The mist-shrouded marshlands of the English Fens provide the perfect backdrop for Daisy Johnson to fully embrace the horror genre in her spine-chilling new short story collection, “The Hotel.” Centered around the titular building that seems to possess a malevolent will of its own, these interconnected tales masterfully blend gothic elements with a fresh, modern sensibility.
A Haunting New Direction for Johnson
While Johnson has flirted with horror tropes and unsettling imagery in her previous works like “Fen” and “Sisters,” “The Hotel” represents her first unapologetic dive into the genre. The result is a triumphant collection that pays homage to horror masters like Stephen King and Shirley Jackson while still maintaining Johnson’s unique literary voice.
The unifying thread that weaves these chilling vignettes together is The Hotel itself—an entity that is as much of a character as any of the doomed souls who find themselves drawn into its orbit. As one protagonist notes:
“What is in this land is some possessive quality, some unquietness. It is clear to me that there are places which have as much personality as any person or animal and this is one of them.”
A Palimpsest of Dread
Johnson constructs The Hotel as a palimpsest—layers of history, tragedy, and intersecting lives that have piled up to imbue it with a dark, hungry sentience. We learn of its origins on the site of a farm where a woman with second sight was drowned by fearful neighbors. Her ghost lingers on, one of many trapped within The Hotel’s walls, endlessly scratching the phrase “I WILL SEE YOU SOON” as an omen to future guests.
In one early story, a construction crew battles the “slick, miserable” Fen soil to erect the building, which will act as a “hurtful magnet” drawing in those it wants to claim. Later tales reveal how The Hotel compels guests to commit unspeakable acts, how the maids wake at night to find themselves inexplicably waiting outside its doors, ready to resume their Sisyphean cleaning duties.
Echoes of Horror Royalty
Though wholly original, Johnson slyly pays tribute to the icons of horror fiction that laid the groundwork for “The Hotel.” The ominous edifice with its narrow windows and stained glass that “dims the light” recalls Stephen King‘s Overlook Hotel from “The Shining.” The emphasis on powerful, inescapable familial trauma evokes Shirley Jackson‘s “We Have Always Lived in the Castle.”
Other stories channel the dread of being lost in a hostile wilderness, similar to “The Blair Witch Project,” or the body horror of an unholy pregnancy like in “Rosemary’s Baby.” Yet for all these knowing nods, Johnson never slips into pastiche. Her voice remains fresh, inventive, and thoroughly modern.
A Sense of Creeping Unease
What makes the stories in “The Hotel” so unsettling is Johnson’s ability to conjure a mounting sense of wrongness, like a splinter in the mind’s eye. Details accumulate to create an atmosphere thick with lurking malice:
- The repeating phrase “I WILL SEE YOU SOON” scrawled in ominous places
- Rooms that seem to shift in size and shape when unobserved
- The sound of footsteps with no visible source
- Children that appear as distorted, otherworldly versions of themselves
In Johnson’s skilled hands, even the welcoming elements of the hotel experience become tainted and suspect. The “big fires in the bar” and “dressing gowns…on the backs of bathroom doors” suggest coziness and warmth, but they’re a veil over the existential dread pulsing in the shadows. This tension between surface comforts and the horror beneath propels these stories into the realm of nightmare.
An Absorbing Halloween Read
With its eerie Fen setting, “The Hotel” is a masterful collection dripping with dread and foreboding, absolutely perfect for fans of literary horror and unsettling gothic fiction. Johnson has crafted a series of interconnected tales that each function as a standalone chiller, but together form an even more powerful, immersive reading experience.
Blending the familiar tropes of haunted houses and ghost stories with a razor-sharp contemporary sensibility, Johnson breathes new life into classic horror fiction. “The Hotel” is elegant yet chilling, restrained yet profoundly creepy—a gripping compendium of original frights and a stylish love letter to the genre greats who paved the way. Its haunting stories are sure to seep into your subconscious and return to unsettle you, long after you’ve turned the final page.
