Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A HAUNTING STORY, 14 Mar 2001
This was David Lindsay's second book after 'A Voyage to Arcturus'. As the reading public had not responded to the grim metaphysical vision revealed in his first (and greatest) novel, he decided to bring his vision 'down to earth'. And so 'The Haunted Woman' is set, not on a strange planet, but in 1920's Brighton, and its characters are not alien cyphers but recognisable members of human society. The plot revolves around a strange house with an interdimensional upper storey reached by a phantom staircase. The heroine, engaged to a conventional businessman, finds herself strangely drawn both to the house and its owner, Mr Judge. The rigid mores of society keep them apart, but when they accidentally meet each other in the phantom upper storey of Judge's house, they recognise the fact that they are soul-mates and fall in love. The tragedy lies in the fact that when they return to the lower levels of the house, they cannot remember anything that took place in the rooms above. This bare outline of the plot cannot possibly convey the book's strange atmosphere. Reading it is a curious experience as it seems to operate on two different levels. One one level it is a conventional story of 'star-crossed lovers' set in 1920's England, with its associated intrigues and an interesting evocation of a vanished era; but on another level (when the action shifts to the weird upper storey of the ancient house) it becomes something else --- but what that 'something else' is, I must leave the reader to decide. One thing I guarantee, the book will haunt you for a long, long time after you have read it. David Lindsay was utterly unique as a writer, and this book is one of his best.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Sublime and mundane love, 26 Sep 2008
As a story in its own right this is a brief, if interesting little novel, focussing on the romantic soul-searchings of the leisured classes, in the lost era of the 1920's, but with a twist of mystery that sets it apart. The mystery involves a house with rooms and staircases that are sometimes there and sometimes not, and lead to other places in another world. As such, it is a clear forerunner of C.S.Lewis's wardrobe into Narnia. Lewis indeed was one of the first literary minds to comprehend Lindsay's significance. But, less hopeful than Lewis, events and particularly emotions, in this other world are so incompatible with our own that only tragedy can result from their interaction.
Read as a sequel to Lindsay's allegorical masterpiece A Voyage To Arcturus (Fantasy Masterworks) the book takes on whole new dimensions as it becomes apparent that it constitutes a deeper exploration of the issues raised in the poetically tragic Sullenbode episode of Arcturus. The allegory works like this; there is a sublime alternate world of which this one is a shabby and mundane shadow. In that world romantic Love between man and woman assumes a passion and, above all, a truth and a baring and sharing of soul that makes the love of this mundane world a twisted sham, distorted by manners and compromise. When a man and woman who have experienced love in the sublime world return to this one, thay 'forget' what has passed between them, but are left with baffling clues that something has passed and the knowledge that what has passed may completely upset and destroy all their plans and relationships in the mundane. That what follows is tragedy without the higher love ever reaching consummation is an expression of a bleak philosophy, the message of which is that Love in the sublime realm is ultimately unattainable to humans, but just to glimpse it is sufficient to wreck and disrupt the lives we are compelled to live in the mundane.
This is a huge message for such an unassuming little book, that could change a life or two, if encountered at just the right moment.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Hauntingly Good..., 1 Feb 2008
The Haunted Woman is a type of novel I love, where life is normal except for one fantastical element. In this case it is a staircase, which gets me interested immediately. Think this might be a rather specialist interest, but I love staircases in literature.
I'll quote the blurb from my copy of The Haunted Woman:
Engaged to a decent but unexceptional man, Isbel Loment leads an empty life, moving with her aunt from hotel to hotel. She is perverse and prickly with untapped resources of character and sensibility. They explore by chance a strange house and there Isbel meets Judge, its owner; a profoundly disturbing relationship develops and it is from this that the drama unfolds.
They obviously don't want to give the staircase bit away, but I shall - there is a staircase which offers three doors at the top. Isbel takes one of them, which leads to a room, where she meets Judge again. When they return to the main house, neither remember what has taken place in the room. And so it goes on, with parallel existences and relationships. All the way throughout the novel there is the mystery of what remains behind the other doors...
David Lindsay's writing is sometimes criticised for not being very fluid or well styled, but I just found it took a little getting used to - sure, he's not Virginia Woolf, but I didn't find it stood out as awful. And, for me, the plot and intrigue and characters more than make up for this. I sometimes love books for language, regardless of plot (e.g. Tove Jansson's writing) but equally sometimes plot takes precedence over language. And Lindsay manages to combine the two in a way which leads to a beautiful surrealism by the end, and produces a novel which is quite unlike anything else I've ever read. Give it a try.
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by David Lindsay
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