Atria, Feb 2003, 25.00, 416 pp.
ISBN 0743456628
It's a beautiful home and should be easy for realtor Glenn Darnley to sell, but the people that she shows 362 Belisle to feel as if it is haunted. She finally sells it to Dan and Rebecca Mason who think it is their dream house. It turns into a nightmare as they hear strange noises and Dan finds himself having sex with a ghost who sometimes assumes human form.
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Rebecca puts the house on the market. Glenn sells it to Barbara Parkins, an angry and pain-filled divorcee, and her son Petey, a young child who is so overweight he becomes the school freak. It is different at home because the ghost children like him, play with him, and want Petey and his mother to join them.
After Rebecca and Petey disappear, the house is again put on the market. Glenn sells it to Richie Branley, an alcoholic suffering from writer's block. At first he thinks the words on his computer, the strange noises and the visions of his father and an older man are part of his alcoholic haze. However he learns soon enough that the house is alive and doesn't want him as a tenant as it has somebody else picked out.
THE DWELLING is a haunted house story that effects the people who live in it in destructive ways. The tale reads as a series of three novellas connected by the realtor. Fascinatingly, the house take center stage while the characters play important support roles. Susie Moloney's novel will appeal to fans that like the works of Peter Staub and Stephen King.
Harriet Klausner
The review of this Book prepared by Harriet Klausner
