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House of Many Shadows (1974)

por Barbara Michaels

Otros autores: Ver la sección otros autores.

MiembrosReseñasPopularidadValoración promediaMenciones
4331157,352 (3.83)6
Meg Rittenhouse fears she is losing her mind. The doctors tell her the strange and disturbing hallucinations she's been experiencing ever since her accident are all in her head, and that, with a little rest, the haunting visions will vanish. But accepting an invitation to stay with her cousin in the country may be the worst decision Meg has ever made. Here, in a remote old house miles from anywhere, the terrible sights and sounds have gotten even worse. Suddenly eerie black shapes dance in the shadows--mocking Meg, haunting her . . . threatening her. And the presence of kind, considerate Andy Brenner, the caretaker, both reassures her and terrifies her--because Andy also sees these dark specters . . .… (más)
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» Ver también 6 menciones

Mostrando 1-5 de 11 (siguiente | mostrar todos)
Es ist gar nicht so sehr die Story, die mich beeindruckt hat, vielmehr berührt hat mich der Umgang im 19. Jhd. mit Autorinnen - es wurde ihnen jegliche Fähigkeit gut zu schreiben abgesprochen :( Ich werde sie künftig mit anderen Augen lesen. ( )
  Isfet | Dec 31, 2019 |
House of Many Shadows is what I consider a proper Barbara Michaels book, as opposed to an Elizabeth Peters book under Ms. Mertz's Michaels nom de plume. (In my idea of a proper Barbara Michaels book, the ghosts are real. In Elizabeth Peters books, there is only a hint of the supernatural or none at all.) I count it among my top three proper Barbara Michaels books, along with Ammie, Come Home and The Walker in Shadows.

This one is set in Pennsylvania, in a big Victorian house near a small town called Wasserburg, in Pennsylvania Dutch country. The house's name is Trail's End. It belongs to wealthy twice widowed and once divorced Sylvia, whose second cousin, once removed is our heroine. Meg Rittenhouse, a New York City secretary, suffered a brain injury in a hit and run accident. She suffers from visual and auditory hallucinations. Sylvia is letting Meg spend six months at Trail's End to recover.

There's a caretaker living in a cottage on Trail's End's grounds. He's Andy Brenner, son of Sylvia's second husband, George, who left her the house. Andy is writing a book in his spare time. Meg remembers Andy as the boy who teased and bullied her when she was eight and he a few years older. Understandably, they don't get along well when they first meet again.

There are a few other characters, of which the most enjoyable is Sylvia's friend, antique seller Georgia Wilkes. The most annoying are the previous tenants of Trail's End, Culver (a lazy artist) and his 'wife,' Cherry. They're both still very angry about being kicked out. Andy is still trying to fix the mess they left in revenge.

Meg and Andy have strange experience's in Trail's End: they keep seeing rooms in an older house where three persons lived: an old man, his elderly female servant, and a young girl. Their efforts to find out who they were take up a good portion of the book. If you're too young to remember what doing research was like before the internet was available, you should get an idea.

More ominous are the shadows by the oak tree near Trail's End. Those shadows cause intense fear and anxiety. They seem to be coming a little closer each night. Will they be able to enter the house? If they do, can they actually harm Meg and Andy?

NOTES:

Chapter 1: Here is where Sylvia tells Meg which of her properties she got from which husband.

Mention: the Mormon Tabernacle Choir

Chapter 2: The outside and some of the inside of Trail's End are described.

Mentions: Fifth Avenue and Brentano's [bookstore],

Chapter 3:

a. Wasserburg has 43 antique shops.

b. We meet Frank Culver and Cherry.

c. Meg visits the attics for the first time.

d. Given that this book came out in 1974, I suspect that Meg is talking about the books of ghost hunter Hans Holzer.

e. Andy and Meg are quoting from Walter de la Mare's 'The Listeners'. (You may listen to the author reciting it on Youtube.)

