The Shunned House by H.P. Lovecraft

H.P. Lovecraft

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A tale of a revolting horror in the cellar of an old house in New England.
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I was quite disappointed with this one.

It's a posthumous horror short story written in 1924, published in 1937, and it is nothing at all what I expected. I've never read anything by Lovecraft before (a big failing of mine) and when I came across this short story I though it'd be as a good as any place to start.  I was so wrong.

It's not half as grand as the impression I've always been given of Lovecraft's work. The first half of the story I wasn't even sure if the story had started yet, it was just such a long droning list of who'd lived in the house and the fact that most of them died. The next half is about the ever elusive protagonist setting out to catch (?) the unknown horror that he's somehow worked out lives in the basement of the house. With him he brings the most useless of objects and his ancient uncle.

Then spoiler stuff happens, resulting in some more spoiler stuff and finally spoilers. I didn't actually understand the ending till I had read the wikipedia's plot summary about it (contains spoilers). And after realising what did happen I'm rather disappointed. What a anticlimactic ending to a story that never even bothered to get properly started.

All in all. Save yourself the disappointment. Read something else.

28 pages / published in 1937
Review by Iben Jakobsen, BoB, 2011