliating in high society, luckily there's always Lucky Jim, one of the funniest books of all time. At the home of Professor Welch and his terrible son Bernard, the comedic effect grew stronger when the guests were forced to join the chorus of love songs. The first time I read this passage—when I was 18 years old, on a train—I laughed so much that I spilled my drink to the ground, and then as I tried to turn back, I fell head-to-head down the aisle. Stupid real life imitates great art, and this is an example.
(Translated by Liu Lian)
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