Joe Hill's Scary Book Recs and Victor LaValle on "The Haunting of Hill House" (Rerun)

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Book Review — Joe Hill's Scary Book Recs and Victor LaValle on "The Haunting of Hill House" (Rerun)

Podcast: The Book Review
Host: Gilbert Cruz (The New York Times Book Review)
Guests: Joe Hill, Victor LaValle
Date: October 24, 2025
Episode Theme: Celebrating the horror genre through book recommendations and deep dives into classic haunted literature, perfect for the Halloween season.

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Episode Overview

This Halloween-themed episode is a rerun featuring:

1. Joe Hill (2024 interview) sharing his lifelong relationship with horror, insights into what makes the genre effective, and offering a curated list of recommended scary novels for the season.
2. Victor LaValle (2023 interview) discussing his favorite haunted house novel, Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House, and reflecting on how the book has influenced his life and work.

Both conversations dig into what draws readers to horror, the mechanics of fear in fiction, and how haunting tales reflect deeper questions about mortality, empathy, and self-discovery.

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Section 1: Joe Hill on Scary Books and What Makes Horror Work

Starts at 00:41

Joe Hill’s Background & Relationship to Horror

• Joe Hill was introduced as an acclaimed novelist, short story, and graphic novel writer, and son of Stephen King.
• Joe recalls reading the manuscript of King’s It as a 12-year-old—and considers his own writing an ongoing attempt to capture what made it so compelling.
  • “In some ways, I feel like I've been trying to write It my whole life.” (05:00, Joe Hill)

What Makes Horror Effective

• Empathy and Character Focus:
  • Effective horror, says Hill, is about falling in love with the characters, not merely about gore or cruelty.
  • “Good horror fiction is about sympathy. It's about empathy, not cruelty.” (05:33, Joe Hill)
• Contrast with 1980s Slasher Films:
  • 80s slashers like Friday the 13th become comedic because characters are one-dimensional; real horror demands depth.
  • “We respond to that exactly the same way we respond to a Warner Brothers cartoon…” (06:48, Joe Hill)
• Physical Reactions to Horror:
  • Both laughter and screams are primal reactions—a sign effective horror cuts through conscious defenses. (08:43–09:03)

Why Do We Seek Horror?

• Hill references How Horror Seduces by Mathias Clasen—horror as evolutionary rehearsal: a “safe playground” to process fears around mortality and adversity.
  • “We read horror fiction as rehearsal… to explore frightening questions about our own mortality…” (10:18, Joe Hill)
• Monsters are metaphors (e.g., vampires for cancer)—preparing us for real invisible adversaries.

Halloween Rituals

• Hill relishes the "anticipatory pleasure" of Halloween—the buildup of fall, scary stories, and films.
  • “The anticipation and the buildup is where all the real pleasure is.” (14:15, Joe Hill)

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Joe Hill’s Scary Book Recommendations (with Insights)

1. Lost Man’s Lane by Scott Carson (14:31–17:44)

• Pen name for Michael Koryta—blends small-town coming-of-age with time-skipping supernatural serial killer.
• Evokes the flavor of Stranger Things and is set in the 1990s.
• Notable for: A chilling Columbine reference, time-skipping cop antagonist, and a standout supernatural snake.
  • “If you loved Stranger Things, you will love Lost Man’s Lane.” (15:03, Joe Hill)

2. Fever House & The Devil by Name by Keith Rosson (21:15–25:50)

• “Absolutely bonkers gonzo horror.” (21:28, Joe Hill)
• Fever House features a severed hand with drug-like, violent influence—juggles a wild cast, including a tortured angel and a Patti Smith-like reclusive musician.
• “The art is in having those reversals and twists and then getting to the end of the book and feeling like they were all earned.” (17:11, Joe Hill)
• Pages “fly by so quickly, you're in constant danger of paper cuts.”
• The Devil by Name is its sequel, where the supernatural reshapes reality.

3. The Reformatory by Tananarive Due (26:01–27:59)

• Recent World Fantasy Award winner; “One of the two or three best horror novels published in this century so far.”
• Set in 1950s south, follows a Black boy trapped in a haunted reformatory—blends social horror and supernatural elements.
• “Boy, it reads like a Stephen King novel… got that energy, that vividness and that heart.” (27:37, Joe Hill)

4. For Young Horror Readers: The House with a Clock in Its Walls by John Bellairs (28:18–31:15)

• Bellairs’ middle-grade classic, especially the editions illustrated by Edward Gorey.
• “It’s the masterpiece of fantasy that J.K. Rowling never wrote... comfortably ahead of any of the Harry Potter novels.” (29:15, Joe Hill)
• Advocates rediscovering Bellairs’ work, which “deserves to be rediscovered because the work is so great.” (30:37, Joe Hill)

Notable Quote:
“The anticipation and the buildup is where all the real pleasure is.” (14:15, Joe Hill)

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Section 2: Victor LaValle on Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House

Starts at 33:36

Introduction

• Victor LaValle shares his deep admiration for Jackson’s novel, connecting it with other haunted house classics like Turn of the Screw and The Shining.
• The haunting at Hill House revolves around Eleanor, a woman shaped by isolation and familial duty, and a quartet’s escalating supernatural experiences.

