Top Ten Tuesday – Hallowe’en Freebie

Over to English! I haven’t done a Top Ten Tuesday in a while, so thought it could be fun to partake. It is after all a meme I very much enjoy – I just seem to forget about it… 

 

This week is a Hallowe’en freebie – and I’ve decided to go for a top ten of haunting novels or other texts. I am fond of the word haunting and am quite fond of things that are haunting – so there we are. 

 

1. First up, of course – Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier. It wasn’t by chance that it became a Hitchcock film… I absolutely love this novel. Such a skilful piece of work.
2. The Virgin Suicides by fantastic Jeffrey Eugenides. There is something haunting throughout this wonderful novel. 
3. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner is not just a haunting novel – it appears that most of the members of the Compson family are indeed haunted themselves, in several ways. I love the Southern Gothic style and this is the epitome of it. 
4. Dark Places by Gillian Flynn must have a place here. Not only the actual crime which was committed, but the environment, the society, everything is haunting and decaying. And amazing. 
5. Suzanne Collins‘s Hunger Games trilogy is also very haunting to me. The feeling that someone is constantly out to get you – or well, not me, then – certainly qualifies in this category. 
6. My favourite novel, The Secret History by Donna Tartt, has an incredibly haunting element to it. The paranoia, or whatever I should call it, of the group is so well described that it really feels like you are there. 
7. Let the right one in by Swedish John Ajvide Lindqvist… well. It’s got vampires. And not shimmering, pansy ones but really scary ones. Excellent. 
8. William Shakespeare deserves a place here, and nothing is more haunting to me than Macbeth. I vividly remember the first time I read it – I’m not one to be frightened by ghost stories per se, but this really did freak me out a little. 
9. Ransom Riggs‘s Miss Peregrine’s home for peculiar children? Yes, I don’t think I need to say much more. Peculiar children’s home? It’s haunting. 
10. I loved Paula Hawkins‘s The girl on the train – a big part of what I thought was so fantastic was the way in which an unreliable narrator makes everything haunting. You constantly have to be on guard with a narrator like Rachel – that creates an unbelievably eerie atmosphere.