Burnt Offerings

"Burnt Offerings offers another example of a haunted house that changes its occupants. It manipulates their behaviour to serve itself. Marion and Ben rent an enormous country home for the summer, but there’s a catch. The elderly brother and sister duo who own the property will leave behind their even more elderly mother, and Marion will need to take care of her. When they arrive at the house, Marion takes a lunch tray up to the mother who does not answer her door. The mother looms as an unseen presence for most of the book. Why doesn’t she talk? Why doesn’t she come out of her room? Why is Marion spending more and more time by the old woman’s door? Does the old woman even exist? What’s so frightening is the extent to which Marion becomes obsessed with the house. Terrible things happen, and as the situation worsens and her family faces grave danger, Marion only becomes more committed to the house. No, I don’t think that’s fair. Obviously, the books have a lot in common, and Stephen King himself has said he was influenced by Burnt Offerings , but they’re not the same book. I could read one after the other and enjoy each in its own right. It’s been a while since I read The Amityville Horror , so I won’t comment on that one!"