Read The Uninvited. You’ll find MacArdle’s writing style intelligent, but simple and unpretentious. She created an entertaining yarn that the reader can glide through.
High Point: It’s an old-time horror story with a haunted house, ghosts, a little romance, and a neat little twist at the end.
Low Point: None
Author: Dorothy MacArdle
Publication Date: 1942
Genre: Horror
Before the slasher movies and the books that spawned them, horror novels and short stories seemed to lean more toward the psychological aspects than blood and guts. Today’s hardcore Stephen King fan might find these old stories, such as Dorothy MacArdle’s The Uninvited, a little too tame to enjoy.
For the rest of us, though, The Uninvited is a fun read. It centers around Cliff’s End, a haunted house in the English countryside. It has ghosts, mystery, a little romance (not much, thankfully), and a neat little twist for the ending. The characters—all of them—are interesting and intriguing. The dialog is clever, and it’s not repetitive as the book progresses.
Of course, there was a movie by the same name adapted from this book. If you haven’t seen the movie, don’t watch it yet. Like Random Harvest by James Hilton, you’ll miss out on the rather surprising ending if you see the spoiler in the movie.
So read The Uninvited. You’ll find MacArdle’s writing style intelligent, but simple and unpretentious. She created an entertaining yarn that the reader can glide through.
Movie/TV Adaptation
The Uninvited (1944)
Sources For This Book
Free eBook (Project Gutenberg): Not available
Free Audiobook (LibriVox): Not available
Available to Purchase: AbeBooks, Biblio, Thriftbooks
