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Type of bind: Mass Market Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN num: 9780380817160
ISBN number: 0380817160
Label: HarperTorch
Manufacturer: HarperTorch
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 384
Printing Date: January 01, 2003
Publishing house: HarperTorch
Release Date: December 31, 2002
Sale Popularity Level: 62983
Studio: HarperTorch
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Product Description:
A once-respected college professor and novelist, Dale Stewart has sabotaged his career and his marriage -- and now darkness is closing in on him. In the last hours of Halloween he has returned to the dying town of Elm Haven, his boyhood home, where he hopes to find peace in isolation. But moving into a long-deserted farmhouse on the far outskirts of town -- the one-time residence of a strange and brilliant friend who lost his young life in a grisly 'accident' back in the terrible summer of 1960 -- is only the latest in his long succession of recent mistakes. Because Dale is not alone here. He has been followed to this house of shadows by private demons who are now twisting his reality into horrifying new forms. And a thick, blanketing early snow is starting to fall ...
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Rated by buyers 
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A dead boy speaks to us from the page, calmly and professionally. He is not a ghost, more of a tenacious memory. His name is Duane McBride, and he will be our Greek chorus, occasionally interrupting the narrative to comment on the history and mental state of the main character. His presence will make much more sense as the book progresses.
Anyone who picks up Dan Simmons's "A Winter Haunting" expecting to find a direct sequel to his earlier "Summer of Night" will be disappointed. Yes, both are horror novels. Yes, the protagonist of this book was one of the young boys who battled an evil force in the earlier novel. But "A Winter Haunting" goes deeper and is not content with straightforward scares. Simmons has taken his original horror creation, examined it from new angles, and created something new and interesting that makes for a very intriguing read.
Dale Stewart is a man with so few options that even his suicide endeavor failed. He has abandoned his family and his professorial career for a love affair with a student that inevitably ended. Now, needing to clear his mind and soul, he returns to his childhood home of Elm Haven, now a bleak, depressing wreck of a town. He will spend the winter working on a novel in the farmhouse of his childhood friend, Duane McBride, who was killed in a gruesome accident(?) during the forgotten summer of 1960. The horrific events of that summer were well-chronicled in "Summer of Night," but I won't bother mentioning them because they aren't important. Simmons himself barely mentions them. Although you can better appreciate this book if you've read "Summer of Night," it is not at all necessary. What matters isn't what happened, or what Dale thinks happened, but the broken man he has become as an indirect result. Now, Elm Haven seems dead and hostile; there is a gang of skinheads on the prowl, and Dale remembers the repulsive local sheriff from when he was a schoolyard bully. With an early snow beginning to fall, Dale settles in to write, and the hauntings begin.
It goes without saying that Duane's old home is haunted, but by what? There are strange sounds and lights, ghostly grey dogs, cryptic messages on Dale's laptop (in several languages, including Old English and ancient Hittite). The second floor has been unused for decades but is clearly inhabited by...something. All of this is actually quite tongue-in-cheek at times. Simmons has fun setting up our expectations for horror cliches, then overturning them. When Dale sees a mysterious light in the farmhouse, he turns his car around and finds a hotel. Later, after certain events that directly contradict reality, Dale is a guest of the police. However, the cops are not smirking, disbelieving hicks, but honest and dependable men, and Dale, rather than insisting he's not crazy, admits that he might be. Is he? Just like in any good psychological thriller, we are not sure what is real, and even things that can be proven may be real in different ways for different people. Hanging over everything are the events of 1960, which are still affecting Dale in ways he cannot begin to guess at. Duane's old home is haunted, but there are several possiblities as to the nature of the "ghosts." Any one may be true, or all of them, or none. But they are catalysts for Dale's descent, or perhaps his redemption.
Most of the negative reviews I've read of this book seem to be from people who were expecting "Summer of Night II: The Evil Returns." But Simmons is not merely returning to his old story; he is remixing it, redefining it in surprising ways. There is a gripping climax in which things are explained (or, should I say, gain possible explanations), and then comes the end, which is very sly and very subversive in what it suggests. I won't reveal it, of course, but let me just say that Simmons does a lovely job of reminding us that fiction itself is as subjective as the stories it tells, and the difference between truth and falsehood depends entirely on who is reading the book, or writing it. "A Winter Haunting" is, in the end, one of those delightful tales in which each layer of truth hides an extra layer or two underneath. It is not so much a horror story as a story about horror stories, and who or what they leave behind.
