Title: Rose / House
Series: N/A
Author: Arkady Martine
Genres: Science Fiction, Horror
Publishing Date: 8 November 2023
Original Language: English
Pages: ~128
CW:
My Rating: 4.5 / 5
Purchase: hardcover / audiobook / large print
Read if you’re looking for:
A novella loosely inspired by The Haunting of Hill House
A famous architect dies and leaves his magnum opus to an estranged student
The house has a consciousness & may or may not be malevolent
Set in the stark deserts of California
A mysterious death in a place where no one should be able to go
A famous and much lauded architect dies, inexplicably leaving his masterpiece of a home to a former student, Selene, with the stipulation that she is only allowed to visit the house for one week per year and no one else may ever enter Rose/House. When the house’s sentient AI calls in to the police to report a body on the premises, the police call in Selene in order to gain access to the house and try to solve the mystery of how anyone could have entered the house and what happened to whoever is in there.
I really loved this novella, and I have loved everything that I have read by Arkady Martine. This one has such an immersive feeling of dreaminess mixed with foreboding. Even though the plot is very different, it really nails the feeling of The Haunting of Hill House, with a building that is influencing those who visit it. I highly recommend this for people who love haunted house stories or psychological horror.
“There was nothing in the nature of an artificial intelligence that forbade it to lie. Nothing at all, save the few failsafes that produced duty-of-care calls. It would have to recognize lying, though, internalize the concept and the methodology of falsehoods, and then choose to engage in it as an—aesthetic practice.”
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