Another governess haunts the halls of Bly, the country estate in Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw. Or perhaps there are two governesses, the current nameless one and her predecessor, Miss Jessel. Or perhaps the ghosts are all in the governess’s head. Henry James isn’t telling in this masterpiece of ambiguity, but really, what’s scarier: that the ghosts are real or that the woman in charge of your children is crazy?
We might doubt the sanity of Eleanor Vance, the heroine of The Haunting of Hill House, but there’s no question of the house’s sanity. “Hill House,” Shirley Jackson tells us right off the bat, is “not sane.” Doors don’t stay closed and none of the angles are right, either. Oh, and just in case you were wondering, “whatever walked there, walked alone.” Because that’s the really scary thing about the haunted house: sooner or later, you’re going to end up there alone.
No one is quite as lonely as the unnamed wife in Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca. Sure, she’s married handsome millionaire Maxim de Winter and come to live in beautiful Manderley on the Cornish Coast, but all anyone can talk about is Maxim’s dead wife, Rebecca, who haunts the house and the narrator’s marriage. Is there any peskier ghost than an ex? Here’s another case where the ghost might not be literal, but the house is haunted just the same. In fact, it’s the house itself that continues to haunt the narrator as she tells us in the very first line, “Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.”
The house itself is the culprit in Anne Rivers Siddons’s The House Next Door, a tale of gentrification and construction gone wrong. If you’ve ever had your view ruined by an ugly monstrosity you’ll feel for Colquitt and Walter Kennedy when modern architecture intrudes on their peaceful suburban backyard.
Haunted houses aren’t only in the country. Jan Bryant Bartell encountered a haunting in the cozy rent-controlled West Village apartment she calls home in Spindrift: Spray from a Psychic Sea. This nonfiction book chilled me when an office-mate passed me a used copy in the early eighties. I used to walk by the townhouse where it took place and wonder whether I’d give up a rent-controlled apartment in the Village even if it were haunted. I recently ordered a used copy of the book to replace the one I’d lost and felt more haunted by nostalgia for my salad days in the city than by the bangs and knocks Bartell reports. But what is chilling is that the author died before the book’s publication and, according to Internet lore, copies of the book mysteriously disappear. Sure enough, though I bought a copy less than six months ago, I can’t find it anywhere.
I’ve had to reorder my copy of The Uninvited by Dorothy Macardle again, too, even though I could swear I’ve owned three over the years. The Cornish cottage where a brother and sister settle is haunted by the scent of mimosa. This is a gentle ghost story with a happy ending. Read it to regain your equilibrium after you read The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters. The ghost that haunts Hundreds Hall, an English country manor falling into genteel postwar decline, may be class consciousness and the Labour government, but that doesn’t mean it’s not just as terrifying.
Why are we so afraid of haunted houses? Perhaps it’s what we see when we look at them. “There are many houses whose fronts suggest faces,” John Langan writes in his chilling House of Windows, “but Belvedere House was the only residence I’ve seen whose front suggested a face hiding amongst its windows and angles, just out of view.” Whose face just out of view are we afraid to see when we look through the windows of our haunted houses? The predecessor who did our job better? The late wife who’s more beloved than us? The raging alcoholic father of Stephen King’s The Shining? Or is the face we’re most afraid to see when we look in the windows our own reflection? As Monty says, quoting Orson Squire Fowler, “Just as men’s skulls correspond to their characters, so men’s habitations correspond to their intellect.” In which case, the scariest haunted house may be the one in which we see ourselves. Red Hook faux Colonial, c’est moi.
Reading Group Guide
1. What are your first impressions of Clare and Jess’s relationship? What clues and subtext does the author include to paint the landscape of their marriage early on?
2. How did the author use themes and motifs from gothic tradition and classic literature to richen the novel? What were some that you were able to identify?
3. Both the house and the town have a very vivid atmosphere. In what ways did sense of place contribute to the narrative?
4. In your opinion, what was the significance of the various strange discoveries that Clare made: the handkerchief in the bath, the illustrations beneath the wallpaper, the collage? How do each of these speak to existing fears and questions in her own life?
5. Were you surprised when the villain was revealed? Why or why not?
6. After reading this novel, how have your views on marriage changed? Is it possible to have a marriage without any secrets?
7. Did you feel bad for Jess after hearing his side of the story (that he felt trapped by the miscarriage)? Why or why not? How could he have handled things differently?
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Praise for The Widow’s House
“Carol Goodman hits it out of the scary, crumbling, haunted ballpark with The Widow’s House, a tale that blends a perfect gothic premise—an old mansion, a long-dead baby’s cries, madness, and betrayal—with modern, mysterious twists and turns that will keep the reader guessing until the last page. I couldn’t put it down but I didn’t want it to end.”
—Wendy Webb, bestselling and award-winning author of The Vanishing
“The Widow’s House is foreboding and moody, haunted by the long dead—and by long-dead dreams. As you’re pulled deeper into its crumbling corridors and gothic history, you’ll never guess where its true threats lie, or who will survive to break its decades-old curse.”
—Miranda Beverly-Whittemore, New York Times bestselling author of Bittersweet and June
“Carol Goodman is, simply put, a stellar writer. She doesn’t tell a story as much as she weaves a dream. I sank right into The Widow’s House—a rich, complex, scary, and utterly compelling novel about the layers of love, the tangle of marriage, and the ghosts that haunt us. This is the very best kind of read—the one you want never to end even as you can’t stop yourself from turning the pages.”
—Lisa Unger, New York Times bestselling author of The Red Hunter
“Evocative and resonant references to local folklore and to literature such as Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ and Edgar Allen Poe’s ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’ combine with influences from both classic gothic works and domestic suspense novels. . . . Gripping readers with its fast pace, supernatural elements, and a conclusion that will have them questioning what really happened here, this psychological thriller is for admirers of Barbara Michaels, Kate Morton, or Daphne Du Maurier.”
—Library Journal
Praise for Carol Goodman’s Other Novels
“Voluptuous. . . . Goodman has a flair for the stylistic flourishes of romantic suspense.”
—New York Times Book Review
“Goodman takes crime fiction to another level with her complex plots and lyrical prose.”
—Globe and Mail
“A gothic and elegant page-turner.”
—Boston Globe
“Goodman expertly melds the psychological thriller and academic mystery into a compelling story of revenge and grief.”
—Associated Press
“Gives her many fans a dose of what she does best: good storytelling, with velvet swaths of gothic mist and fairy-tale eeriness.”
—Plain Dealer
Also by Carol Goodman
The Lake of Dead Languages
The Seduction of Water
The Drowning Tree
The Ghost Orchid
The Sonnet Lover
The Night Villa
Arcadia Falls
River Road
THE BLYTHEWOOD SERIES
Blythewood
/> Ravencliffe
Hawthorn
Credits
Cover design by Elsie Lyons
Cover photographs: © Jill Battaglia / Trevillion Images (house); © ilolab / Shutterstock (texture)
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
P.S.™ is a trademark of HarperCollinsPublishers.
THE WIDOW’S HOUSE. Copyright © 2017 by Carol Goodman. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
FIRST EDITION
EPub Edition March 2017 ISBN 9780062562630
ISBN 978-0-06-256262-3
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Carol Goodman, The Widow's House
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