Tales about haunted houses are by now as common as major character deaths in Game of Thrones (sorry, couldn't resist that comment), but it seems like Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House belongs to those classic stories which caused the hype first of all. Shirley Jackson may be best known for her dystopian short story The Lottery which initially introduced me to her writing, but in the end, Hill House is what made her a commonly mentioned presence in the genre of classic horror stories. However, don't be led into the wrong direction here. There are no zombies strolling over streets, no vampires lurking in the dark, no monsters running behind desperated victims. There is only a mysterious house with secrets of its own, only some curious characters experiencing something they would not have expected. The true terror of the story is lurking behind the words, catching hold of your mind only when you are reading between the lines. 
 In The Haunting of Hill House four characters who could not have been more designed as caricatures seek to learn the truth behind this house: a peculiar professor, his lighthearted assistant, the future heir of the house and a fragile woman. Inexplicable incidents soon cause those characters to be confronted with difficult questions, and the course of the story might lead some of them into the deepest corners of their conscious minds. This sounds like an intriguing premise, but ultimately, the execution turned out to be not as intriguing. I have read quite a few other Shirley Jackson short stories, all of them quite slow-paced and narrated without directly involving the reader, but each of them still managed to stand out in their own right. The same happened with this novel - you don't find any real twists there, no moments of true, climatic horror. The only difference to her short stories was the characterisation. While this can't be directly minded in her shorter works, her missing talent at writing believable characters sticked out in this novel, and it bothered me throughout my entire reading experience. In a short story, it can be enough to have an engaging plot, but in a book, you have to accompany characters on their journey, and if the author fails at making you care about them, the journey can turn out to be uncomfortable and disappointing. 
 Shirley Jackson's writing style is unique and interesting, a style so different from other authors that in spite of the slow pace, it somehow manages to attract readers. But a good plot, an intriguing atmosphere and good writing are sometimes simply not enough. Someone should have taught Shirley Jackson how to create breathing, vivid characters before writing her novels. It is sad that she died way too young, at the age of 48 - she had a lot of potential for writing more powerful works and stories. Another book by her, We Have Always Lived in the Castle, has become quite popular throughout the years, so I will probably give this one a chance as well. 
 It has almost been a year since I read this novel, but it still remains in my memory as if it was glued to my mind, so I feel like three stars are the perfect rating to this novel. Maybe my expectations were wrong or Shirley Jackson simply didn't exhaust all the possibilities with the potential of this story, but something always kept this from becoming an extraordinary work for me.