If you've seen the movie, this is different
Really, really different. The way Faye Weldon's Lives and Loves of a She-Devil is really different from the wacky film starring Roseanne and Meryl. You can enjoy both because one is a comedy and the other is a dark, twisted story that you just can't look away from. It's not supernatural horror, it's the much more pedestrian type of horror that people are consumed in and sacrificed to daily with no fuss at all.
Barbara and Jonathan Rose are those people. It's easy enough to see their points, but both are selfish, wrong-headed, and cruel. Barbara wants an entirely different life than the one they've led together for 18 years, while Jonathan wants exactly that life, whether she's happy playing her role or not. Or, more correctly, he wants her to be happy with it, period.
Of such mundane things are horrific tragedies made.
The last third of the book held me completely enthralled as I began to see another story emerge as both Roses assumed the house was not only sentient, but siding with each against the other. Neither feels truly endangered because each believes the house won't let the other hurt them. However, when it is observed through the eyes of a third party, she sees it as a thing that has been brought to life by the boiling hatred of its occupants, sentient, perhaps, but protecting neither. Perhaps even hoping the lure the observer inside.
So what began as a story about two people going through a bad divorce kind of turned into how haunted houses get their start. It was like watching The Overlook Hotel practice with its first set of puppet people, and I, for one, would love to see a series of books based on the unfortunate adventures of the Rose House's stream of future owners.