The Power of the Opening Paragraph (34:57–35:59)

• LaValle reads and dissects Jackson’s famous opening:
  • “No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality... whatever walked there, walked alone.”
• “That opening line... is like the thematic, the organizing principle of the entire book.” (35:59, Victor LaValle)
• The paragraph reframed at the end: “Spooky in the beginning and at the end, it's heartbreaking.” (37:03, Victor LaValle)

LaValle’s Reading History with Hill House

• First read as a teen on Stephen King’s recommendation in Danse Macabre:
  • “As a kid… all I really remembered… was the haunted house.” (37:32, Victor LaValle)
  • Haunted house itself is the villain, not a specific ghost or event—anticipates The Shining.
  • The house’s architecture is itself evil, “something is always off." “How is this house a reflection of that [Eleanor]?” (41:06, Victor LaValle)
• Second reading as a struggling college dropout resonated with Eleanor’s stifling home life and desire for escape.
  • “You see her being snowed under by the weight of this family…”
  • After stealing the family car: “You’re actually proud of her... I was extra empathetic to Eleanor…” (44:59, Victor LaValle)

Thematic Depth: Character, Loneliness, and Home

• The book isn’t just a ghost story, but about “a very lonely woman in a very lonely house.” (48:59, Victor LaValle)
• House and protagonist mirror each other’s flaws—uncertainty about what is supernatural and what stems from Eleanor’s psyche.

Influence & Recommendations

• LaValle acknowledges Jackson’s influence on Lone Women, especially in crafting his character’s sense of escape and fear.
• Recommends the novel by reading its opening paragraph—“If a person hears that paragraph and... they lean in... then I know this will be your thing.” (48:03, Victor LaValle)
• If readers want something a touch different, recommends Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle.

Notable Quotes:

• “Do you want to read a beautifully written book about a very lonely woman in a very lonely house?” (48:59, Victor LaValle)
• “By the end… hopefully you understand [the opening] very differently because of the choice that Eleanor has made.” (37:03, Victor LaValle)

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Standout Moments & Timestamps

| Timestamp | Speaker | Memorable Moment | |-------------|----------------|---------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 05:33 | Joe Hill | “Good horror fiction is about sympathy. It's about empathy, not cruelty.” | | 10:18 | Joe Hill | “We read horror fiction as rehearsal… in the safe playground of our imagination”| | 14:15 | Joe Hill | “The anticipation and the buildup is where all the real pleasure is.” | | 21:28 | Joe Hill | “Absolutely bonkers gonzo horror. Every scene... is more bananas than the one before.” | | 27:37 | Joe Hill | “Boy, it reads like a Stephen King novel... got that energy, that vividness...” | | 29:15 | Joe Hill | “It’s the masterpiece of fantasy that J.K. Rowling never wrote...” | | 34:57–35:59 | Victor LaValle | Reads & analyzes Hill House's famous opening; its thematic depth | | 44:59 | Victor LaValle | Relating Eleanor’s oppression and escape to his own life struggles | | 48:59 | Victor LaValle | “Do you want to read a beautifully written book about a very lonely woman in a very lonely house?” |

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Tone & Feel

The conversation is warm, literary, and insightful—a mix of humor (Joe Hill’s self-deprecation, banter about scary movies), deep analysis, and evocative storytelling. Both guests convey a profound love for the horror genre, highlighting its ability to provoke thought, foster empathy, and offer catharsis under the guise of fear.

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Conclusion

This episode is a rich guide for both seasoned horror aficionados and newcomers seeking literary chills:

• Joe Hill’s book recommendations span classic horror, modern supernatural thrillers, and age-appropriate dark fantasy.
• Victor LaValle’s discussion profoundly unpacks why The Haunting of Hill House remains essential reading for its psychological acuity and emotional resonance.
• Both guests reinforce: the best horror isn’t merely about scares—it helps us rehearse life’s hardest questions, feel less alone, and better understand what it means to be human.

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Recommended for:

• Fans of horror literature looking for new reads or classics to revisit
• Readers interested in the connections between fictional fear and real-life anxieties
• Anyone craving literary conversation—and a spooky good time

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Summary by ChatGPT — For more Book Review episodes, visit nytimes.com/podcasts.

Transcript

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[Gilbert Cruz]

I'm Gilbert Cruz, editor of the New York Times Book Review, and this is the Book Review Podcast. This week we're staying on October Vibes and presenting you with a couple of conversations from years past with great horror writers. First, from 2024, Joe Hill, who has just released his first novel in almost a decade, King Sorrow, came on the pod. Great conversation. He offered a bunch of fantastic, scary book recommendations. And then after the break, Victor lavall, author of 2023's Lone Women, talks about the book he's read the most in his life, a book I have read many times, the great Shirley Jackson's the Haunting of Hill House. I hope you enjoyed both of these conversations. I absolutely did. And I doubly hope that you look forward to next week's episode of the podcast in which MJ Franklin, as he does every month, hosts a book club discussion, this one about this year's the Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones. But first, let's turn to Joe Hill. Joe Hill, author, novelist, short story writer, has worked in the graphic novel space. The first time I read you before interviewing you, I feel like years ago for Time magazine. For Horns, this was a very long time ago. It was 20th century ghosts, which is a short story collection. And I don't know if I said this at the time, but it has stuck with me. I was listening to it. I was listening to the audiobook version of 20th Century Ghosts. And the first story in 20th Century Ghost is a story called Best New Horror, if I'm recalling correctly. And it was so tense that I was genuinely sweating on a New York City subway platform. And I wasn't sweating because it was summertime and it gets to be 97 degrees on these platforms. I think it was a different time of year. It was very tense, very tense. And then several stories later, there's a story called Pop Art, which was one of the more moving pieces of short fiction I've read in a horror collection ever, maybe. It was a great delight to see the range there.

[Joe Hill]

That's very kind. I remember that we spoke in a restaurant in Boston around 2010 for horns, and shortly afterwards I had a nervous breakdown and a divorce. So, Gilbert, I'm hoping this conversation has a better outcome. I don't want to lay all that on you, but I'm not taking you completely off the hook. Clearly. We had this conversation and two years later, I was a divorced guy in therapy and so, anyway, no pressure here.

[Gilbert Cruz]

What happened? I'm so sorry. I feel like you should have told.

[Joe Hill]

Me this earlier this week going into the conversation. Yeah.

[Gilbert Cruz]

This might be the first time we've spoken since then.

[Joe Hill]

I'll keep you updated after this conversation. I'll let you know how it go.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Great. Thank you. Welcome to the book Review podcast.

