| The House on the Borderland |  | Author: William Hope Hodgson
Publisher: Public Domain Books
This item is no longer available
Rating:  46 reviews
Format: Kindle Book
Media: Kindle Edition
ASIN: B000JMKVXK
Publication Date: November 1, 2003
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Amazon.com Review
This classic novel of the weird supernatural, first published in 1908, was an important influence on H. P. Lovecraft. In the ruins of an ancient stone house in Ireland is found the diary of an elderly man who lived alone with his sister and their pets, and who longed for his lost love. The diary tells of how the man explores a cyclopean cavern beneath the house and fights off swarms of white pig-like monsters pouring up from below. Then, in a visionary sequence, he breaks through to an alternate space-time dimension and sees a doppelganger of his house on a vast desolate plain. The prose is hokey at times, but the strange mood evoked by the other-dimensional setting is powerful indeed. As acclaimed horror writer T. E. D. Klein says, "Never has a book so hauntingly conveyed a sense of terrible loneliness and isolation."
Product Description
This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 46
Creepy and weird-- in a good way May 31, 2010
Live2Cruise (USA)
My head is still spinning from this trippy little novel, in a good way. I don't think I've read anything quite like it. Part supernatural, part horror with a smidge of sci fi, it defies convention. Definitely a book that can be read in one sitting, so you can really get absorbed into the story.
The basic plot consists of two friends on holiday, who find a muddied manuscript in the ruins of a very creepy house perched over an abyss. The manuscript is written by a recluse who lived in the house, to provide an account of the eerie goings-on in his home. The suspense builds slowly, and quite deliciously. (I got so absorbed that at one point when something fell in my house, I thought I was in danger from one of the creatures in the book until I remembered where I was-- that's good writing!)
Some of the book focuses on the recluse's experiences in his home, and the later part focuses on a journey he takes through time and space. This later part dragged a bit for me, as it lacked the suspense and energy of the scenes set in the house. But things picked up again, and the ending left me shivering.
 Disappointing June 26, 2009
Athanasius (NYC)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
I love classic ghost stories, and am always happy to curl up with Susan Hill, Oliver Onions, Algernon Blackwood, J.S. LeFanu, and, of course, the great M.R. James. I have never been a fan, however, of H.P. Lovecraft. Not surprisingly, therefore, I didn't enjoy William Hope Hodgson's "The House on the Borderland", which is Lovecraft on steroids. And given that Lovecraft is already too overwrought for my liking, Hodgson is definitely not my cup of tea.
The book starts off well; indeed, very well. But the two men on the fishing trip turn out to be little more than potted plants. Nothing much happens to them, and they don't really do or accomplish anything. One of them reads the manuscript found in the ruins of the house, while the other listens to the tale. Yawn.
As for that tale, which is the heart of the book, Hodgson has thrown in everything but the kitchen sink. In addition to the story being heavily laden, it's also directionless and confused. What are we dealing with here? Not ghosts, surely. Demons? So it would seem. But why confuse the issue with pretentious and unsuccessful science fiction gibberish? Hodgson's obsession with space/time/dimensional travel is both bizarre and tiresome. This is H.G. Wells territory, and Hodgson is lost in it. In a very short book, there is page after page of the sun rising and setting at an ever-increasing pace and of the seasons melding together in the wink of an eye. It's interminable and boring.
I usually prefer to think that the protagonist in these tales is actually experiencing horror, rather than assume he's psychotic. But not in this case. The guy's crazy. It should be left at that. And the book -- it should be left on the shelf.
 house on the borderland May 20, 2008
s.e.a. (portland)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
i first read this book in its original form many years ago, and it was already very old. it eventually got stolen from the library as its value had increased. it was out of print for many years. without ruining it for you i would recommend highly. i couldn't put it down the first time i read it and stayed up until about three to finish. kept the lights on after that. it is different than any other book i have read and is not a horror "story". it is actually a narrative document in first person, develops slowly but please read. the only reason not to like it is if you hate accounts that make you nervous.
this manuscript involves a man who is at a very remote rural home and his dog discovers
Starts well... and then collapses April 21, 2008
Brian Trent
4 out of 6 found this review helpful
The House on the Borderland is one of the works which inspired H. P. Lovecraft, and it's easy to see why. A crumbling mansion in a forgotten corner of Ireland, in which an elderly man lives with his sister (shades of Poe's The Fall of the House of Usher) is an intriguing premise. The writing is decent and at times quite evocative.
An earthquake opens up a fissure in the ground, and to the old man's horror an entire nest of peculiar monsters is set loose in the land. Hodgson weaves a compelling narrative at this point; the efforts of the man to repel these creatures is well-described and engaging.
Then -- poof! the tale self-destructs.
