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The Invited: A Novel Hardcover – April 30, 2019
In a quest for a simpler life, Helen and Nate have abandoned the comforts of suburbia to take up residence on forty-four acres of rural land where they will begin the ultimate, aspirational do-it-yourself project: building the house of their dreams. When they discover that this beautiful property has a dark and violent past, Helen, a former history teacher, becomes consumed by the local legend of Hattie Breckenridge, a woman who lived and died there a century ago. With her passion for artifacts, Helen finds special materials to incorporate into the house--a beam from an old schoolroom, bricks from a mill, a mantel from a farmhouse--objects that draw her deeper into the story of Hattie and her descendants, three generations of Breckenridge women, each of whom died suspiciously. As the building project progresses, the house will become a place of menace and unfinished business: a new home, now haunted, that beckons its owners and their neighbors toward unimaginable danger.
- Print length368 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherDoubleday
- Publication dateApril 30, 2019
- Dimensions6.43 x 1.29 x 9.52 inches
- ISBN-100385541384
- ISBN-13978-0385541381
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Editorial Reviews
Review
—Minneapolis Star Tribune
“McMahon finds ingenuity in the likes of Shirley Jackson to craft a story. The chills come from equal helpings of both unearthly and tangible disquiet throughout.”
—Fangoria
“McMahon blends her historical tale of rural Vermont with some crafty ghost stories and makes it impossible for the reader to turn away.” –Suspense Magazine
“Ghostly. . . engaging. . . unnerving.”
–Syfy.com
“Jennifer McMahon’s latest premise is utterly chilling: Imagine you don’t stumble upon a haunted house, you build one. The Invited deserves a special spot in the canon of great ghost stories, and will remind McMahon’s readers why she is such a worthy literary descendant of Shirley Jackson.”
— Chris Bohjalian, bestselling author of The Flight Attendant
A dream home becomes one of nightmares for a husband and wife attempting to start a new life in the woods of Vermont. Board by board, stone by stone, tragic events of the past creep toward the light in this delicious slow burn of a haunted tale.
— J.D. Barker, bestselling author of The Fourth Monkey and Dracul
“THE INVITED ha(s) one hell of a hook. . . I’ve been devouring it. McMahon’s prose is clean and unfussy, with a steady attention to tension. . . I don’t get scared by horror novels much anymore, but a scene of something otherworldly unfolding in the night actually gave me goosebumps.”
—Alex McLevy, The A.V. Club
“[A] powerful supernatural thriller…. Whether one believes in ghosts, McMahon’s consummately crafted chiller is guaranteed to haunt.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“[The] blend of ghost story and modern mystery is flawlessly compelling and evocative. A masterful twist on the haunted-house story.”
— Booklist (starred review)
“The latest from McMahon is like a nesting doll - a thriller inside a murder mystery inside a ghost story - and will chill readers with every sideways glimpse of a passing shadow.”
— Library Journal
“On one level, The Invited is a straightforward mystery, but ghosts and spirits still haunt its edges in a truly unsettling way. . . . THE INVITED will appeal to mystery fans and devotees of paranormal fiction alike.” –The Book Reporter
“Rich enough in shivers to make a good fireside read for McMahon's many fans.”
—Seven Days Vermont
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
McMahon / THE INVITED
Hattie Breckenridge
MAY 19, 1924
It had started when Hattie was a little girl.
She’d had a cloth-bodied doll with a porcelain head called Miss Fentwig. Miss Fentwig told her things—things that Hattie had no way of knowing, things that Hattie didn’t really want to hear. She felt it deep down inside her in the way that she’d felt things all her life.
Her gift.
Her curse.
One day, Miss Fentwig told her that Hattie’s father would be killed, struck by lightning, and that there was nothing Hattie could do. Hattie tried to warn her daddy and her mother. She told them just what Miss Fentwig had said. “Nonsense, child,” they said, and sent her to bed without supper for saying such terrible things.
Two weeks later, her daddy was dead. Struck by lightning while he was putting his horse in the barn.
Everyone started looking at Hattie funny after that. They took Miss Fentwig away from her, but Hattie, she kept hearing voices. The trees talked to her. Rocks and rivers and little shiny green beetles spoke to her. They told her what was to come.
You have a gift, the voices told her.
But Hattie, she didn’t see it that way. Not at first. Not until she learned to control it.
Now, today, the voices cried out a warning.
