Mrs. GodBy Peter StraubPublisher: Pegasus CrimePublished In: New York, New YorkDate: 1990Pgs: 185Summary:On a lonely estate home in England, the Seneschal family, historic patrons of the literary arts, one-time hosts of D.H. Lawrence, T.S. Elliot, Ford Madox Ford, and Henry James among others, a new honoree has been invited. Invitations to Esswood House come and are rescinded regularly. This one comes to a distant relative of a previous darling of Esswood, Isobel Standish. It couldn’t have come at a better time for Professor William Standish, untenured, cuckolded once, expecting his and his wife’s first child…if it’s his. An escape for three weeks to work on a dissertation about his famous relative and the house that so impacted her art. And a chance to explore the mystery that is Esswood…but the ominous phrase, “It’s better to never leave Esswood.”Genre:Horror, genetics, demons, vampires, madnessMain Character: Professor William Standish…though I almost said Esswood HouseFavorite Character: After long thought, I’d have to say that my favorite character is Esswood House, at least through the first three quarters of the book. During the run up to the finale, she…it seems to recede back to being just a house watching what’s going on.Least Favorite Character: The Professor. There were so many places where the character could have turned aside, chosen a more rational path, etc.Favorite Scene: The whole first three quarters of the book are so immersive…at least once he gets to Esswood. From the moment he walks in the front door, even with chapter breaks, it felt like one long scene to me. I read through this book at a breakneck speed wanting to see what happened next and discover the secrets of Esswood. The climax and denouement sucked a lot of that enjoyment out of it for me.Plot Holes/Out of Character: There is a huge gapping hole left at the end. Not really an ending. A big climax…a denouement…and then, it stops. No real payoff.Last Page Sound:“grunt”Author Assessment: I had high expectations for Straub. Somehow he had been on my radar for a long, long time, but I hadn’t read any of his books. This one was on the new pub shelf at the local library when I took my youngest over there. So, it came home with me. I loved the books. The imagery is, as previously stated, immersive. The book was great…75%. Just wish he could have finished in the same vein.It pains me to give this book only one star because it was so much better than the ending gave it to be.Disposition of Book: Returning to the library. Not ever re-reading.Why isn't there a screenplay?:No…not without a significant rewrite of the ending. And with modern culture being what it is, they’d have to retitle it. As written, it would make a helluva trailer…just not sure if it would live up to it’s presence with the ending. Meh.
ugh - i don't know what this book is thinking. it isn't so bad as to be unendurable, but it definitely is the kind of thing where you can see elements of it that make sense, but the overall effect is just not working.i mean, i guess so. it is better than what i could make.but when you are going up against:you're pretty much screwed. and i don't know yet what the horror novel equivalent is to my little fashion gargoyle mondo, but someday my horror prince will come. i read this one because it promised to be a literary-themed horror novel, about a haunted yaddo type of place where famous people like eliot and henry james and virginia woolf etc once did some work, contributing to some secret archive of unknown glory blah blah blah. if you are reading this for the inclusion of literary greats, go find another book. the only place these people show up are in photographs. there is no attempt to write about them as characters or to discuss their "secret" work. there is a brief and completely unsatisfying laundry list of work that "may have been inspired by" their time here, but then it becomes a list of, "oh, here are some moderately creepy works by authors people know - i will pretend they once worked at this house for dramatic purposes! bang!! whimper!!"so but this book is about someone who is chosen to come to this house to study the archives of his aunt; a poet who was either way ahead of her time or batshit crazy, and while he is there he discovers seeeecrets and horrrorrr...only it's not, really. again, like poor mila's outfit - there are all these parts but nothing really comes together in a harmonious whole. things are not as they seem, and the man himself has a creepy backstory and is this drunkenness or madness and what is the deal with these tiny houses and this room full of newspapers and this stairway that goes on and on and on...why is this man yelling at me in a graveyard and who are these people i see thru the windows and what do my dreams mean?it gets messy.i was talking to someone about this at work, and he suggested that it was because straub is old and can't cut it. which, maybe, but after i used the internet - he is only 69!! leonard cohen is about ten years older and just released his best album in 17 years.ageists...i was hoping for a short horror novel about literary personalities. instead i got kind of a mess.it might just be that my own expectations were not met except for the "short" part, and i am just being cranky, but i really think this is an unsuccessful exercise. there are too many placeholders for things that should be scary and interesting, and not enough actual cohesive story. straub - you can leave the runway. and please clean up your workspace
What do You think about Mrs. God (1991)?
Originally released in 1990 as a limited edition novella and then in 1991 as part of Straub's HOUSES WITHOUT DOORS collection, MRS. GOD is now available as a trade hardcover from Pegasus Crime. WHY Pegasus Crime? I haven't the slightest idea...and unless you are a DIE HARD Straub fan, you'll have no idea why they felt the necessity to re-re-release this downbeat tale. In fact, I AM a die hard Straub fan and couldn't tell you...THAT said, MRS. GOD is an interesting if unclear tale dealing with American English professor William Standish, who is chosen over 600 other applicants to spend three weeks in England at Esswood House, which is the home of an incredible library of both published and non published works. Standish is a major fan of obscure poet Isobel Standish, who's also a distant relative of his. She only had one volume of her work published in the early 1900s, and Standish is amazed to find how many non-published pieces are at Esswood.What I liked about MRS. GOD is the "Wicker Man"-type suspense building, which begins when Standish has a run-in with a strange pub owner, to his meeting with a mysterious woman who shows him to his room at Esswood House, to his dinner with Robert Wall, the Houses' generational caretaker. Standish spends his days studying countless texts, and his nights eating alone in the vast dining room. He continually hears laughter and sees things moving in the shadows, but is never sure if it's real or an after-effect of the wine and whiskey.In the end, it's never clear if Straub was trying to tell an offbeat ghost story or give us a portrait of a father-to-be attempting to delay his future. As a booklover, I liked the scenes of Standish standing in awe of the Esswood library and Straub's prose here is slick and addictive. But even fans of "quiet" horror may have a hard time making it to the end of this one, despite it's short page count. An unsatisfying conclusion doesn't help matters, either.For Straub completists ONLY.
—Nick Cato
It's definitely creepy and definitely keeps you guessing, but Standish is completely unsympathetic as a main character - in fact, no-one turns out to be particularly worth liking. Normally this means a "did not finish" for me, but because Mr Straub is my favourite author I kept going. There's something quite classical about the horror - the slow realisation that nobody in Esswood House may be real, and the never quite explained diseases of the Seneschal children. But ultimately this book feels like either a re-working or an early experiment of the ideas that were so brilliantly used in The Hellfire Club. I'm not sure anyone new to Peter Straub's writing will find this the best starting place... Do what I did, and hit up "Ghost Story" and "Koko" first. If those can't float your boat I'm not sure Straub is the guy for you.
—Charlie Boucher
This started off really good. A professor gets invited to a large creepy house with a library full of unpublished manuscripts/notes/poems/diaries of several of the best in Literature. The house has a secret passageway and mysterious servants and owners who are never seen. I was really into this story...... And then, Peter Straub obviously had an enormous brain fart that blew a bunch of nonsense onto the last few chapters of this book. There is no ending, and the climax of the story is so confusing, that I was sure I must have accidentally picked up the wrong book.
—Elizabeth Nesbit-comer
