#malpertuis

Or will be it’s with a watch party in my book club.

Susan Hampshire in Malpertuis / The Legend of Doom House (1971), dir. by Harry Kümel Belgian. 

note: If you did not finish but feel you read enough to form an opinion, you may choose a ‘Yes’ option instead of 'Partly' (e.g., Yes, I didn’t like it). Similarly, if you’ve never heard of a book until now but formed an opinion from this post, you may wish to select a “no” option e.g., “No, but I want to.”

Malpertuis is a puzzle box of nested narratives wrested from a set of manuscripts stolen from a monastery. A bizarre collection of distrustful relatives has gathered together in the ancient stone mansion of a sea-trading dynasty for the impending death of the occult scientist, Uncle Cassave, and the reading of his will. Forced to dwell together for the remainder of their lives within the stifling walls of Malpertuis for the sake of a cursed inheritance, their banal existence gradually gives way to love affairs and secret plots, as the building slowly exposes a malevolence that eventually leads to a series of ghastly deaths. The eccentric personalities it houses—which include an obsessive taxidermist, a hypochondriac, a trio of vengeful sisters and a former paint store manager who has gone mad—begin to shed like skins to reveal yet another hidden story buried in the novel’s structure, one that turns the haunted-house tradition on its head and culminates in an apocalyptic denouement.