TITLE: Sick Houses: Haunted Homes and the Architect of Dread
AUTHOR: Leila Taylor
PUBLISHER: Repeater
PUBLISHING DATE: February 11, 2025
PAGES: 322
SOURCE: ARC
FROM GOODREADS: The history of horror begins with a house. From Otranto to Amityville, the haunted house story endures because it perverts what is equally the most universal and the most personal of the home. Our home is an extension of our self, a manifestation of our identity, and a repository of our memories. It is a micro-universe of our own creation that we control. It is also where we are the most vulnerable because we are supposed to be the most safe.
Whether it is a decrepit Victorian mansion, a modernist luxury high-rise, a little cottage in the woods, or a starter house in the suburbs, Sick Houses explores how the horror genre in film, television, and literature uses architecture and the ideology of the home against us. It looks at the mythology of the American Dream and how the lure of homeownership becomes a trap. It celebrates the witch house, the power of the crone, and the fear of aging women who live alone. It explores how concrete utopias became ready-made mise en scene for urban terror.
From the betrayal of sentient shape-shifting houses to shadow-self dollhouse doppelgangers, Sick Houses examines how the horror genre subverts and corrupts that which is the most sacrosanct.
Sick Houses analyzes houses of all kinds. The chapters are broken down into specific categories and include American Houses, Dead Houses, Doll Houses, and Witch Houses to name a few. The author has definitely completed the necessary research and used examples and references from houses featured in horror movies, houses built by renowned (and sometimes odd) architects, houses lived in by famous killers and television shows such as The Twilight Zone. This was a definite plus for both a pop culture and true crime junkie like me. I learned a lot about what really makes a home evil and why haunted house intrigue so many of us. In fact, the author basically states that since our home is supposed to be our safe place and our second bodies, haunted house become the most intimate kind of horror.
My only complaint was at times this book read a little bit TOO much like a textbook. But even so, it was the best kind of textbook in my opinion (kind of the like the summer in college when I took Deviant Behavior and Abnormal Psychology back-to-back for four hours each morning and became good friends with the guy ranting about cutting his ex-girlfriend up into "itty bitty pieces." Don't worry, he was weird but harmless). Sick Houses contains photos and movie shots, and I added a few older movies I had never heard of but now want to see to my watchlist.
If topics like this interest you, then you definitely want to pick this book up. The author also has another book out Darkly: Black History and America's Gothic Soul that I also want to pick up eventually.
MY RATING: 4 PAWS
Anything with haunted houses in the title (or subtitle) always makes me perk up my ears. This one does sound interesting and fun.
ReplyDeleteI would definitely read this if I had more time. Just like you said, this is the kind of non fiction I could see myself reading!
ReplyDelete