London: Titan Books 2023
393 pages
ISBN 9781803360539
Post hau ingelesez dago.
Donostia Book Club’s last meeting of this season is dedicated to a…. horror novel. How to Sell a Haunted House by Grady Hendrix starts rather slowly and gives us this eery feeling that the family issues we are reading about are not the biggest problem the characters are going to face. While we wonder how brother and sister can hate each other so much (and what the reasons are) the real horror strikes us and we get all the explanation we could have wanted and more.
The main theme in the book is definitely the power of secrets and family relations. Nothing is what it seems, and only by confronting the past, the characters could live normal lives. But will they be able to do it and uncover all that is hidden? Hendrix uses family tension to create the classic horror that will make may spend more than a one sleepless night…
An interesting addition to the story is the way the author uses The Velveteen Rabbit, a classic children’s book. It’s a motif with more than one possible interpretation and while reading the novel it would be good to be at least a bit familiar with it.
If what you’ve read up to now sound interesting, we hope you’ll decide to join us on June 9th to talk about How to Sell a Haunted House in detail. Here are some questions suggested by bookclubs.com that we might consider discussing at the meeting:
– Louise can be impatient with other people, quick to jump on their faults, and slow to identify her own. Do you feel this makes her less relatable, or more? Is she a classic oldest child, or is that just her excuse?
– How does Louise and Mark’s relationship evolve over the course of the novel? How do their perceptions of each other change?
– Much of the book focuses on how dealing with the possessions people leave behind is not just a physical process but an emotional one too. How does going through their parents’ things—and dealing with the memories they bring back—affect Louise and Mark?
– Puppets and dolls are children’s toys—but they can also terrify people. How does this book explore what makes them scary? What did you find most frightening in the book: the puppets or the dolls? Is there any difference?
– How has Mark’s fear about what happened to him during college governed his life? How will the events of the book change the way he lives going forward, if at all?
– Why do you think. Nancy kept Pupkin? Do you think she understood the danger he posed to her children? Do you think even understanding that danger would have made her give up her last link to her brother? Did you see the twist about Freddie coming?
– Haunted house novels and movies often revolve around family issues (family secrets, family curses, family dysfunction). Do you think that’s the case here?
(source: https://bookclubs.com/discussion-guides/how-to-sell-a-haunted-house )