First, it was the whisper of the reeds and cattails that grew down at the west end of the bog—a sound others would hear only as dry stalks rubbing together in the wind, but to her they formed a chorus of voices, pleading and desperate: They’re coming for you, run!
It wasn’t just the plants who spoke. The crows cawed out an urgent, hoarse warning. The frogs at the edge of the bog bellowed at her: Hurry, hurry, hurry.
Off in the distance, dogs barked, howled: a pack of dogs, moving closer, coming for her.
And then there were footsteps, a single runner coming down the path. Hattie was in front of their house, an ax in her hands, splitting wood for the fire. Hattie loved splitting wood: to feel the force of the blows, hear the crack as the ax head hit the wood, splitting it right at the heart. Now she raised the ax defensively, waiting.
“Jane?” she called out when she saw her daughter come bursting out of the woods, hair and eyes wild. Her blue flowered dress was torn. Hattie had sewn the dress herself, as she’d made all their clothes, on her mother’s old treadle sewing machine with fabric ordered from the Sears, Roebuck catalog. Sometimes Hattie splurged and bought them dresses from the catalog, but they were never as comfortable or durable as the ones she sewed.
Hattie lowered the ax.
“Where have you been, girl?” she asked her daughter.
It was a school day, but Hattie had forbidden her daughter from going to school. And last she knew, Jane was gathering kindling in the woods.
Jane opened her mouth to speak, to say, but could not seem to make the words come.
Instead, she burst into tears.
Hattie set down her ax, went to her, wrapped her arms around Jane’s trembling body.
Then she smelled the smoke on Jane’s dress, in her tangled hair.
Even the smoke spoke to her, spun an evil tale.
“Jane? What’s happened?”
Jane reached into the pocket of her dress, pulled out a box of matches.
“I’ve done something wicked,” she said.
Hattie pushed her away, held tight to her arms, searched her face. Hattie had spent her life interpreting messages and signs, divining the future. But her own flesh and blood, her daughter—her mind was closed to Hattie. Always had been.
“Tell me,” Hattie said, not wanting to know.
“Mama,” Jane said, crying. “I’m sorry.”
Hattie closed her eyes. The dogs were coming closer. Dogs and men who were shouting, crashing through the woods. It had always been funny to Hattie how men who’d spent their whole lives moving through these woods, hunting in them, could move so clumsily, without grace, without any trace of respect for the living things they trod upon.
“What will we do?” Jane looked pale and young, much younger than her twelve years. Fear does that to a person: shrinks them down, makes them small and weak. Hattie had learned, over the years, to put her own fears in a box at the back of her mind, to stand tall and brave, to be resilient to whatever enemy presented itself.
“You? You’ll go hide in the root cellar back where the old house used to be.”
“But there are spiders down there, Mama! Rats, too!”
“Spiders and rats are the least of our concerns. They’ll bring you no harm.”
Unlike the men who are coming now, Hattie thought. The men who are close. Getting closer still. If she listened, she could hear their voices, their shouts.
“Cut through the woods to the old place. Climb down into the cellar and bar the door. Open it for no one.”
“But, Mama—”
“Go now. Run! I’ll come for you. I’ll lead them away, then I’ll come back. I’ll be back for you, Jane Breckenridge, I swear. Don’t you open that cellar door for anyone but me. And, Jane?”
“Yes, Mama?”
“Don’t you be afraid.”
As if it could be that easy. As if you could banish fear just like that. As if words could have such power.
By the time Jane ran down the path, the dogs were coming from the east, from the road that led into the center of town. Old hound dogs, trained to tree bears and coons, but now it was her scent they were after.
Don’t be afraid, Hattie told herself now. She concentrated on pushing the fear to the back of her mind. She picked up her ax and stood tall.
“Witch!” the men who ran after the dogs cried. “Get the witch!”
“Murderer!” some cried.
“The devil’s bride,” others said.
Ax clenched in her hands, Hattie started off across the bog, knowing the safest path. There were parts that dropped down, went deep; places where springs bubbled up, bringing icy-cold water from deep underground. Healing water. Water that knew things; water that could change you if you’d let it.
The peat was spongy beneath her feet, but she moved quickly, surely, leaping like a yearling deer.
“There she is!” a man shouted from up ahead of her. And this was not good. She hadn’t expected them to come from that direction. In fact, they were coming from all directions. And there were so many more of them than she’d expected. She froze, panicked, as she looked at the circle forming around her, searching for an opening, a way out.
