I have no idea of any sort of rating. I’m not sure I understand what just happened.

Odd. Not spooky at all unfortunately. ( )

On the whole I found this little book more baffling than anything. I hate it when I suspect a writer of doing something over my head, but I’m not sure that was all that was at fault here. After a bit of research, I discovered this novella is a reworking of a short story. Maybe it should have stayed a short story. Maybe it would have been more effective that way.

It starts out strong - Straub efficiently gets down to business giving us our main character, setting him in his world and then on his way to the main sphere of the story. There are nice touches of foreboding and mystery in Standish’s past. I didn’t like the long dream sequences, but then I never do and always skip them. I was intrigued by Standish’s marriage and Jean in particular, but alas nothing comes of it. I’m still not sure if it was real or if she’s still alive or what. Dangling plotlines bug me when they’re made much of during the course of a novel.

If you like your horror of the more surreal type, this might work for you. It has elements of the gothic and of the unraveling mind; descent into madness. But it’s not all that clear. Is this all a hoax and a figment of Standish’s disintegrating psyche? Is it a hoax of another kind; that the house does exist, but that none of the famous writers associated with it ever spent time there? This occurred to me when Standish broke open all the “writer’s boxes” to find pictures of Isobel and Corn spilling out of all of them (Corn = a minor nobody who Standish’s nemesis wanted to study at Esswood only to be rebuffed). But then who is keeping Standish during his stay? Cooking his meals? Raiding the wine cellar and fetching his little requirements and laying them on the floor outside the library door? I’m left with more questions than answer, but if that’s your bag, you might like this. ( )

The single most frightening thing I've ever read. Peter Straub has noted the influence of Robert Aickman--the British master of surreal horror--on Mrs. God, and this will be evident to those who have read Aickman. But here, at least in my opinion, Straub exceeds his model, plunging headlong into such horrifying psychological depths that having the book in the house after I'd finished it actually made me uneasy. As a matter of routine, newcomers to Aickman's work are warned not to expect clean, unambiguous endings which tie up all the loose threads, and the same caveat applies to this novel. Some of the details of William Standish's bizarre, ghastly adventure at Esswood House will remain obscure; readers will have unanswered questions. This places Mrs. God in what David G. Hartwell called the third stream of horror fiction: stories that "maintain the pretense of everyday reality only to annihilate it, leaving us with another world entirely, one in which we are disturbingly imprisoned." Obviously this brand of horror is not for all tastes, but the more daring readers among us would be hard-pressed to find a better example of Hartwell's third stream than Mrs. God. It may justly be called a masterpiece. ( )

I did not not like this..... I did not understand the book or the point of it, no not at all.

I suppose it is a darkly spooky, lyrical, literary fantasy..... It is a ghost story, but I have not a clue what it is really all about.

I had a very difficult time reading this book, it took me over 4 weeks to finish. It was even rather boring in an overly descriptive manner of style.

( )