Our first BookTalk of 2017 looked at the American Gothic classic, Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House (1959). A finalist for the National Book Award in the US, Jackson’s novel evokes the dark secrets that lie in the heart of post-war middle America, as it traces the psychological assault faced by its protagonist, Eleanor Vance, and displays a complex interweaving of the conventions of gothic supernaturalism with probing analysis of middle-American culture. Our speakers for the evening were Robert Lloyd, Dr Dawn Mannay and Prof. Diana Wallace.

You can read posts for the event below:

1. BookTalk event, 8 Feb 2017: Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House 13 Jan 2017
2. Ruth Franklin on Shirley Jackson, Part One 30 Jan 2017
3. Ruth Franklin on Shirley Jackson, Part Two 1 Feb 2017
4. Ruth Franklin on Shirley Jackson, Part Three 3 Feb 2017
5. Trailer for The Haunting (1963) 6 Feb 2017
6. BookTalk Event Review: The Haunting of Hill House 17 Apr 2017
7. Film in Focus: Shirley (Dir. Josephine Decker, 2020) 2 Nov 2020
8. ‘All the time that I am making beds and doing dishes and driving to town for dancing shoes, I am telling myself stories,’ 10 Nov 2020