She was surrounded by men from the sawmill, men who stood around the potbelly stove at the general store, men who worked for the railroad, men who farmed. And there were women, too. This she should have expected, should have seen coming, but somehow hadn’t.
When a child’s life is lost, it’s the mother who bears the most grief, the most fury. The women, Hattie knew, might be more dangerous than the men.
Product details
- Publisher : Doubleday (April 30, 2019)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 368 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0385541384
- ISBN-13 : 978-0385541381
- Item Weight : 1.48 pounds
- Dimensions : 6.43 x 1.29 x 9.52 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #753,823 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #2,365 in Ghost Fiction
- #4,484 in Small Town & Rural Fiction (Books)
- #36,926 in Suspense Thrillers
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
I was born in 1968 and grew up in my grandmother’s house in suburban Connecticut, where I was convinced a ghost named Virgil lived in the attic. I wrote my first short story in third grade. I graduated with a BA from Goddard College in 1991 and then studied poetry for a year in the MFA in Writing Program at Vermont College. A poem turned into a story, which turned into a novel, and I decided to take some time to think about whether I wanted to write poetry or fiction. After bouncing around the country, I wound up back in Vermont, living in a cabin with no electricity, running water, or phone with my partner, Drea, while we built our own house. Over the years, I have been a house painter, farm worker, paste-up artist, Easter Bunny, pizza delivery person, homeless shelter staff member, and counselor for adults and kids with mental illness — I quit my last real job in 2000 to work on writing full time. In 2004, I gave birth to our daughter, Zella. These days, we’re living in an old Victorian in Montpelier, Vermont. Some neighbors think it looks like the Addams family house, which brings me immense pleasure.
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Strange events, dreams and visions become the norm as Nate and Helen build their new home. Helen, trying her hardest to keep things secret from her science-loving husband, is led to collecting pieces of buildings significant to Hattie and her relatives, which in turn seems to conjure their presence for some reason Helen is anxious to figure out.
Thrown into the mix is Olive, a 14-year-old neighbor whose mother mysteriously vanished a year prior. While everyone insists that Lori took off with a boyfriend, Olive believes that couldn't be. Why, for instance, are all her mother's favorite clothes still hanging in her closet?
The story quickly gains momentum as you go between the various character POV and time periods. You really want to find out the truth as to what's going on. HOWEVER - without spoiling things for those who haven't yet read this, a character is depicted to be 100% different than they've indicated to everyone in their lives for literally DECADES. I found this rather unbelievable. It felt as though the author got to a certain point in the story and then simply didn't know how to wrap things up, which is disappointing.
After receiving a big chunk of money from her father, Helen and her husband Nate decide to move to a small town in rural Vermont to build their own house. After buying the land at a very good price, Helen and Nate start building. It isn't long before they learn the legend of Hattie, a witch who was hanged on the bog where their house is being built. People swear the bog is haunted. Helen loves the history behind the bog and seeks out more information about Hattie which will ultimately put her and her husband in danger. Olive, a 14 year old girl, is searching for Hattie's treasure, another legend and wondering if the stories about her mother running off with another man or true. As Olive comes closer to discovering the truth about Hattie's treasure and what happened to her mother, it puts her that much closer to danger.
The plot for The Invited was interesting enough. I enjoyed learning about Hattie as well as her descendants. The book is written mostly from Olive's and Helen's point of view, but there are some characters where we get to see things from their point of view which I found intriguing. There are a few plot twists although I found them all to be easily predictable. Not one of the plot twists surprised me at all unfortunately. Still, I did enjoy reading the climax of the story and afterwards. I also enjoyed that there were no cliffhangers in this book.
I really enjoyed the character of Helen. She felt so realistic and like someone I would want to be friends with. I admired how laid back she was. I was indifferent about Nate. I just couldn't connect with him. I don't think he was written badly, but you could tell he wasn't meant to be a focal point in The Invited. I did like the character of Olive, but I felt like she was a lot younger than 14. I felt like she acted and spoke more like an 11 or 12 year old. I really had a hard time believing she was actually 14. I did admire how courageous she was and how determined on her goal whether it be to find Hattie's treasure or to find out the truth about what happened to her mother. I never really liked the character of Riley. She came across as someone who was trying too hard to be friendly. She felt too syrupy sweet. Hattie made a great ghost! There were times where I didn't trust her motives, and I couldn't figure out if I should be wary of her or if I should trust her.
