"The Amityville Horror" by Jay Anson

This will be the year when I suddenly (and unexpectedly) turned my attention to genre of horror. There is nothing wrong with it, except that previously I had completely different ideas, thinking that I will spend time reading classics, soaking some wisdom and maybe exploring science fiction genre but it didn't work that way. First, I found out that I simply wasn't in the mood for the long-winded novels (sorry "Gil Blas" it will happen another time), second with all my neat lists and arranging books by genres, there is actually a pleasure in random choice and as it happens, Shirley Jackson was really a discovery - excellent writer with a good grasp of human psychology - finally I realised there is someone else out there besides Stephen King and Anne Rice, so I went on to check Richard Matheson and now this book that was huge phenomenon back in 1977 and inspired long list of haunted-house movies.

It all depends is the haunted house genre your cup of tea at all - personally I find that Shirley Jackson created such a masterpiece with her "The Haunting of Hill House"  that its really hard (impossible?) to even attempt competing with such brilliant, multi-faceted and multi-layered, ambiguous creation that has power to thrill even today, 59 years after it was first published. Than there is a matter of certain limitations of haunted house genre, after all, so far we were dealing with very much the same frame: somebody (gullible family) moves in a space that is full of demons, ghosts and malevolent poltergeists and starting from there, chapter in, chapter out, we follow how the characters gets spooked and freaked out until a) they run, b) priest comes and sprinkles holy water, c) someone else talks to ghosts and explains there is a grave under the kitchen floor. It was all extremely exciting when I was a teenager but it eventually became an old hat, I mean, we have seen cliché after cliché in every single movie and book so many times that we started to wonder is there any other way the story could be poked,without using same old plot.

"The Amityville Horror" is a guilty pleasure. I had to admit that in my naivety (and absolute lack of any preconception of what am I getting into) I actually took all of this very seriously, reading it long into the night and getting all very excited about things that go bump into the night. Than I read the supposed background of the story and apparently universal public dismissal of the even possibility that George and Kathy Lutz actually lived trough all of this, kind of cooled my excitement, which, looking back in retrospective now I think it was wrong of me - I should just enjoy it as a work of fiction and not bothering to know other people's opinions. It's fairly gripping story (except that somewhere halfway trough I started noticing that it could have been better edited) and since apparently I kept the lifelong fascination with the subject, this is exactly kind of novel that keeps me awake in the night. Perhaps instead of criticising it, readers should just enjoy it for what it is - escapism, fun, thrill of it - after all, we are not looking into haunted house novel to find out some deep, meaningful ideas or truths.