The Haunting of Alma Fielding
A True Ghost Story
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2.4 • 9 Ratings
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
Named a Best Book of the Year by NPR • The Sunday Times • The New Statesman • The Times • The Spectator • The Telegraph
Shortlisted for the 2020 Baillie Gifford Prize * A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice * A New York Times Book Review Paperback Row Selection
“Prepare not to see much broad daylight, literal or metaphorical, for days if you read this.... The atmosphere evoked is something I will never forget.”—The Times (London)
London, 1938. In the suburbs of the city, a young housewife has become the eye in a storm of chaos. In Alma Fielding’s modest home, china flies off the shelves and eggs fly through the air; stolen jewelry appears on her fingers, white mice crawl out of her handbag, beetles appear from under her gloves; in the middle of a car journey, a turtle materializes on her lap. The culprit is incorporeal. As Alma cannot call the police, she calls the papers instead.
After the sensational story headlines the news, Nandor Fodor, a Hungarian ghost hunter for the International Institute for Psychical Research, arrives to investigate the poltergeist. But when he embarks on his scrupulous investigation, he discovers that the case is even stranger than it seems.
By unravelling Alma’s peculiar history, Fodor finds a different and darker type of haunting, a tale of trauma, alienation, loss and revenge. He comes to believe that Alma’s past has bled into her present, her mind into her body. There are no words for processing her experience, so it comes to possess her. As the threat of a world war looms, and as Fodor’s obsession with the case deepens, Alma becomes ever more disturbed.
With characteristic rigor and insight, Kate Summerscale brilliantly captures the rich atmosphere of a haunting that transforms into a very modern battle between the supernatural and the subconscious.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
In British journalist Kate Summerscale’s gripping nonfiction book, being haunted takes on several meanings. She delves into the real-life mystery of ghost hunter and psychoanalyst Nandor Fodor, who in 1938 arrived in London to investigate Alma Fielding: a housewife apparently beset by a violent, kitchenware-throwing poltergeist. Summerscale dives headlong into Fodor’s research, piecing together a compelling narrative that’s as much about personal trauma as it is about the supernatural; she also paints a rich portrait of a country teeming with anxiety about the looming world war. Summerscale also examines the culture clash between Fodor’s devotion to brand-new psychological theories and her country’s lingering Victorian-era fascination with the paranormal and the afterlife. It’s a page-turning, fascinating read, so it’s no surprise that The Haunting of Alma Fielding has been adapted for TV.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Edgar winner Summerscale (The Wicked Boy: The Mystery of a Victorian Child Murderer) illuminates the bizarre events that afflicted Alma Fielding, a suburban London housewife, in 1938, in this mind-bending historical investigation. In February of that year, the British press began covering the activities of an alleged poltergeist in the Fielding home. The spirit reportedly broke glasses, threw pots and coins, and even transported an unbroken light bulb from one part of a room to another. The occurrences attracted the interest of Nandor Fodor, the chief ghost-hunter for the International Institute for Psychical Research. Fodor gained the confidence of the Fieldings and spent months observing oddities and exploring rational explanations for them. Fodor's experiments and tests led him to conclude that Alma, who suffered from repressed trauma, faked the incidents. Fodor's analysis won the support of Sigmund Freud and his experiences influenced Shirley Jackson's writing of The Haunting of Hill House. Summerscale vividly recreates the four months in 1938 that fascinated a Britain seeking distraction from Hitler's ominous aggressions, and reconstructs the events and the secret inner torment that led to Alma's brief appearance in the spotlight with sensitivity and a novelist's gift for narrative. Readers will be riveted.
Customer Reviews
I don’t even understand how this was published
This book was so dull and repetitive. I don’t even know if there was a point to it?