[Joe Hill]

Thanks for having me on. It's wonderful to be here.

[Gilbert Cruz]

This is such a silly question, given who you are and how you grew up, but what has your relationship to scary books been from the time you were a child? We're here to talk about scary books.

[Joe Hill]

It is quite literally a lifelong relationship with the scary stuff. So the elephant in the room is of my dad is Stephen King, a fact that I was able to keep secret for a period of time in the early part of my career while I was finding my own voice and starting to publish. But I'm a huge Stephen King fan and fell hard for my dad's work like so many other children of the 1980s and read everything. And the thing is, people, they think of it as a long book, but I read it in second draft and manuscript, and that thing that manuscript was like, came to my knee. I was shorter then, but I wasn't that short. It was a huge manuscript and certainly I was swept away by that story.

[Gilbert Cruz]

How old were you when you read that book?

[Joe Hill]

Which has a lot of young, far, far too young. Yeah, I think I was 12. If you look at the date the book came out and subtract two years, 86 maybe. Okay. So I read it in 1984 and I would have been 12.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Okay.

[Joe Hill]

I was talking to a friend recently and I said, in some ways, I feel like I've been trying to write it my whole life. My third book, Nosferatu, was a stab. My attempt to write it. I've got a new one that'll be out next year called King Sorrow, where I was trying to write it. I think I did a short story called the Black Phone that was in 20th century ghost. And at the time, I Wrote it. It was the furthest thing from my mind. But when I look at it now, I see the influence of that book all over that story.

[Gilbert Cruz]

What did you take from that book? It's a big book. There's a lot to take from it. But what do you think are the elements that keep coming back over and over in your writing?

[Joe Hill]

I learned pretty early on that effective horror is not about sadism. It's not about throwing a pile of guts at the reader. Effective horror is about giving you some characters to fall in love with. Introducing fully rounded characters who feel like you would want to spend time with them. And you're going to spend time with them because it usually takes between 12 and 20 hours to read a book. So you meet some characters and you fall in love with them, and then you see them forced to confront the worst that we can imagine. And so in that sense, I think good horror fiction is about sympathy. It's about empathy, not cruelty. That isn't always so clearly understood. And so I think when you look at the horror movies of the 1980s, the slasher films of the 1980s, you see a lot of movies that are terrible horror films, but great slapstick comedies. The Friday the 13th films, for example, every character in those movies is one dimensional. You've got the cheerleader, you've got the jock, you've got the stoner, you've got the good girl who studies and is saving her virginity for marriage.

[Gilbert Cruz]

All of the tropes that were made fun of in the film Cabin in the Woods.

[Joe Hill]

Absolutely. And none of these characters have any depth to them. You never really care about them as human beings or even see them as fully rounded human beings. And so it actually becomes somewhat entertaining to. To watch Jason Voorhees work his way through them with one ghoulish murder after another. We respond to that exactly the same way we respond to a Warner Brothers cartoon where, you know, Bugs Bunny smashes a sledgehammer into Daffy Duck's head. The difference between the Three Stooges film and some of the later Friday the 13th films is very fine.

[Gilbert Cruz]

A lot of eyes getting poked.

[Joe Hill]

Yeah, exactly. That thing where Mo takes a sledgehammer to Curly's head. You see that scene and you shout with laughter. You're watching Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Leatherface takes a sledgehammer to some teenager's head and blood flies all over the camera and you scream. But you're responding fundamentally to the same scene. It's actually the same scene. And I also think it's interesting that in Both cases you respond with this kind of reptile brain vocalization. Something that's deeper than words, a scream or a laugh.

[Gilbert Cruz]

I was describing this phenomenon or this response mechanism to someone recently. I saw a movie called In a Violent Nature.

[Joe Hill]

I haven't seen it yet, but I'm.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Pretty excited for it, which for many people listening, do not watch this movie. This movie is not for most people. But I will talk to Joe here about it because it is for him. And there's a scene in that movie I was watching at home alone, late at night where I did the thing you just described, where I went. Oh. I started making sounds that I was not expecting to and I was not prepared to, but I could not help myself.

[Joe Hill]

Yeah. That is a mark, of course, of an effective moment because it's cut right through your conscious, the fortress of your conscious mind and got to something deeper and has reminded you that we're animals on the face of the planet and terrible things can happen to us if we get in the way of a buzzing chainsaw.

[Gilbert Cruz]

It's a very odd thing to laugh too.

[Joe Hill]

It is. And it's weird. It's weird that we want this. It's weird that we want to spend a weekend with a frightening novel, someone facing a dreadful scenario. Why would we want to read these stories? Someone lost in a dark basement with a vampire or something. And something that's going to make it hard for us to sleep. There is a Dutch writer named Matthias Lawson who's written a book called How Horror Seduces that's one of the better non fiction works on the genre in the last quarter century. And he studies horror fiction from the viewpoint of evolutionary psychology. And his attitude about horror fiction is it's much like when children play hide and seek or tag, because hide and seek and tag are play versions of predator and prey. It's chasing and being chased. Children find this terrifically entertaining. But there have been times and places in history when knowing how to hide fast was extremely useful for small human beings. And by the same token, I think that we read horror fiction as rehearsal, that we study horror fiction because in the safe playground of our imagination we can explore frightening questions about our own mortality and our own well being that in everyday life we normally don't want to confront. The example I use is there's obviously, you know, a terrific passion for stories about vampires of all sorts. From glittering vampires to drooling Nosferatu. And spoiler alert, you're never going to face a vampire in real life. They don't exist. No bloodsucker is going to come by your house in the middle of the night, you know, get a pint of blood.

[Gilbert Cruz]

I'm slightly disappointed, but continue.

