This is Megan's story in the collection A Darker Shade of Noir, Of course, I read it first (solving the problem of what to read first) and enjoyed. As the parent of the author, it is fun to see what she has used in the story that comes from her childhood.
Anyway, this is the story of an eleven-year old who feels compelled to visit the haunted house in her neighborhood, much like Margaret O'Brien's character in Meet Me in St. Louis. Penny is also afraid of her father who's suffering from PTSD from his tour in Vietnam. The Hoffman House was the scene of an horrific murder and sits abandoned around the corner from Penny. This is also a story about day v night and the landscape of dreams. I am looking forward to reading the other stories, all written by woman.
Jerry House -I could not get into your blog at all. Maybe just thinking of that word did it.
11 comments:
I would be hard for me to Not pick this one up...you remind me of the abandoned, ravaged farmhouse on the lo in Hazardville, Conn., adjacent to our 1973-76 house via mutual back yards. Funny, aside from writing an easy haunted house story for my 5th Grade class assignment, I've done nothing with that germ...despite once stepping on a nail at the wreck, and my friend Andy and I once being shot at by the active farmer living across the country highway from the ruin for feeding handfuls of grass from the field to his penned-in horse who wandered over to reach what she could through the wires. Half-way through a Ramsey Campbell or Oates story already.
Or, on the lot. Our Jackson Road houses had presumably been built, in the '50s or '60s, on some of the former farmland fields.
And here's mine: https://socialistjazz.blogspot.com/2023/09/ssw-superhorror-aka-far-reaches-of-fear.html
Oh, I've been meaning to read this collection, Patti! I know Megan's story is great, and it sounds as though there are a lot of other fine ones, too.
Just out this week, Margot.
And every neighborhood has a house like this--even urban ones.
Not a big Oates fam, but I have this on hold.
Currently reading Mary Lavin, SELECTED STORIES (nearly done)
Otto Penzler, ed. GOLDEN AGE BIBLIOMYSTERIES
The Lavin is interesting but I wouldn't rave about it.
I know I've already read a number of stories in the anthology before, yet when I reread them I had little if any memory of the previous time. Anthony Boucher, "QL696.C9" is set in a library. No memory. Lilian de la Torre, "The Missing SHakespeare Manuscript," features Samuel Johnson & James Boswell. I definitely remember that I'd read it, but not the actual plot. C. Daly King, "The Episode of the Codex' Curse" was in THE CURIOUS MR. TARRANT, a book I definitely read. Again, no memory. The one story was was familiar was Frank Gruber's Oliver Quade story, "State Fair Murder," which is nicely atmospheric. "The Adventures of the Three R's" by Ellery Queen is another I didn't remember.
I don't know if the stories are at fault or I am.
Terrific story!
Oh, indeed, a whole Lot of decrepit buildings in the small towns (Enfield, which politically engulfed Hazardville some time before we moved there, was arguably a reasonably close place to commute to Hartford or Springfied, MA, from) and burbs, relatively unpopulated country and certainly cities. The farmhouse burned down, happily with no real damage to much else, in '76, not too long before we moved away...if anyone learned who/what started the fire, no one told me.
Turns out I can't comment using the E word on Jerry's or Tracy's Blogspot blogs without auto-erasing, so it's my Mark of Chicanery, I guess. Or perhaps a Blogspot-wide censorship of the E word to kill spamming. Maybe. Unless on one's own blog.
You will have to invent a substitute.
Blue Lit...
I don't know why it has taken me so long to get to commenting here and at the other SSW posts. I have been very spacy both yesterday and today. Maybe allergies.
I will get a copy of A DARKER SHADE OF NOIR and look forward to reading the story by Megan.
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