House Next Door

Wow! Stephen King put this on his list of best horror novels; I’m not a King reader (I could not finish The Shining, even in daytime, because I was just too scared). But unlike your typical haunted house story, this house is a newly-built house, not an ancient castle or creepy Victorian mansion. Nothing but tragedy touches the lives of the three different families who occupy the new house next door to Colquitt & Walter Kennedy and, as the horrors escalate, they decide to take matters into their own hands. Set in 1960s suburban Atlanta, this book grabbed me from beginning to end and I’ve re-read it several times since. Note: this is Siddons’ only horror novel; she usually writes genteel Southern fiction.

I have been a fan of Anne Rivers Siddons and have chosen her books for lazy vacation reading but this book sums up the worst of the lot. Beginning with quirky character names like Colquit and Semmes and moving on to her overuse of cliches of rump sprung couches this book attempts to take its place with horror genre but falls quite short of that. It is just odd, not clever and certainly not scary. I wish I had taken it out of the library and not spent good money on an E read.Her leading cast of rich, well educated and Southern gentlemen and women are like paper cut outs. They drink from morning until night, ice always klinking in the bourbon or Bloody Mary's thick with celery while the supporting players wear polyester pants and dresses whose children pick their noses and take Instamatic pictures of the house. I know one thing for certain and that is I want my money back. This book is a horror, not the house in it. Call me odd but I never need to read again about a little girl who has massive diarrhea at the big party or the two gay men with sickly white skin. This is not a horror story it is a horrible mess of a book. It is frightening in the sense that it is so bad.

My only real drawback for this book was the incredibly pretentious middle class narrative of the main character. The story itself and all of its twists are absolutely terrifying and I found myself riveted from the very 1st page. This book came highly recommended and I can definitely see why. It is one of the more unique haunted house stories I have ever encountered.

This is our book club's October selection. I must admit that it isn't quite as spooky as I had hoped. There are a few spine-tingling moments (mostly in Part Two) with phone calls from the other side and TVs turning on their own, oh my! But, overall, the point of view detracts from the book by distancing the reader from the action and preventing anything from being truly frightening. The premise of this book, though, is quite good and I am not sure how else these three short stories could have been presented in one semi-cohesive book.Unfortunately, the ending feels terribly rushed and rather chaotic. There isn't a real final confrontation, and I feel like I am still left with questions. Still, I think that this will provide fodder for an interesting discussion on Sunday. I am surprised by some of the dialogue and I am sure that some will want to talk about Greene in particular.

I had just tried, for the third time, to read House of Leaves. Having fallen out of interest again, with the characters, and the overwriting, I floated back to the book's reviews to see if anything that others who had made it through the book had written, could inspire me to pick it up again. It was there, in a review not dissimilar to the one I had written of House of Leaves in 2013, that I came across a recommendation for a good haunted house story. This one. And I must agree, that reviewer knew his stuff - This IS a real haunted house (and haunted people) story. This book was written in 1978 so some of the views are outdated (but a good reminder of how far we've come) and the story interesting. I liked the characters very much. I loved the way the author defined malice, how she packed it in friendliness, benignness. Because that's often how terror finds us - through a person, a moment, an experience that we misjudged. For the sake of this story, I appreciated the willingness of the main character to consistently doubt her gut. In real life though, the gut is precisely what helps you avoid the experience of real life terror. When my gut turns on, you can be sure I will be listening to it. In the mean time, this is a very well written story about a truly haunted house. I hope you enjoy it as I did!

I've been steadily reading my way through Anne Rivers Siddons books and will no doubt continue to absorb every tome this iconic Southern writer has offered to her legions of fans. Without knowing what "The House Next Door" was about, I bought it sight unseen and dove right in. This books is eerily off-kilter, yet balanced and steeped in realism as it tells the story of a well to do, thirty-something year old Southern couple named the Kennedy's, who lead a rather common place life in the affluent suburbs. They are settled in their intentionally childless life, with their work and their neighborhood social life. They throw cocktail parties on their back patio and keep to their even-keeled rhythm of life until a house is built by an up and coming architect in the vacant lot next door. The author takes us through three couples who move into this particular house, one after the other, and strangely,one tragedy after another quickly transpires with a theme so coincidental, it couldn't be anything but a curse that envelopes the environs. Narrated in the voice of Colquitt Kennedy as she tells of the uncanny horrors that takes place next door, this book shocks and surprises all the way through and is one more reason why I am an Anne Rivers Siddons fan.

I had heard about this book for years without being able to get my hands on a copy, and boy was it worth the wait. The book is also in great condition and was delivered very quickly- I can’t recommend this enough. Wonderful read!!!

I found this to be a disappointing read. I was looking forward to a gothic, edge of the seat, haunted house tale. Instead I got a drawn out tale about a malevolent house that should have been scary but wasn’t. The ending was extremely cliched and obvious.

Excellent service. As described. Thank you

**mild spoilers**In honour of Ms. Siddons' passing in 2019, I took The House Next Door off the "to be read" list. It did not disappoint. Siddons is a good writer, particularly in the passages between the big plot points. Well-paced and well-written, The House Next Door effortlessly jumps genres. It's not quite a horror novel, although it's got horrific and Gothic elements. If the tone were different, it might almost be a comedy of manners, since most of what happens is boundaries of grace and decorum are crossed. Siddons mercilessly skewers the characters, too. Colquitt is an exasperating Southern lady, and for most of the novel, she is the voice of sanity...until the ending "twist," when you start to question if she was the crazy one all along. A worthy and entertaining way to pass a few hours of reading time

I'm a big fan of ghost stories, and while the characters were a bit odd, the atmosphere in the novel builds steadily and this author kept my interest from the very start, which only those I regard as "better" writers manage to do. A few hours of reading spent in fictional pleasure.