[Joe Hill]

I know, I know I'm a heartbreaker. But many people in their lives will wrestle with something like cancer. Cancer is an invisible adversary that. That wants to take your life and will can weaken you day by day. And it's not clear how to fight it. And it's frightening. It puts you right up in the face of your own mortality. Cancer is a vampire. And when we read a story about people fighting, fighting off a vampire, I think that we're engaged in a kind of rehearsal about what sort of choices would I make if some invisible adversary was preying on my life and my time was running out. How would I want to be in the world if I felt my strength ebbing away and was in this fight for my life that there was a good chance I might lose?

[Gilbert Cruz]

Also, what do moments of great stress reveal about a person? What would it reveal about me?

[Joe Hill]

Absolutely. How would I cope? And we're drawn to these questions because we want to prepare for the big moments ahead of time before it's too late. We want to have some idea about what is admirable behavior, what is wholesome behavior, what is emotionally healthy behavior, and what's destructive and damaging and useless and counterproductive. I think most people don't want to go out like the Paul Reiser character in Aliens, desperately shutting doors on his fellows and running to save his own ass and everyone else be damned.

[Gilbert Cruz]

One of the great cowards.

[Joe Hill]

Yeah, one of the great cowards of horror cinema. Whereas Bill Paxton, the Bill Paxton character in Aliens, who seems like such a coward, actually has this moment at the end when suddenly he grabs his courage with both hands and he's standing there with the aliens running at him, saying, you want some? You want some, too? How about you? And I think most of us feel like, okay, if I was in that scenario, I'd be just as terrified as him. But I hope in my last moments, I'd make my stand.

[Gilbert Cruz]

So we're here to talk about horror fiction, but first I want to ask you, given the season, given that Halloween is part of the reason that we're having this conversation, what is Halloween for you?

[Joe Hill]

I think the thing about Halloween, and I'm a New England guy, I live in New Hampshire, and the thing about Halloween is it's all about the buildup. The joy is all in the buildup. The leaves are turning, the mornings are crisp. Nothing tastes better than the first cup of Tea. And every Friday night you watch a new horror film. You plan ahead. So you've got your whole horror film festival worked out. You pick some reading that's appropriate for the season. So at the moment, I'm reading the best ghost stories of Algernon Blackwood. It's the first time I've read him since I was a teenager. It's all early 20th century. It has a kind of Edwardian, Victorian feel to it. So it's just right. It feels just perfect for the season. Tasteful, but frightening. And then you have the big night. The kids go out and they get dressed and run from house to house collecting candy. That's fun, that's fine. But sort of like opening your presents on Christmas morning. The anticipation and the buildup is where all the real pleasure is.

[Gilbert Cruz]

That is perfectly put. I want to talk about some books that you would recommend for the season. You just mentioned the stories of Algernon Blackwood, but I know you have a few more that you wanted to dip into. The first one is Lost Man's Lane by Scott Carson.

[Joe Hill]

Who is Scott Carson, not who he appears to be. Scott Carson is a pen name for the thriller writer Michael Corita. Michael's probably best known for a novel under his own name called those who Wish Me Dead, which was made into an intense backwoods thriller starring Angelina Jolie. But he does write other novels under the name Scott Carson. His Michael Corita thrillers are all mainstream thrillers set in the world as we understand it. But the Scott Carson books indulge in his love of supernatural fiction. Lost Man's Lane is probably the best of the Scott Carson books to date. So if you loved Stranger Things, you will love Lost Man's Lane. It has something of the same feel to has some of the texture of a young adult novel, but is also very much for grownups, something like Stranger Things. It is set not the 1980s like Stranger Things, but at the tail end of the 1990s. And occasional historical events intrude in quite striking ways. They're all plopped in front of the TV on the day that Columbine happens. And one of the most moving moment in the story is when one of the parents says to the kids, we will never let this happen again. And that's the most frightening moment in the book. Sent a shiver right through me. But the story is about a young man on the day he gets his driver's license. He's pulled over by the police for going just slightly over the speed limit. The cop who pulls him over is a Terrifying bully and there's something off about him. And gradually we are forced to conclude that he's had an encounter with a police officer who is 50 or 60 or 70 years out of time. Someone who has popped into the 1990s from all the way back in the 1940s or 1950s. And this person, and that this person who is hop. Skipping through time is also responsible for a number of murders. There's also. I mentioned it has a little bit of the quality of a young adult story. There's also the best supernatural snake in this story since the snake in the Harry Potter books. What was the name of the snake?

[Gilbert Cruz]

Nagini.

[Joe Hill]

Yes. Yes.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Okay, so number one and number two on a list of two.

[Joe Hill]

Yes, exactly. It's sort of like Jaws 2 is the absolute second best shark film. Not actually a huge list.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Yeah. So that's a great recommendation.

[Joe Hill]

The writing is light and witty. The pages turn swiftly because Michael is a thriller writer in the mold of Harlan Coben or a Linwood Barclay. He also has a little dash of Dennis Lehane in him. And because that's the world of writing he comes from, there are a lot of very satisfying twists. A lot of, you know, really stunning. Oh, I can't believe that just happened. And the art is in having those reversals and twists and then getting to the end of the book and feeling like they were all earned.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Yeah.

[Joe Hill]

That it wasn't just. It wasn't just a twist to shock you and keep you moving.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Do you feel, as someone who has read more than most, perhaps, and has written a lot and has to think about plotting and structure and twists and turns and surprises, do you find that when you actually encounter a genuine one in fiction, it remains delightful, the idea that someone can still come up with a twist that can confound even someone who's read hundreds and hundreds of books.

[Joe Hill]

The really good ones are miraculous. Probably the writer who is best at the mind blowing twist is the crime and thriller writer Anthony Horowitz, who also dabbles in horror. Some of his fiction is horror.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Has he written Sherlock Holmes books? Is that the same person?

