It’s an unforgivable part of an otherwise good book, even though many might say it perfectly emulates the mindset of the Southern WASP who happened to write in 1978 about other Southern WASPS. In addition, a Jewish character is portrayed as a new money-hungry boo.

There are some issues with language used to describe an queer entanglement. In this case, it meant there was always more action with enough of the slice of life to make the story of this strange house in a conservative (of course, they think themselves liberal), old money community feel like an avoidable tragedy. One has to move those stories at a certain pace, or they become absolute trudges. Siddons is known for her slice of Southern, and I think that shows well in this horror story. It takes a family or two, as well as the drunken ramblings of the architect, before anyone believes something might be going on and Col/Walt find a reason to start taking… action. Walking into this house is the karma equivalent of breaking a billion mirrors and passing under a ladder on your way out. The architect loses his talent, other neighbors watch their son throw his life away, and “Col,” as the book often calls her, and Walter almost implode an otherwise impenetrable marriage. Two more families follow, along with various incidences of “bad luck” with those who visit the house. Then shit starts to go down.Īfter several suspicious wildlife maulings, the new neighbors lose everything that is valuable to them: a child, reputation, their father- until they are driven from the home in an attempt to to maintain their reputations. Colquitt and Walter do come around on it, even becoming close friends with the architect, as they see his talent come alive in the form of a modern home.

A newly-minted architect has been hired by an old money daughter of the South to build a house that says fuck daddy in all its glory.

The neighbors, Colquitt and Walter, are pissed when they find out the empty lot next to their house- in a very influential Atlanta neighborhood- is to be no more. That’s the premise of The House Next Door. And what if you just happen to live next door to all of the zany butchery? Instead, it relies on a person’s own weaknesses, feeding them until they become grotesqueries and horrors beyond imagining. It doesn’t need any incorporeal spirit rattling its chains or throwing plates. What’s a house without a ghost? Still one bad motherfucker, if The House Next Door is to be believed.

The house next door anne rivers