Burnt Offerings by Robert Marasco

Hello everyone.

I hope you are having a good week. During the last blog post I took a trip down memory lane, a little blast to the past, and talked about reading the novel Hell House and watching the movie The Legend of Hell House. Another movie we used to watch was Burnt Offerings. Have you ever seen it? The movie has some pretty notable people in it: Oliver Reed, Karen Black, Burgess Meredith, Eileen Heckart and Bette Davis. This time of year, you might be able to catch it on Turner Classic Movies or with a subscription service. Upon checking, guess what I found. Yep, it had been a book first. You know curiosity got the better of me.

I recently read Burnt Offerings by Robert Marasco. The author only wrote one other book, Parlor Games.  He also wrote the long running broadway show, Child's Play. Robert Marasco was even nominated for a Tony award. Burnt Offerings, published in 1973, is a great and unusual haunted house book. Kind of. The house isn't haunted, there are no ghosts at all. If you want something paranormal including the spirit world, this book won't do it for you. In this story, the house is alive. The Rolfe family, living in a small Brooklyn apartment, want to escape the hot city for the summer and rent an enormous home in the country. The house is stunning but run down. The family gets a super low price on rent if they will take care of the owner's mother who lives on the top floor. She never comes out and requires no care other than meals to be brought to her room, left outside the door. Seems easy enough and completely anonymous. The other thing is to spruce up the house as they want, restore the old pool, polish knicknacks, trim trees...general house puttering. As the story progresses the reader finds that the house and the Rolfes are very much connected, with the house almost feeding off the family as it begins to return to its original splendor.

This book is well written, with building (note pun) suspense, and a quick satisfying read. Disturbing in the best way, this won't have you checking under your bed, but it will make you think twice about your next rental! Enjoyable from beginning to end, this book is a statement to a great plot and writing featuring a true horror story without gore, vampires or zombies. A scantily clad girl, in high heels for no reason, running away from obvious safety can only be featured so many times before it gets old. You will find solid, plot driven, story telling at it's best here. Some things never get old.

If I read many more of these retro books, I'll have to don a bouffant hair-do, get a coffee percolator, and ditch my laptop in favor of an IBM Selectric typewriter. Nah, I suck with white out.