[Joe Hill]

He has. He has. He wrote a book called Moriarty. I was reading it aloud to my wife and it had one twist that was so ingenious and so stunning, she didn't believe it had really happened. She thought I was making it up just to upset and perturb her. And she snatched the book out of my hands to read it for herself to make sure it was really on the page. So that's the power of A really good twist. All I can speak of is my own work. When it comes to this sort of thing, I'm not an outliner. I don't plan the books ahead. When I have pulled off a satisfying twist, the first person it surprised was me. Before it ever surprised a reader, it was a decision that one of my characters made or some kind of revelation where I was completely stunned. For that to just fly onto the page.

[Gilbert Cruz]

And how does that come to you? You're sitting there and it happens. Are you in the shower? Are you on a walk?

[Joe Hill]

It usually happens while you're writing. So usually it's not something that just occurs to you while you're out for a walk. My view of it is you have a situation. I wrote a story about a man who has a collection of disturbing artifacts. So he has a trey panned human skull, he has a witch's confession, he has a snuff film. He has a whole cabinet of curiosities of disturbing artifacts. And he hears about a woman selling a ghost online, and he decides he has to have it for his collection. Now, if you ever read even a single horror story, you know what a terrible idea this is, but the guy buys it. In my case, it was this death metal rocker named Judas Coyne, who's in his mid-60s. This was my first book, Heart Shaped Box. And when I wrote the story, I thought it was going to be a short story called Dead Man's Suit, because I was sure that he was the guy. When we first meet Jude, he's sort of an angry creep and a belligerent creep, and I thought he would buy this ghost online and it would eat him for breakfast by page 30. And I'd tell another short story for 500 bucks. But Jude turned out to be like a cockroach. Every time I stepped on him, I'd lift my shoe and he'd scuttle away again. Every time he survived, it surprised me all over again. But the reason he surprised is because I was projecting myself into his psychology and his views, his whole sort of Persona. And he kept making choices that were perfectly natural for him but were surprising to me because they were never the choices that I would have made in the same situation. So I think that's how a reveal or a shock can work if you don't outline for it. Maybe Michael outlines. I'd have to ask him. I've spoken to him a few times.

[Gilbert Cruz]

The next two books on your list, Fever House and the Devil by name, are by Keith Rossen, and the first one in particular Has a classic conceit, which is that there's an evil severed hand. We've all been there.

[Joe Hill]

Yeah. And the Fever House, and it's just out in hardcover. Sequel, the Devil by Name is absolutely bonkers gonzo horror. Every scene, every chapter is more bananas than the one before. And somehow it all works and is compulsive and tremendously exciting. When Fever House begins, we're with two enforcers. Two. Two goons who work for a criminal syndicate. And they've come to collect some money from a meth head. Well, when they go to collect, they discover a severed hand in his icebox. And the severed hand works on you a little bit like bath salts. It's drug like and has power over your reactions in your mind. There's something addictive about being close to it, but it also makes you incredibly violent. It makes you want to hurt everyone around you and respond to the slightest setback by reaching for the closest baseball bat. And on one endless rainy night in Portland, Oregon, this severed hand, which might be the severed hand of a devil, begins to move across Portland, move across the city, being passed from one person to another and creating more and more chaos. It turns out that the severed hand is one of three remnants. There's also a tape recording that drives people crazy, a voice tape recording of a voice that drives people crazy to hear it. And there's an eyeball. An eyeball of a devil. And if you look into this eyeball, you see how you yourself will die.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Somehow I knew this conversation would be very different from views I've had throughout the rest of the year.

[Joe Hill]

The Fever House is an ingenious work of writing. It has the energy of early punk rock. It has something of a punk rock ethos. It's very in your face. It has a tremendous cast of characters. There is a pair of feds that read like a twisted version of Mulder and Scully from the X Files. There is an angel that's being held under conditions that make Guantanamo Bay look like the Hilton.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Did you say an angel?

[Joe Hill]

Yes, an angel. And occasionally, people with the secretive government agency take a hacksaw to his wings to force him to talk. So that's fairly savage.

[Gilbert Cruz]

I don't know what to make of this. This is all in one book.

[Joe Hill]

This is all in one book. There is a former rock and roll singer who is now almost incapable of leaving her apartment. And she's a bit like Patti Smith. She's tough and highly intelligent. But in this case, she's also crippled by her anxieties. You have this Whole World. I have actually sometimes described it as the pulp fiction of horror novels in the sense that you have this kaleidoscopic ensemble of characters on a whole spectrum of scumminess. And all of them are whirling about in this one city, in this one incredibly rainy night, while our whole world spins out of control and this hand spreads rage, madness and chaos across Portland, Oregon. The ending is so outrageous, I won't speak of it.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Thank you.

[Joe Hill]

I will say the Devil by Name, the follow up presents us with a world that has been profoundly changed. Feverhouse is set in our world as we understand it, with the supernatural intruding on life as we know it. And the Devil by Name is something of the reverse, where the real world is now intruding on a world that has been changed by the power of the supernatural.

[Gilbert Cruz]

That was a superb recommendation. I think you should do this for a living.

[Joe Hill]

Job is taken. The last thing I'll say about it is because I think this matters to a lot of readers. The last thing I'll say about it is the pages of Feverhouse and the Devil by Name fly by so quickly. You're in constant danger of paper cuts. And I think that matters because I think good horror fiction needs to move. Stuff has got to happen. And there's certainly not time for a lot of introspection in the work of Keith Rossen. There's some, though.

[Gilbert Cruz]

I feel like the next and last book you're gonna talk about probably has a little bit of that. It's tonally completely different. Quite serious, quite frightening. This is a book called the Reformatory.

