La casa delle streghe

synopsis : a little girl is haunted but is she really? When is a haunted house story not a haunted house story? When it is a Weird Fiction™ haunted house story, of course. The old Weird Fiction Masters blood runs through Walton's veins: some Arthur Machen, a little bit of Lord Dunsany, and a lot of Al Leggi tutto

Ever since British author Horace Walpole kick-started the haunted house genre with his seminal short novel of Gothic romance, "The Castle of Otranto" (1765), there have been hundreds of short stories and dozens of novels centered on this most shuddery of literary subjects. But for this reader, the t Leggi tutto

You have to love Inter-Library loan - this book, originally the first volume in famed weird publisher Arkham House's series of novel releases, came up on my reading list and so I put an order in, at the same time also asking for a copy of a 70's paperback that included a reprinting of Evangeline Wal Leggi tutto

Walton wrote a novella as a prequel to this, which I thought was more interesting and carried a greater emotional charge than the novel. The British edition of this novel includes that novella - "The Chinese Woman". Read this again a few weeks ago, including the full prologue (the version of the prol Leggi tutto

Evangeline Walton is a master storyteller. This is a matter-of-fact story of a haunted house, and the spiritual struggle for the soul of its victim. It's out of print. Only 3000 copies were printed, in 1945, from August Derleth's Arkham House, Sauk City, Wisconsin. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witch_H Leggi tutto

The first four chapters in I was loving the book. Walton was doing world-building of such a high order it wouldn’t become fashionable until thirty years later. She set the tone beautifully and placed her characters in a rich and complicated family tree that went all the way back to the original Quin Leggi tutto

I have just finished reading “Witch House”, a Gothic novel by fantasy author Evangeline Walton. Walton is best known for her Mabinogian Tetralogy, a fantasy re-telling of the Welsh Mabinogian, a mediaeval manuscript that contains the mythology of Wales dating back to pre-Christian times. First publis Leggi tutto

This could have used a little less melodrama and few more instances of things actually happening. While far from pulpy - usually not a complaint - this might have benefited from a few of those impulses. Still, there's plenty of atmosphere with a potent sense of menace, and tale is elegantly wrought, Leggi tutto

Good tale. Different take on the "haunted house" tale. Review coming soon on Horror 101 for Tales to Terrify...

Il ritmo del romanzo l'ho trovato lento, i risultati impiegano molto tempo per presentarsi, e per essere classificato come horror non è successo niente di veramente spaventoso… La scrittura di Evangeline Walton è scorrevole ma risulta purtroppo poco coinvolgente. Nella parte centrale poi perde maggi Leggi tutto