This psychological horror tale is a great, fast read despite the fact that it bogs down in the middle for about fifty pages and its dénouement seems to go on at operatic length. But these are minor flaws in a scary ghost story every bit as unnerving as "The Turn of the Screw" and as frightening as
Dracula. Author Dan Simmons is an adroit story-teller whose writing skills are equal to the stylistic prowess of James and Stoker. He creates a haunting atmosphere that permeates the novel and chills the reader with subtle terror and tantalizing suspense.
A Winter Haunting is a sequel, twenty years later, to
Summer of Night.
Literature professor and novelist, Dale Stewart, has managed to sabotage his successful careers and his marriage by having an affair with a student that ended badly. Filled with guilt and preoccupied with self-recriminations--having lost everything including his marriage, children, and confidence as a novelist--Dale decides to take a sabbatical from his university position so he can return to his childhood town in Illinois where he rents the farmhouse in which his childhood friend, Duane McBride, lived and died so long ago. Hoping to rid himself of nightmares and demons and to find peace in the isolation, Dale settles in for the long winter ahead (his arrival is curiously late evening on Halloween) but, no sooner settled in, he begins experiencing strange and eerie things--cryptic messages in Old English appear mysteriously on his computer screen while he attempts to work on a novel; he sees black dogs roaming around even though no neighbors in the area own black dogs; thugs and enemies threaten him. Is Dale hallucinating? Is he being haunted by past ghosts? Is he slowly loosing his mind? Obsessive recollections of his friend, Duane, and of Duane's "accident" cause Dale to question his grip on reality. Though haunted with ghosts of the past and terrorized by present dangers (real or imagined), this tale is woven with great subtly and refreshing intelligence.
A Winter Haunting is a fine addition to the ghost story oeuvre in the tradition of Henry James, Wilkie Collins and M. R. James. Dan Simmons belongs to that group of brilliant writers who write darkly in the Gothic mode.
This psychological horror tale is a great, fast read despite the fact that it bogs down in the middle for about fifty pages and its dénouement seems to go on at operatic length. But these are minor flaws in a scary ghost story every bit as unnerving as "The Turn of the Screw" and as frightening as Dracula. Author Dan Simmons is an adroit story-teller whose writing skills are equal to the stylistic prowess of James and Stoker. He creates a haunting atmosphere that permeates the novel and chills the reader with subtle terror and tantalizing suspense. A Winter Haunting is a sequel, twenty years later, to Summer of Night.
Literature professor and novelist, Dale Stewart, has managed to sabotage his successful careers and his marriage by having an affair with a student that ended badly. Filled with guilt and preoccupied with self-recriminations--having lost everything including his marriage, children, and confidence as a novelist--Dale decides to take a sabbatical from his university position so he can return to his childhood town in Illinois where he rents the farmhouse in which his childhood friend, Duane McBride, lived and died so long ago. Hoping to rid himself of nightmares and demons and to find peace in the isolation, Dale settles in for the long winter ahead (his arrival is curiously late evening on Halloween) but, no sooner settled in, he begins experiencing strange and eerie things--cryptic messages in Old English appear mysteriously on his computer screen while he attempts to work on a novel; he sees black dogs roaming around even though no neighbors in the area own black dogs; thugs and enemies threaten him. Is Dale hallucinating? Is he being haunted by past ghosts? Is he slowly loosing his mind? Obsessive recollections of his friend, Duane, and of Duane's "accident" cause Dale to question his grip on reality. Though haunted with ghosts of the past and terrorized by present dangers (real or imagined), this tale is woven with great subtly and refreshing intelligence. A Winter Haunting is a fine addition to the ghost story oeuvre in the tradition of Henry James, Wilkie Collins and M. R. James. Dan Simmons belongs to that group of brilliant writers who write darkly in the Gothic mode.