[Joe Hill]

Yeah, The Reformatory by Tananarivedu is just out in paperback. It also just won the World Fantasy Award for best novel. I think that's wonderful, but hardly surprising. The Reformatory is probably one of the two or three best horror novels published in this century so far. It is set in the early 1950s in the south, and it's about a black kid who gets in a tussling match with a white kid after a sister is insulted. This black kid winds up in a reformatory that is as terrifying as the Overlook Hotel and just as haunted. And gradually, it becomes clear that if this kid doesn't get out of the reformatory in a hurry, he will not live to be 15. The book has a lot to say about the early Civil Rights movement and about what it was like to be black in the south in the middle of the 20th century. I thought I knew that story, and it turned out there was a whole bunch I did not Know, it's also just a damn fine horror novel. You know, scary, zippy, full of fraught, tense set pieces. Our lead character encounters a number of ghosts in the reformatory, and those encounters are chilling and also emotionally powerful. These are moments that have something to say about the tragedy of so many of the kids who were sent to, for example, the Dojo School for Boys who never left, walked through that door, and never walked back out. And probably the highest praise I can give the book just about is. Boy, it reads like a Stephen King novel. You know, I mean, it's just. It's got that energy, that vividness and that heart. And I was completely blown away. I read the book probably a year ago, and I think about it all the time.

[Gilbert Cruz]

I have one more question for you that I didn't prepare you for, but I am curious. Given you have kids, what do you think are good entry points? Goosebumps aside, we know the work of R.L. stein is a gateway drug for kids in horror, but what do you give younger people, maybe who want to. That's not it, but who want to dip into this stuff?

[Joe Hill]

I think the gateway drug for horror fiction for kids who are maybe 10, 11. And to any parents listening, I am not the parent of your kid, and you have to make your own decisions about what your kid is appropriate for. So take any advice from me with a grain of salt.

[Gilbert Cruz]

You are legally protected. Thank you.

[Joe Hill]

Yeah, you know what your kid can handle and I don't. That said, there is a work of dark fantasy by a writer named John Bellaire. It's called the House with a Clock and Its Walls. There was a film. I haven't seen the film because I desperately wanted to write the screenplay and I never got a chance to. And I'm so disgusted someone else got to have that pleasure instead that just. I'm just rejecting the film. I'm pretending the film doesn't exist on personal grounds. The book is a masterpiece of dark fantasy, and I would look for any of the editions that were illustrated by Edward Gorey, who illustrated the original edition as part of the Joy of the Book. Absolutely marvelous illustrations. But it is about a young boy named Lewis Barnevelt, who, like so many kids in young adult novels, has been orphaned. And he goes to live with his uncle in, I want to say, New Zebedee, Connecticut. It turns out that his uncle is a sorcerer and that the house is full of magical artifacts. And in the course of trying to impress another boy, Lewis accidentally casts some, gets involved with necromancy and raises the spirit of Evil Terrible Person. And I've read that book. I've probably read House With Clock on Its Walls a dozen times over the course of my life and I think it has some incredibly chilling scenes, but still within the range of what an imaginative, good humored 11 year old can cope with. It's the masterpiece of fantasy that J.K. rowling never wrote. I would put House with the Clock on Its Walls comfortably ahead of any of the Harry Potter novels.

[Gilbert Cruz]

I read those books in those editions that you're describing. I remember the illustrations quite well. I think there was one John Bellairs book, not illustrated by Edward Gorey that genuinely gave me bad dreams for years. I think it was from the Letter of the Witch in the Ring. But do you think John Bellairs is still discussed these days? I feel like you don't hear it as much about him as maybe you should.

[Joe Hill]

I think he's mostly dropped out of the conversation and that's too bad. He's someone who deserves to be rediscovered because the work is so great. That book in particular, the House With a Clock and Walls in particular is really one of the classics of childhood fantasy just as much as the Phantom Tollbooth or the Black Cauldron, the Lion of what's in the Wardrobe. It is in that class, that very elite class of lasting, timeless stories of childhood wonder, darkness and the fantastic. And I'm pretty sure that House with a Clock on Its Walls at least is still in print.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Joe Hill, thank you so much for coming on the Book Review podcast to recommend a bunch of great scary books for the season. This was a real delight.

[Joe Hill]

Gilbert, it was a pleasure. Thanks for talking to me.

[Gilbert Cruz]

That was my conversation from last October with Joe Hill, who has just released his first novel in almost a decade, King Sorrow. We'll be right back.

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[Gilbert Cruz]

Mont Blanc invites you to use life's quiet moments to pause, reflect and put pen to paper. Chapter one. Oh, no, no, no, no.

[Joe Hill]

Part one.

[Victor Laval]

Mmm.

[Joe Hill]

Perfect. The mountains are impressive. Oh, I wish you were here to see them.

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[Gilbert Cruz]

For every journey, the perfect companion awaits. Montblanc. Let's write.

[Victor Laval]

Visit montblanc.com for exquisitely crafted writing instruments, leather goods and more.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Welcome back. I'm Gilbert Cruz, editor of the New York Times Book Review, and I am presenting you now with a conversation that I had with a great writer from two years ago, Victor Lavall, who wrote a piece of historical horror fiction called Lone Women. He is talking about Shirley Jackson's the Haunting of Hill House alongside Henry James's the Turn of the Screw and Stephen King's the Shining. The Haunting of Hill house, published in 1959, is one of the seminal haunted house stories of the 20th century. It tells a tale of Eleanor Vance, a 32 year old woman who is invited to the titular Hill House by a psychic investigator who has gathered a small group of people to try to gather actual proof of the existence of paranormal phenomena. Eleanor, who had spent years essentially cut off from the world as she cared for her now deceased mother, previously experienced an unexplained event when she was 12 when stones fell on her house for three days. This quartet of people, Eleanor, Dr. Montague, a woman named Theo, who is clairvoyance, and Luke, who's the heir to the house, experience increasingly creepy incidents as they begin to wonder what's real and what's not. As we begin to wonder what's real and what's not and whether or not one of them is actually responsible. Victor, I'd love it if you can read the first paragraph of the Haunting of Hill House.

[Victor Laval]

I'm happy to. No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality. Even larks and cattydids are supposed by some to dream. Hill House not sane stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within. It had stood so for 80 years and might stand for 80 more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut. Silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House. And whatever walked there walked alone. Yeah, I love that. One of the great opening paragraphs.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Talk to me about that.

