Danse Macabre   ::   Кинг Стивен

Siddons's own view on just what the Kennedys' rising social consciousness means is also muddier than I would like. If it is a victory, it seems to be of the Pyrrhic variety; their world has been destroyed by their conviction that they must warn the world against the house next door, but their conviction seems to have given them remarkably little inner peace in return-and the book's kicker seems to indicate that their victory has a decidedly hollow ring.

Colquitt does not just put on her sun-hat when she goes out to do the garden; she puts on her Mexican sun-hat. She is justly proud of her job, but the reader may feel a bit more uneasy about her serene confidence in her own looks: "I have what I want and do not need the adulation of very young men, even though, I modestly admit, there have been some around my agency who have offered it." We know that she looks good in tight jeans; Colquitt herself helpfully points this out. We have the feeling that if the book had been written a year or two later, Colquitt would be pointing out that she looks good in her Calvin Klein jeans. The point of all this is that she's not a character most people will be able to hope for easily, and whether or not her personal tics help or hinder in the book's steady, downturning funnel toward disaster is something that the reader will have to decide for herself or himself.

Equally problematic is the book's dialogue. At one point Colquitt hugs the newly arrived Anita Sheehan and tells her, "Welcome to the neighborhood once again, Anita Sheehan.

Because you're a whole new lady and one I like immensely, and I hope you're going to be very, very happy here." I don't quibble with the sentiment; I just wonder if people, even in the South, really talk like this.

Let's say this: the major problem with The House Next Door is the muddiness of character development. A lesser problem is one of actual execution-a problem that crops up mostly in the dialogue, as the narration is adequate and the imagery often oddly beautiful. But as a gothic, the book succeeds admirably.

Now let me suggest that, in addition to being a Southern gothic novel, Anne Rivers Siddons's The House Next Door , whatever its shortcomings in terms of characterization or execution, succeeds on far more important ground; it is a prime example of what Irving Malin calls "the new American gothic"-so is Straub's Ghost Story , for that matter, although Straub seems much more clearly aware of the species of fish he has netted (the clearest indication of this is his use of the Narcissus myth and the spooky use of the lethal mirror).

John G.