Rated by buyers 
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Great book with incredible imagery. There are many pages that will make you think twice about that darkness outside your door, the farm down the street and going upstairs. The plot remains thick and twisting the whole way through. Good read.
Rated by buyers 
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As a ghost story, Dan Simmons' A Winter Haunting disappointed me. It's neither scary nor thrilling. The storyline plods, the protagonist is not particularly likable, and the ending falls flat.
Maybe the novel is not a ghost story, but it is set up as one. In Elm Haven, Simmons presents a decaying, depressing place, the ideal setting for a ghost story. The protagonist, Dale, has bottomed out in his life, the ideal character for a ghost story. When things get weird for Dale, the author balances the supernatural explanations (ghosts) with more natural ones (sleeplessness, madness, pharmaceutical reactions), another staple of ghost stories. And of course there are ghosts.
In my opinion, Simmons ruins this novel with all the literary references/allusions. He has done this before, in Ilium and Hyperion, both of which failed to dazzle me. In this novel, the references to Beowulf, Henry James, and obscure languages obfuscate the plot; they do not enrich it. Additionally, the flashbacks to Dale's time with Clare retard the pace and atmosphere. I think that a ghost story relies on an escalation of tension, and the flashbacks stunt that buildup. Also, the author labors over the descriptions of setting; do we really need to know the models of various houses? Finally, the novel contains a mystery regarding Duane's demise, but Dale does not solve it. It gets solved for him. Shouldn't the main character solve the mystery? Instead of having Dale rush off to the library to decrypt some bizarre ghostly email, Simmons should have had him investigate the circumstances of his childhood friend's death.
I like Dan Simmons, and I like how he experiments with different genres. Song of Kali, The Crook Factory, and The Terror are excellent, atmospheric novels. When he chooses to tell a straightforward story, Simmons excels. For me, when he injects his novels with literary meaning, he stumbles. Simmons is a good writer, but in my opinion, A Winter Haunting is not a good book.
Rated by buyers -
This is my second Simmons novel, and I must say that he is fast becoming one of my favorite writers. I read this book without knowing that "Summer of Night" came before it... which is sad because I bought them both together an am now apparently reading them out of order. Never the less, I had no trouble following the story without having read the preceding novel. I think having read it would have filled me in a bit on some of the information that the sheriff seems to randomly blurt out toward the end of the novel, but it didn't really bother me.
Dale is an interesting character; pitiful, deplorable at times, yet not so appalling as to make him hard to root for. After destroying his life and his relationships through bad choice after bad choice, a failed suicide endeavor sends him back to his childhood to try to write a novel while sorting through his past. Dale drifts in and out of possible madness, as the reader you are never sure... is he being haunted by ghosts? His past? Or simply madness? Is he loosing his mind or are there hell hounds growing and growling in the night outside of his childhood friend's house. The tragic death of his childhood friend has scarred him, though we are never sure how deeply. Is Dale writing notes to himself or communicating with his long dead childhood friend Duane?
Most of the complaints about the "slow pace" of the book come from the flashbacks Dale has of his life with Claire. Clair is not a very likeable person and we know that Dale has thrown his marriage away to be with her, and of course... it ended badly between them. Also we have chapters from the perspective of a spirit we assume to be Duane, watching Dale and telling us a bit of what he sees from the outside. The spirit chapters bothered me a bit; particularly at the end when I wondered why, if the spirit was so eloquent was it so cryptic in it's warnings to him. Perhaps it knew that Dale must traverse this path whether it wanted him to or not.
Dale's choice to live in his dead friend's farmhouse is a strange one, and when it seems that the reader has figured out what is going on, the twists guide you into a new direction. I went through a range of guesses hoping always to be wrong. For the most part I was, and I am glad for it. I like to be surprised by a novel. Though I didn't find the book to be "Hair Raising" or "Spine tingling" I did find it to be a wonderfully enjoyable read. Well written and perplexing without being confusing. You find yourself just as baffled by events as Dale and hoping that he finds a way to survive either the madness or the haunting. 4.5 out of 5 stars... excellent read!
Rated by buyers -
Dan Simmons is a great author.This was a very enjoyable and intense read.I couldnt put it down.I loved the characters in the book.Devinitlty a must read for any horror fan
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