[Victor Laval]

Paragraph number one. It's just so beautiful, beautifully written. I think one of the great things about Shirley Jackson is the way that she finds a way to. She writes about the fantastical, the supernatural and all the rest, but she does it with such beautiful sentences. And it's a real gift, number one.

[Wayfair Announcer]

But.

[Victor Laval]

But it's that opening line in that paragraph that is really like the thematic, the organizing principle of the entire book. No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality. And that turns out to be essentially the test that is put to our main character, Eleanor. We see her because she's our real main character. We spend a great deal of time in her head as she's trying to parse out, like, what's actually happening and what isn't happening. But even more, what do I feel? What do I want? What do I not want? Do I really understand myself or not? And it's a kind of debate she's having with herself throughout the book. And by the end, I would say the choice she makes. I don't want to ruin it for anybody, but the choice she makes is almost her final reaction to the absolute reality of who she is and what her circumstances are. And it's right there in the opening sentence.

[Gilbert Cruz]

And that paragraph is repeated at the end of the book, as I recall.

[Victor Laval]

That's right. And I think it's just like a refrain that comes back. But by the end of the book, hopefully you understand it very differently because of the choice that Eleanor has made. And it's spooky in the beginning and at the end, it's heartbreaking.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Talk to me about the first time you read this book or the earliest memory that you have of. Of reading this book. Tell me everything where you got it. Was it. Did you buy it? Was it at the library? Do you still have that copy? What you thought then, the whole magilla.

[Victor Laval]

Well, it actually begins before Shirley Jackson. It begins with Stephen King and his book Danse macabre, which was his 80s summary of the horror field in general. And as a kid who was in love with Stephen King at the time, but who was not supremely well read, I treated that book like as many people Did, I'm sure, like a. Just a list of bibliography. Here's everything you gotta read. And for better or worse, Shirley Jackson's haunting of Hill House was one of the first I picked up. Actually, I know the reason is because it was one of the few that was in the library, our local. The Flushing branch of the public library. And I picked it up because. Essentially because Stephen King said I should. And then I read it and I didn't understand more than half of it. The funny thing is, when I think about the book at my different stages when I read it as a kid, I was probably 15, and all I really remembered, the part that really stayed with me was the haunted house. Everything's spooky. Which, as I reread it again, like, preparing to come today, I was, like, looking through it and I was marveling at the fact that we don't even get to the house till page 25 of the book. And it's a short book, it's only 175 pages. But when I was a kid, that was the part that sparked my excitement. Oh, there's a big spooky house. And then the other thing that she does that to me is even more rarefied within the haunted house field, although certainly anyone who's read the Shining will understand it, is that a lot of haunted house stories turn out to be that there's an entity there that is the cause, someone died there. Someone. A crime was done, blah, blah, blah. But in her book, it's the house itself. It's Hill House that is evil. Or at least that's what Eleanor believes. The Overlook Hotel feels very much like. Akin to.

[Joe Hill]

To that.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Yeah. I believe there's a line early on, maybe when Eleanor sees the house for the first time. Jackson writes, the house was vile. She shivered and thought, the words coming freely into her mind. Hill House is vile. It is diseased. Get away from here at once. You're absolutely right that there is something to the house being evil. And the way that Jackson gets at it, as I recall, is not just having Eleanor tell us, but it's also within the architecture of the house. To me, it was one of the more memorable things about the book. If you think about books that came decades later, like House of Leaves, which is about a house that keeps mutating, growing bigger on the inside. The way that Jackson describes the way rooms just don't seem right. Walls don't come together at the right angles. Pieces of the house that you should be able to see from this window are just completely obscured. It touches on how H.P. lovecraft used to write about the way in which angles never came together in the right way. But she applies that to a house as a living organism almost.

[Victor Laval]

Yeah. The non Euclidean geometry that was Lovecraft's whole cities built on non Euclidean geometry, which I always love. Cause I had no idea what that means.

[Gilbert Cruz]

I don't know what it means. Nobody knows.

[Victor Laval]

Nobody knows what it means. But it sounds good and definitely Shirley Jackson. Even the first time Eleanor enters her room, she's just standing at like the doorway and she's just trying to understand where the corners are. Because there's strange shadows in places where she thinks there shouldn't be. And the ceiling goes higher on one end than the other. And then she walks across the room and suddenly where she was looks strange. And it's so disorienting in a way that feels not cheap. Like the. I feel like the cheap version of this is she walks in and then there was a skeleton in the corner and whatever it might be.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Please. I would never read that book.

[Joe Hill]

Right.

[Victor Laval]

It would not become a classic. But for her, it's that sense of something is off. Something is always off in this place. And then, of course, the beauty of it is you start to understand or you start to wonder, is that the house or is that Eleanor? Because Eleanor is also always trying to figure out why. Why can't she get close to people? Why can't she trust anyone? Why can't she love anyone? What are the things that are off in her? And how is this house a reflection of that? And it becomes this wonderful funhouse mirror back and forth between the two.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Talk to me about another moment in your life when you were older, when you can remember reading this book and how you received it differently. So if the first time you're ready, you're like, wow, this is a great creepy haunted house story. Tell me where you were in your life when you read it. Second, third, fourth time, and what you picked up then.

