Patrick.G.P's Reviews > The House on the Borderland

An astonishing piece of strange fiction! The novel’s outlandish and terrifying vistas and vast scope are awe-inspiring and reminded me of several works from David Lindsay’s dizzying, existential fantasy A Voyage to Arcturus, and Jean Ray’s Malpertuis, to Walpole’s spectacularly doomed edifice, The Castle of Otranto, all of which seems to occupy that same dream-like subconsciousness as that of Hodgson’s novel. As with Lindsay’s epic, The House on the Borderland is a daunting read, due to the enormous scope and sheer strangeness that it presents to its reader.

Reading the beautiful hardcover edition from Swan River Press, I thoroughly enjoyed Alan Moore’s insightful foreword and can see the influences of the novel in his work (particularly his early Green Lantern stories) as well as the excellent re-printed afterword by Ian Sinclair who ties the novel into the counterculture of the sixties as well as pose some truly interesting theories regarding the plot of the novel.

As I finished the book, it is the pressing aura of solitude and loneliness that lingers most heavily in my mind after the last pages. Rightly considered a masterpiece of weird fiction, Hodgson’s work is imbued with a strangeness and aura that is wholly exceptional and should be experienced by everyone with an interest in uncanny fiction.