The House Next Door – Anne Rivers Siddons
Simon & Schuster – 1978

Of all the books that Stephen King discusses in his Danse Macabre, Anne Rivers Siddons’ The House Next Door was the one I least wanted to read. The title is dull (there are several other novels with the same name), the cover is a picture of a house, and I had read that this novel was the only work of horror that the author ever wrote. I expected a boring attempt at a haunted house story. I thought I was going to read about chains rattling in the night and books flying off shelves of their own accord. I did not expect a masterfully written work of psychological terror that was almost impossible to put down.

God damn, this book was a good one.

A house is built on a plot of land beside a rich couple’s house in Georgia, USA. Bad stuff happens to everyone who lives in or even enters this place. I won’t ruin the story by revealing details, but I will say some of the unfortunate turns are utterly scandalous!

It was stupid of me to assume that this book wouldn’t be good because the author wasn’t a dedicated horror author. This is probably one of the book’s strengths. The stuff going on between the characters is great, and the story is well told. Also, Anne Rivers Siddons doesn’t use any of the tropes that a dedicated horror author might struggle to keep out of a haunted house book. One of the characters makes a joke about the house being built on ancient Indian burial ground, but that’s about it.

No, this is not vulnerable heroine tiptoeing through the attic by candlelight horror; it’s much more subtle and disturbing. The bad stuff that is going down here is just a few steps past seeming unfortunately coincidental. There’s no single instance that you could really claim was supernatural. Any one (or two or even three) of the events recounted could happen, but as the misfortune builds, so do our suspicions. There is something creepy about this house.

This book probably highlights the actual fears of upper middle class Americans in late 1970s: you find out in the opening pages that the characters in this book are willing to lose their friends rather than their reputations. There’s probably some deeper social commentary in here too, but I’m not overly concerned with that stuff. I read this for entertainment’s sake, and I was thoroughly entertained. This was an awesome book, and it had genuinely creepy moments. I can heartily recommend it to anyone looking for a good read.