[Victor Laval]

So the second time I can recall reading it, I was. It must have been about 1990, I want to say 94. And I had been kicked out of college because I was not doing well. I had poor grades, all this kind of rest. I was living in Ithaca, New York, and I took a job working for Manpower, the temp agency. And I was usually like, moving furniture, cleaning offices, whatever it might be, and trying to figure out, like, was my college career over? Cause I got booted out in my junior year, I think. And I had a lot of free time, as you sometimes do at Temp jobs. And I'd picked up the book for a class that I, characteristically, at that time in my life, did no work in. But I had the book in the house that I was sharing, in the room that I was sharing with these other guys. And I started to read it. And the thing that stayed with me this time was those first 25 pages where you discover how awful Eleanor's life was before she shows up at Hill House. The awfulness of that was she spent years taking care of a mother who was vile to her. And then she lives with her in one of the most effective scenes right at the start, but that I totally glossed over. At 15, she's sitting with her sister and brother in law and she's saying, I'd like to take the family car to drive to Hill House for this trip. And you watch, the sister keeps saying, jackson's so nice about this. Eleanor keeps saying, the car is half mine. It was like half my inheritance. And the sister keeps saying, I just don't know if I can let you take my car. And they just keep doing that. And then the brother in law just keeps saying, what if our kid gets sick while you're away? We might need to get in the car and drive somewhere. And you see her being snowed under by the weight of this family and these people who just don't listen to her. And so then one morning, after they've told her no, she just steals the car. And you're actually proud of her. She's done this bold thing, and I guess in a way, like reading it. Then when I was booted out of school and I had been. I'm not gonna say anybody's names, but I had been treated really badly by this dean. When I got booted out, like literally in his office, he said to me, you will never graduate while I am a dean. And I had never met this dude before. And so it really felt like, wow, the universe is out to get me. And so maybe I was extra empathetic to Eleanor and her feelings of being crushed under the weight of these people. And so that first 25 pages, she steals the car. And then on her drive to Hill House, it's her first time that she is free. And you watch her stopping in different places and living out these fantasies about, oh, I could just go here, and I could live in the woods and I could grow this kind of fruit and vegetables and I could just live happily, or I could go here. And the beauty of it is, you see her trying out independence. You see her trying to stand up for herself. And then she goes to Hill House.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Where everything goes fine.

[Victor Laval]

Where it's the shortest novel ever. She gets there, everyone welcomes her. It's all sweet. The house isn't haunted.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Have you ever borrowed anything from this book for your work? A character name, a beat, a motivation, a tone? What have you pulled out of it?

[Victor Laval]

Well, actually, I mean, rereading it again just over the weekend, the opening bits. I realized the beginning of Lone Women is Eleanor's escape. And the way that she's afraid of being caught. Like, I absolutely lifted that feeling for Adelaide. And in a way, it's not in the book. Because in the end, my editor and I agreed it was a little boring. But I spent actually a lot more time. In an earlier draft, you stayed with her on the ship that she's first on from Southern California. Then she's in Seattle, she spends a little time in Seattle. Then from Seattle, she takes the train across Montana. And that one, I spent even more time, like, really borrowing from that first 25 pages in particular.

[Gilbert Cruz]

When was the last time that you read the Haunting of Hill House?

[Victor Laval]

The last time before this weekend, when I was rereading it for this. My wife had given birth to our first son. It was the summer we're both off from teaching. So we were just. Basically, what we would do is we were up and down by his schedule at that point. And living this kind of weird nocturnal life. Where we would, at around 5 o', clock, watch the Wire while drinking beer and eating popcorn with this, like, wheat dust on top of it. Cause it was supposedly gonna give us more energy or whatever it might do. And then eventually he would fall asleep. My wife, who was absolutely much more exhausted, would crash. And one of those times I was in the kitchen. I started to make it my thing that I would be in the kitchen. So that I could be closer to. If he woke up, I could get to him quicker. And I started to read some things. And this was one of the books I actually read Haunting of Hill House then. So that would have been 11 years ago now. Because he's 11. And I also read her the book that came after this. We have Always Lived in the Castle. Which is. As much as I love this book, that's her masterpiece, I would say. But the two are almost like a great pairing. But I read that Exhausted in our kitchen in Washington Heights. And in that one I just envied the idea that Eleanor lived alone. Cause I really needed to live alone at that point. When our baby was about a Month or two old.

[Gilbert Cruz]

I remember those crazy early morning hours and being up and trying to read something or trying to. I think I watched the Babadook at like 4 o' clock in the morning, which is not a great movie if you've just had a kid.

[Victor Laval]

Oh, that's a terrible idea.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Oh my God. Maybe this was a bad idea.

[Victor Laval]

Yes, that's a profound. I mean, I love that movie, but yeah, I wouldn't recommend it then.

[Gilbert Cruz]

I had not read a plot synopsis beforehand. It was my mistake. How do you recommend this book to people? If you ever do, when you're trying to tell someone you absolutely have to read Haunting of a Hill House. How do you sell it?

[Victor Laval]

You know, actually, often it's with that opening paragraph that you asked me to read. Because I really feel like it's almost a kind of key. Like if a person hears that paragraph and. And they lean in, they kind of go, wait a second, what does that mean? Hill House is not sane. What does that mean? That even larks and cattydids dream. If all those things inspire questions, then I know this will be your thing. Just take it. I promise you. And then if I read that to someone and they go, I don't know what they're talking about. I don't know what that means. I often say, let me think of something else. How about. Because the other. The nice thing is then I might recommend the we have always lived in the castle. Because that one begins with a much clearer, in theory, introduction to the main character, Mary Cat. And she's super weird, but it's more concrete. But really, I say at heart, like, do you want to read a beautifully written book about a very lonely woman in a very lonely house?

[Gilbert Cruz]

Well, this is definitely a book that I can see myself reading several more times in my life. Hopefully that's the same for you.

[Joe Hill]

Yes.

[Gilbert Cruz]

And hopefully for everyone listening. We've convinced you to give it a shot.

[Victor Laval]

I hope so. I hope so. It will reward you.

[Gilbert Cruz]

It's one of the greats. Yes, I've been speaking with Victor Laval about Shirley Jackson's the Haunting of Hill House and about his new novel, Lone Women. Victor, thank you so much for being here today.

[Victor Laval]

It was a pleasure. Thanks for this.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Those were my conversations with Joe Hill from 2024 and Victor Laval from 2023. I'm Gilbert Cruz. I hope you keep it spooky. Everyone. See you.

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