A review by octavia_cade
The Picture in the House by H.P. Lovecraft

dark tense fast-paced

2.0

Most of this short story was genuinely creepy, which is something I don't often feel about Lovecraft's work. The depiction of that old bigot, increasingly sympathetic to, and taking on the characteristics of, the distant peoples he was obsessing over, is disturbing. (Ironic, too, given that's how I often picture Lovecraft himself, whipped up into a frenzy over all the things that scared him.) I might have given it three stars just for that. However, the ending is terrible. It's a total cop-out. I don't know what old H.P.'s intentions were, but it reads to me as if he ran out of ideas and didn't know how to end the story and so just gave up. 

What a waste of that effective characterisation.