The pacing for The Invited was slow throughout the majority of the book. The first few chapters were painfully slow. It was as if the author had word vomit and was describing every minute detail about the land and about Helen's inheritance. I felt like all that backstory was unneeded and definitely didn't need two or three chapters dedicated to it. After those chapters, the pacing picks up slightly, so it goes from being painfully slow to just slow. There were so many times I considered giving up on this book, but others in my book club said to keep on reading because it gets better. The pacing finally did pick up around 70 percent through the book. Once the pacing picked up, I couldn't put this book down! I had to know what would happen next even if it was predictable. (I had to make sure I had predicted correctly!)
Trigger warnings for The Invited include violence, death, murder, mentions of suicide, the occult, drug use (marijuana), drinking, some sexual references (not graphic), and profanity.
Overall, The Invited is a decent ghost story although there is more to the story than just that. It also makes for a decent mystery read. While it is mostly slow paced, the action does pick up eventually. I would recommend The Invited by Jennifer McMahon to those aged 16+ who enjoy a decent ghostly mystery.
Helen and Nate decided to quit their jobs in their quest for a simpler life. They bought a property out in the sticks … the property sitting next to a bog and a whole lot of wildlife. Helen, by profession, was a history teacher, and Nate absolutely loved exploring the outdoors … so much so he would keep journals and draw pictures of the wildlife, take pictures. While they were building their dream home, their temporary residence was a beat-up, leaky roofed, tin trailer. Through the house building venture, they met their closest neighbor, a teen girl named Olive. Little did they know that the property they purchased was haunted by the ghost of Hattie Breckenridge, or at least that was town legend, which Nate really did not buy into … until he did.
This is definitely an interesting tale of strange things happening to a couple who were least expecting the town to be so against them. There is also the intertwining tale of what happened to Olive’s mother … the truth of what happened to her, not the conjecture that the town still talked about all these years later.
I think this tale also might be considered in the paranormal genre. Overall, I enjoyed this tale of Hattie’s ghost coming to life through the eyes of Helen. And the ending … that was an unexpected surprise.
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P.S. please don’t hate me
Die Handlung folgt einem Paar, das beschließt, ihr Leben in der Stadt hinter sich zu lassen und ein Haus im ländlichen Vermont zu bauen. Doch das Grundstück, das sie für ihren Neuanfang auswählen, ist belastet mit den Echoes vergangener Tragödien. Was als ein Projekt des Aufbaus und der Hoffnung beginnt, verwandelt sich bald in eine fesselnde Untersuchung von Schuld, Erlösung und dem Geist der Vergangenheit, der in den Ecken ihres neuen Zuhauses lauert.
Eines der herausragendsten Merkmale des Romans ist die Fähigkeit der Autorin, eine Atmosphäre zu erschaffen, die so dicht und greifbar ist, dass man beim Lesen die Kälte des Nebels spüren und das Knarren des alten Holzes hören kann. Die detaillierten Beschreibungen der Landschaft, des Hauses und der paranormalen Ereignisse sind so lebendig, dass man sich als Teil der Geschichte fühlt.
Die Charakterentwicklung ist ein weiterer Punkt, in dem "The Invited" glänzt. Jede Figur, von den Hauptprotagonisten bis zu den Nebenfiguren, ist sorgfältig ausgearbeitet und trägt eine Tiefe in sich, die sie real und glaubwürdig macht. Ihre persönlichen Kämpfe und die Art und Weise, wie ihre Geschichten miteinander verflochten sind, verleihen dem Roman eine emotionale Komplexität, die selten so gekonnt umgesetzt wird.
Ein besonders beeindruckendes Element ist, wie die Autorin das Übernatürliche nutzt, um tiefere Themen wie Verlust, Trauer und die Suche nach Zugehörigkeit zu erkunden. Anstatt sich auf billige Schockmomente zu verlassen, dient das Paranormale als Mittel, um die innere Landschaft der Charaktere zu erforschen und die Geschichte auf eine Weise zu bereichern, die sowohl ergreifend als auch aufschlussreich ist.
Abschließend kann ich sagen, dass "The Invited" ein außergewöhnlicher Roman ist, der weit mehr bietet als nur eine spannende Geistergeschichte. Es ist eine tiefgründige Erkundung von Familie, Geschichte und dem, was es bedeutet, ein Zuhause zu bauen. Für Leser, die auf der Suche nach einer Geschichte sind, die sowohl zum Nachdenken anregt als auch unterhält, ist dieses Buch eine unbedingte Empfehlung. Ein wahrhaft unvergessliches Leseerlebnis!