Mentions: Lizzie Borden, Victor Herbert (composer), 'Saturday Evening Post' magazine, Edgar Rice Burroughs (Tarzan's, etc. creator), 'Argosy' magazine, Mozart, 'We're Gonna Kick the Kaiser' (Meg might be confusing 'We're Going to Get the Kaiser' or 'We're Going to Whip the Kaiser' or 'We're Going to Kick the Hell out of Will-hell-em' or similar World War I songs), Bartlett [Familiar Quotations], Roget [Thesaurus], and Walter de la Mare

Chapter 4:

a. Meg finds a privately printed 1933 genealogy of the Emig family. Trail's End was built by Benjamin Emig. His son was Alexander, whose daughter was Beverly.

b. Andy quotes some more from 'The Listeners'.

c. Meg finds a box.

Mention: the 'Mayflower'

Chapter 5:

a. Look here for the verse on Anna Maria Huber's sampler, stitched when she was 11 years old in 1734.

b. We meet Georgia Wilkes, who explains about genuine Chippendale versus the Chippendale style.

Mentions: Philadelphia, Chippendale, Hepplewhite, Sheraton, and Duncan Phyfe

Chapter 6: Andy tells Meg about an old hex murder in Pennsylvania. (It's real, but happened five years later than Andy says it did.)

Chapter 7:

a. Meg finds the the von Friedlans of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel crest.

b. Meg reads aloud from The Sheikh (also spelled The Sheik by E. M. Hull.

c. Andy makes a momentous discovery.

Mentions: Sir Walter Scott, Abbotsford (Scott's estate), Lizzie Borden, Burke and Hare (body snatchers), Constance Kent (unsolved murder), Little Women, and The Sheikh

Chapter 8: We meet Mrs. Adams, elderly Historical Association volunteer.

Mentions: Quakers, Dunkards, Mennonites, Ben Franklin, the 'Pennsylvania Gazette,' and First Purchasers of Pennsylvania

Chapter 9: Georgia and Meg discuss Sylvia and Andy.

Mentions: Betty Friedan (co-founder of the National Organization for Women, wrote The Feminine Mystique), Beethoven, Vivaldi, Bach, Jonathan Gostelowe of Philadelphia (18th century cabinetmaker), Christopher Sauer's German Bible

Chapter 10:

a. Andy tells Meg how one writes a mystery story.

b. Andy talks some more about [John] Blymire and the murder of [Nelson D. Rehmeyer], the hex murder mentioned in chapter six.

Mentions: Sicily, the Netherlands, Pennsylvania Deutsch, the Rhineland, the Ephrata community, the Society of the Woman in the Wilderness, the Kentucky rifle, and the specter of the rose

Chapter 11:

a. Meg learns things visiting Mrs. Adams.

b. Christian Huber's journal is found.

Mentions: Norman Mailer, Philip Roth, Bokhara carpet, and Kerman carpet

Chapter 12:

a. Andy reads aloud from the journal.

b. Meg learns some information about John Emig from Mrs. Adam's copy of the Sadler-Gross-Emig genealogy book. Mrs. Adams' letter includes a family legend.

Mentions: Rosicrusians, Swedenborgians, Hermetic philosophers, Gnostics, Ophites, Emanuel Swedenborg, Hermes Trismegistus, the Masons, the Three Musketeers, Louis the Fourteenth, and [The Man in the Iron Mask]

Chapter 13: Meg talks about England's 1752 revision of the old Gregorian calendar.

There's a difference to the haunting going on in this haunted house story, although Andy doesn't put it together until the last chapter. I enjoyed Andy and Meg acting as if they were cold case detectives trying to solve the mystery of what happened to the Huber family in 1740. On the other hand, Meg is so upset about what they learn that she fails to see what wouldn't have happened if what she so devoutly wished had come true.

The scary parts are few and far between until the climax, so if you're looking for sustained horror, this isn't the book for you. On the other hand, if you like amateur sleuthing with a horror story sneaking around until it catches up with the sleuths, you should enjoy this. ( )
  JalenV | Mar 22, 2019 |
A re-read

This is one of those books that is good, but not great, and then it warms up to you more at the end.