The writer shifts gears and takes his main character on an astral out-of-body quest deep into the universe. Colors, flashing lights, and pages upon pages of description that amounts to nothing. It felt a little like the concluding shots of Dave Bowman's fall into the monolith at the end of 2001 -- trippy and drawn out.
In short, Hodgson abandoned his set-up and premise and drops us into an acid-trip. I'm guessing he wanted to weave a paranormal tale that deliberately leaves questions in the reader's mind. To do that well, however, there has to be a meaty story with some form of resolution. Lovecraft rarely gives his audience every piece of information, but there is substance and a concrete value to his metaphors. The House on the Borderland may have been his inspiration, but Lovecraft immeasurably improved on the craft.
Very disappointing.
Hodgson Ups The Ante March 8, 2008
s.ferber (New York, NY United States)
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
William Hope Hodgson's first published novel, "The Boats of the Glen Carrig" (1907), is a tale of survival after a foundering at sea, replete with carnivorous trees, crab monsters, bipedal slugmen and giant octopi. In his now-classic second novel, "The House on the Borderland," which was released the following year, Hodgson, remarkably, upped the ante, and the result is one of the first instances of "cosmic horror" in literature, and a stunning amalgam of sci-fi and macabre fantasy. An inspiration for no less a practitioner than H.P. Lovecraft, the book really is a parcel of malign wonders. Once read, it will not be easily forgotten. I myself read the book for the first time some 20-odd years ago, and it has stayed with me ever since; a recent repeat reading has served to remind me of just why.
"House" takes the form of a found manuscript that had been written by "an old man" (we never learn his name, although he is one of the spunkiest, toughest, bravest old men imaginable) living in a very mysterious house in a desolate area of western Ireland. A recluse, living only with his elderly sister and his dog, Pepper (an animal who proves to be one of the gutsiest, loyalist pets you've ever encountered), he writes of the increasingly outre experiences he has recently undergone in this strange abode. We learn of his bizarre vision of a larger but identical house on some distant planet, watched over by the hideous gods and goddesses of Earth's past. In the manuscript's most exciting section, he tells of his battle with the "Swine Things" that besieged his home, and of his subsequent exploration of the great Pit from which they had emerged. In a segment that takes up almost half of his history, the recluse tells of his incredible voyage through time, space and dimensions, a journey that almost makes me wish that I had read this book in college, while under the influence of some psychotropic substance. This mind-expanding section boasts a sequence in which time superaccelerates, and Hodgson's descriptions here will surely bring to mind (and manage to outdo) the forward-traveling segment of the 1960 film "The Time Machine," with its rapid-fire sun/moon transitions. Hodgson's description of the last days of our planet and solar system, with a dead sun hanging ponderously in the sky over a frozen Earth, are almost as effective as H.G. Wells' in his "Time Machine" novel of 1895, with that author's dead, oily sea and (come to think of it) some crab monsters of his own. The recluse's cosmic journey after Earth's demise, and his visit to the Green Star and the "celestial orbs" (Hodgson's conception of heaven and hell?), are as mind-blowing, surely, as the "star gate" sequence in 1968's "2001: A Space Odyssey," and perhaps more meaningful. And any book that manages to rival Wells' and top George Pal and Stanley Kubrick in the cosmic spectacle department can't be all bad, right?
I used the expression "perhaps more meaningful" just now, and that "perhaps" might represent, for many readers, a significant drawback of "The House on the Borderland." For, although we are shown glimpses of many mystifying wonders in the recluse's tale, Hodgson does not deign to explain one of them. The origin of the Swine Things, the meaning of the counterpart House on another planet, the cause of the hermit's cosmic journey, the reason for the destruction of the House and many other conundrums remain mysteries by the book's end; not just open to interpretation, but practically demanding some sort of explication on the part of the reader. I'm not usually a fan of such open-ended stories (for example, the writers on the hit TV series "Lost" had better tie up every last loose end or I am going to be mighty P.O.'ed!), but here, it works somehow, only adding an aura of cosmic inscrutability to an already awe-inspiring affair. Hodgson writes simply in this novel, forgoing the pseudo-archaic 18th century English of "Boats" and the hyperadjectival, baroque language of 1912's "The Night Land," but still seemingly can't resist the urge to play with the language a bit. For example, I've never read a book with so many unnecessary commas, as in this sentence: "For, a time, I mused, absently." But again, this affectation works, only increasing the strangeness quotient of the book. Not for nothing was "The House on the Borderland" chosen for inclusion in Newman & Jones' excellent overview volume "Horror: 100 Best Books." Read it today for the awe and the shudders, and then tell me in the year 2030 how well YOU remember it....
Showing reviews 1-5 of 46
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