I have read half this book and I found the first quarter excellent but I have never finished it as it becomes more tedious and frivolous the more I read.

Not my taste. I'm sorry I read all 300 pages; I should have stopped when I first got annoyed. But the book kept hinting about some great reveal about the family's former trauma...but that never happened. The whimsy fell flat, the characters were annoying assholes, and the ending was unspeakably saccharine.

Imagine a house that was haunted before there was a house to haunt.....Newman brings his unique vision to this slow burning tale of a family that finds itself in the presence of supernatural forces of unknown intent.So subtle as to be nearly subliminal, this almost psychological haunting will keep you wondering if the ghosts ate having a negative effect on the family.....the family is having a negative effect on the ghosts, or possibly both, as things spin inexorably from the creepy to the weird...

I will get around to posting about this book shortly, but in the meantime, if anyone would like my copy (in the US), I'm not keeping it and it needs a home. Just be the first to leave a message -- and I'll give it to you and I'll pay postage.

This was okay. I found the ending a bit muddled and confusing at to what was going on but enjoyed the scene-setting in the first quarter or so, and the writing style is often quite beautiful. There's nothing really scary here, it's more of a family drama with spooky interludes.

I've been a Kim Newman fan since "Jago" in the early 90s, and its great that he's finally back to writing horror novels after such a long break (I still haven't read "Johnny Alucard," but I'm chomping at the bit to get to it). "An English Ghost Story" didn't disappoint. It's at once a great, almost classic ghost story in the M.R. James mold, but Newman infuses it with enough of his batsh*t weirdo sensibility to make it utterly its own thing. There's a minor rough patch in the middle where the sh...

This was my first time reading Newman, the author until now I only knew rom his Anno Dracula series. Vampires and series being not my thing, never read him until I saw this book. Named so generically, it doesn't really set up any expectations and so it didn't disappoint. Did it impress? To an extent. Newman's writing skills are actually quite impressive, his character development is most excellent and so the first third of the book is really good. Then once it delves into the horror zone, it sta...

Not too bad to start but it just got weird and not in a good way. At 60% or so it was so ridiculous that I just scanned the rest, which didn't bode well, so I gave myself permission to call it a day.

Discounting last year’s ANNO DRACULA: JOHNNY ALUCARD (I do so hesitantly, but it was largely an assemblage of previously published novella pieces with new connective tissue pulling the storyline together) it has been roughly 15 long years (LIFE’S LOTTERY 1999) since we’ve had a new novel from Kim Newman. Sure, we’ve had plenty of incredibly fun novellas and short story collections in the ANNO DRACULA and DIOGENES CLUB and MORIARTY vein to keep us occupied, and every one of them a pop-culture lad...

This was a book that started out GREAT! The descriptions of 'The Hollow' and its effect on what was a splintered and disintegrating English family, was nothing less than charming. Add to that the back story of the house's past, and BOOM...instant readability.The problem comes in the of a meandering plot, and snail slow pacing.By the time you get to the part in the read where charm turns macabre, you are so ready for it that there is no wow.There is also the issue of the family's seeming unwillin...

This is a very different take on the age old haunted house story. Whimsical is a good word to describe it. Creepy? Yes. Quaint, too. Like, you know how Mary Poppins is pretty and has lovely pink shoes but it also just a little bit scary? That's this book.

This started out marvelously with a dysfunctional family moving into a beautiful, old, haunted house and being charmed by the supernatural elements they encounter. It was an original, odd, and endearing twist on the traditional ghost story. This happens in the very beginning, so I'm not giving anything away. Things soon fall apart.With the family, their initial happiness with the house begins to chip away as the negative quirks in their personalities start to reassert themselves. The most malevo...

The back of the book describes the Naremores as a dysfunctional family, so I don't think it's a spoiler to say that all four of them (parents and two kids) have issues. Some are apparent to the reader from the outset, others are slower to reveal themselves. Daughter Jordan's is the most specific (though it took me longer than it should have to put a name to it), son Tim's the least (I was never able to tell whether he actually had some kind of problem or had adopted his particular obsession as a...

This novel indeed has the structure of a fairly classic ghost story. A family comes to live in a haunted house- haunted land, actually. The spirit(s) start quietly, but very quickly ramp up to full scale, capital H Haunting. This family, however, is not your typical English ghost story family. This is a modern day, dysfunctional, can barely get along family. This becomes an important factor later in the story. The Naremore family is looking for a house in the country, hoping relocation will solv...

the first half was better than the second. writing good, ending rushed. not scary

Book Review & Giveaway: You probably know multi-award-winning author Kim Newman for his bestselling Anno Dracula series. An English Ghost Story is his new stand-alone novel and I was intrigued by it from the moment I saw it in an industry newsletter. Growing up in the Appalachian Mountains, it seemed that listening to and reading ghost stories was an ongoing rite of passage. An English Ghost Story is such a different kind of novel from the Anno Dracula series that I didn’t even realize Mr. Newma...

I often think writing a good Haunted House novel is just about the hardest trick in the world. It's just about impossible to get right. Newman mostly succeeds. Not really a horror novel, though so adjust your expectations towards family drama.

The slow burn at the beginning is really captivating, moving from whimsical to uncanny at a good pace. I liked that the haunting took unique forms for each of the family members, which isn't exactly an original take but I thought it was done mostly well here. Newman explores gendered tropes in a way that sometimes felt interesting, at other times verged on problematic or cliche. The men (well, one man, one boy) both adopt uber masculine patterns of behaviour - the boy lives an imaginary second-l...

This book was really more about the journey for me than the destination, because the ending was a little weak, IMO. The pacing was a tale of 2 books, because what started off slowly took off like a shot around 2/3 of the way in.It is the story of a haunted piece of ground called The Hollow, and a family who moves into the house there. It is obvious right away that it is haunted, but at least at first this is not a bad thing. I won't say more for fear of spoiling it.The premise was very creative,...

I enjoyed the ideas behind this novel-that a land could be haunted for thousands of years, that trees and lamps and long-dead children could manifest power to either help or harm. But there were too many logic holes in this one for more than 3 stars.