Barbara Michaels had an enthusiasm for old houses that shows clearly in almost all her gothic works, of which there were many. She also has a fondness for antiques. I noticed that in Agatha Christie's biography, she also loved houses, antiques, and traveling - which Barbara Michaels did as well under her real name, Barbara Mertz. (She had a PhD in Egyptology.) It's telling that antiques, old houses, and the cultural history of places is fascinating, each having countless stories and mysteries of their own waiting to be told.

House of Many Shadows has a slower pace because the mystery can only unravel slowly. The location isn't as interesting since, because of illness, finances, and plot, the two mains are almost exclusively isolated in one location (the house.) They go into town for research, but it's a small town and only feeds into the story of "THE HOUSE."

Meg has been offered a reprieve for six months by her unusual aunt Sylvia - to go to the country, the house, and stay there for six months. There they hope she will recover from a head injury that has been giving her visual and auditory hallucinations. On the property, a caretaker is also recovering from his own illness, finding solitude to be a balm in recovery.

There is no way a reader can guess the complex outcome of this one. Clues are too ambiguous, yet they are not teased. They drift down slow, steady, but they seem simple on the surface. In the end how it all ties together is actually layered. This gothic delivers the punches with the paranormal, but avoids cliches in doing so. When it seems like it is too simple, the next few chapters shows there is much to be discovered and the characters are back to square one.

The ending and the girl's face in the last vision a little haunting - I think I'll remember that shocked glance for awhile. This is only fitting since the characters have been slowly haunted (but not in classic methods) for the entire book.

Flimsy on the 'pure gothic angle', but rich with mystery and history. As a side bonus, I'm curious about embroidery now! ( )
  ErinPaperbackstash | Jun 14, 2016 |
A page turner for sure. A bit disappointed in the ending but overall it was a very good book. ( )
  LenaR0307 | May 30, 2016 |
I can see why some fans of Barbara Michaels are put off by House of Many Shadows. It is more of a paranormal mystery/Gothic with a touch of romance. I love discovering the answers along with the characters. Putting aside expectations and judging the book on its own merits, it is well-written and left me with that frisson of delightful horror. It is a keeper! ( )
  Jean_Sexton | May 16, 2015 |
Mostrando 1-5 de 11 (siguiente | mostrar todos)
A must miss.
añadido por JalenV | editarKirkus Reivews (Nov 1, 1974)
 

» Añade otros autores (3 posibles)

Nombre del autorRolTipo de autor¿Obra?Estado
Barbara Michaelsautor principaltodas las edicionescalculado
Huinh, SimonneTraductorautor secundarioalgunas edicionesconfirmado
Linnert, HildeTraductorautor secundarioalgunas edicionesconfirmado
Debes iniciar sesión para editar los datos de Conocimiento Común.
Para más ayuda, consulta la página de ayuda de Conocimiento Común.
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Título original
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To my daughter Beth
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The sounds bothered Meg most.
Citas
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Andy opened the door -- and stopped, so suddenly he rocked back on his heels. Meg felt it too, even before she saw what was outside. It poured into the house like a flood of evil-smelling gas.
The half-grown moon, high in the sky, cast a thin light over the lawn. The shadows it made were faint; but those other shadows were not the products of moonlight. Tall, columnar shapes of blackness, they hovered in the widere, pale shadow of the big oak. The horror emanated from them, whatever they were -- and Meg thought she knew what they were. (chapter 8)
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Meg Rittenhouse fears she is losing her mind. The doctors tell her the strange and disturbing hallucinations she's been experiencing ever since her accident are all in her head, and that, with a little rest, the haunting visions will vanish. But accepting an invitation to stay with her cousin in the country may be the worst decision Meg has ever made. Here, in a remote old house miles from anywhere, the terrible sights and sounds have gotten even worse. Suddenly eerie black shapes dance in the shadows--mocking Meg, haunting her . . . threatening her. And the presence of kind, considerate Andy Brenner, the caretaker, both reassures her and terrifies her--because Andy also sees these dark specters . . .

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