A review by renicula
The House Next Door by Anne Rivers Siddons

dark mysterious sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

This is a complicated one. It’s definitely of its time and I wouldn’t blame anyone for skipping it based on that. Be forewarned, the main characters are wealthy 1970s southerners and their perspectives on things reflects that. The themes of the book can be read as regressive as well; “modernity will infiltrate our perfect upper class society enclave and destroy it” (I’d argue that the
ostracism and social destruction the protagonist faces when trying  to actually do something and protect people (because making a scene is worse than passively allowing other people to be killed, clearly)
is a rebuke to the supposed preexisting “perfection” of her social set, but it’s certainly arguable that Siddons doesn’t pull that critique off (
the Kim being adopted thing is truly stupid
) and the fact is the main characters of this book frequently express outright offensive positions and it isn’t clear whether the author doesn’t share them. I grew up in the Stephen King mines, so I can bracket that off in my reading, but certainly don’t fault anyone who can’t. Take the content warnings seriously.

All that being said, I found this book riveting. The tension, the uncertainty, the creeping dread interspersed with the banality of neighborhood life just worked for me. I read it in a couple of days and had a hard time putting it down (well, outside of the
gay tryst being treated like a scene of primal horror, which ages like milk. That did make me put it down for a bit. I get that under any circumstances, getting caught having an extra-marital affair by your bosses and in laws and causing your father-in-law to subsequently drop dead out of shock is probably a nightmare scenario for anyone. But it’s not exactly terrifying as a reader; maybe the ambient 1970s homophobia made it so for contemporary audiences, but for me reading it in 2024, it comes off as not only offensive, but farcical.
). I could see a reader being irritated that the events of the book are largely mundane, but I actually liked that. I appreciated that the horrors (even the one I complained about earlier) were all the kind of things that, if they happened in a “nice” neighborhood, “nice” people would gossip about behind closed doors and say, “Oh, how awful!” - but want to know every sordid detail, and would never consider there might be something fundamentally *wrong* at the core of it.

I’ve spent more words caveating my review than I have praising the book, but if I haven’t scared you off yet, I’d recommend this book if you’re at all interested in haunted house stories. Getting the perspective of a neighbor who increasingly knows that *something* is wrong but feels powerless to do anything (and is gaslit when she tries to) is a fascinating perspective on the genre. Plus I always have a soft spot for
haunted houses without ghosts
and modern haunted houses - just when you thought you were safe because you didn’t opt for that 100 year old Victorian.
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