Good Press, $1.99
Horror, 2020 (Reissue)
Matthew Phipps Shiel—better known as MP Shiel—was once considered one of the greats of early science fiction and weird fiction. But like many figures from the long-ago literary mists, his reputation has aged like unrefrigerated dairy. In 2008, it came to light that Mr Shiel had, in fact, served prison time for sexually abusing his 12-year-old stepdaughter. So yes, let’s just say problematic fave is off the table. MP Shiel: the man, the myth, the massive red flag.
But what about the writing, you ask? Well, The House of Sounds has been hailed by none other than HP Lovecraft himself as one of the best horror stories he ever read—which is quite the endorsement from the guy who invented fish cults and inherited trauma via architecture. The story appears in nearly every anthology that dares slap “Lovecraftian” on its cover, so it’s got the street cred. But… does it actually hold up?
In true Weird Fiction™ fashion, our narrator travels to a remote Scottish island to visit his old college friend. Said friend, it turns out, lives in a giant decaying house—because of course he does—that may or may not be built over a geological death trap. Things escalate from weird to worse, as creepy architecture, existential despair, and emotionally constipated men in velvet coats all converge in what might be the loudest silent scream of a short story ever penned.
Now, if you think HP Lovecraft was a tad too fond of his thesaurus, buckle up: MP Shiel looked at Edgar Allen Poe and said, “Not dramatic enough. Needs more semicolons and shrieking.”
The prose in The House of Sounds isn’t so much written as it is screamed in florid, feverish Latin and then translated badly by a haunted Victorian thesaurus. Sentences stretch for miles, whole paragraphs exist just to describe the angle of a window sash or the glistening agony of a staircase. Reading this thing feels less like turning pages and more like swimming through wallpaper paste made of adjectives.
As for the dialogue, imagine if every character were simultaneously dying of a fever and auditioning for the lead role in a community theatre production of Macbeth. Every utterance is overwrought, melodramatic, and delivered with the breathless intensity of someone who just learned what “apocalyptic” means and decided it applies to brunch.
And yet… somehow… it works. Beneath the bloated verbiage and Victorian histrionics is a genuinely haunting tale. The setting drips with atmospheric dread. The house itself feels alive in the most unsettling way, the landscape bleak and isolating, the tone suffocating in the best Poe-esque tradition. The Fall of the House of Usher vibes are strong here—complete with doomed friendship, creepy house-as-character, and a narrator who watches everything unravel with the emotional engagement of a wet sock.
Indeed, like many horror tales of this era, our narrator is less a character and more a vaguely startled meat puppet who just happens to be present. He notices things. He contemplates things. But scream, run, freak out like a normal person? Not really. He’s the literary equivalent of someone blinking slowly while the walls bleed. This detachment makes the story feel dreamlike—but also prevents it from being particularly scary. One never feels like they’re in danger, just that they’re watching someone else listen to an existential podcast on a crumbling island.
Final verdict: if you’re brave enough to slog through prose that makes Henry James look like Ernest Hemingway, The House of Sounds rewards you with a haunting, lingering atmosphere and a glimpse into the primordial ooze that would one day give rise to Lovecraftian horror. But if you haven’t read The Fall of the House of Usher yet… maybe do that first. It’s shorter, sharper, and less likely to induce migraines from excessive clause exposure.
