Now we’re well and truly into the New Year (happy New Year, by the way) it seems late to be talking about Christmas but here we go.
Deciding that the Christmas period was a good time for some ghost stories I purchased a few ghostly type books. Two of them I read well before Christmas. Rosemary’s Baby by Ira Levin and We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson both of which satisfied my ghostly/horror yearnings over that period. The third one was Ghost Story by the American horror writer, Peter Straub which I’m still reading. Peter Straub has won quite a number of awards for his books including The Bram Stoker Award, World Fantasy Award and International Guild Horror Award. The novel was published in 1979 and was made into a film in 1981 starring Fred Astaire. I’ve seen the film and as usual it’s nothing like the book. This is a very satisfying read. I was gripped by the novel from the beginning mainly based on the description of the snowy fictional town of Milburn, New York. The story is told from the perspective of the five main characters – a group of five elderly men who formed The Chowder Society which meets to tell each other stories. Mainly of the ghostly/horror type. The question is: Are the men literally frightening themselves to death or are they being haunted? That’s the question I’m still pondering as I race towards the end of the book. As I said, this is a satisfying read and I can highly recommend it to you.
