The Last House on Needless Street Catriona Ward

Table Of Content

• El Planeta Streaming: Watch & Stream Online via HBO Max
• The Last Bookstore
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• Leaves of Grass Streaming: Watch & Stream Online via Amazon Prime Video
• Historical Nonfiction: Research-Based Writing With Hadley Meares
• Jessica Lange Says Some Of The Best Recent Films Were Not From The U.S.: "We're Living In A Corporate World"
• Book Review: The Last House on Needless Street by Catriona Ward

“It would be a bad book if I wasn't afraid of it,” says author Cat Ward about The Last House on Needless Street, this season's must-read horror novel. We depend on ad revenue to craft and curate stories about the world’s hidden wonders. Consider supporting our work by becoming a member for as little as $5 a month. Like us on Facebook to get the latest on the world's hidden wonders. Almost as if to make a point about beauty in disarray, the bookshelves are placed every which way all throughout the store, and sculptures have been custom-built from overstocked or damaged copies.

El Planeta Streaming: Watch & Stream Online via HBO Max

Without spoiling things, I wasn’t completely satisfied with the conclusion of the novel for the simple reason that a story should really only have one Norman Bates, and Last House has several, possibly stressing the limits of verisimilitude for some readers. Having multiple characters prove deeply unreliable as a result of their mental trauma feels like painting outside of the lines. It’s the kind of audacious triple-twist that I feel has been popular ever since Gillian Flynn rose to fame, though few authors, including Catriona Ward, do it quite as well.

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The novel combines elements of Gothic literature with the thriller genre to create a claustrophobic world where the past is never far from the present, and nothing is truly as it seems. Fear in the dark is what powered her 2015 gothic horror debut, Rawblood, the follow-up Little Eve, and now her breakout third book, The Last House on Needless Street, published on 18 March. Buzz has been building for months around a dark, audacious highwire act of a novel that can be only tentatively described for risk of giving too much away. Whereas Ward’s previous novels were historical chillers set in remote corners of Britain, featuring young women traumatised by cursed families and social oppression, the new book looks at first like a contemporary American thriller. There are horrors hidden in a rundown house on the edge of a forest; a spate of disappearing children; a vulnerable woman searching for answers. Ward introduces us to Ted, a bizarre, childlike loner who lives with his daughter Lauren and cat Olivia – and then pulls the rug, repeatedly, from under the reader’s feet.

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Every character, setting, and arc is an askew, asymmetrical thing that shuffles at the edge of the reader’s perception showing a side that does not match its shadow. This is the unreliable narrator taken from element to thesis, and throughout my time with the novel I felt a deep discomfort which underpins all of the events that play out on the pages. When Ted falls asleep, Olivia manages to control her and Lauren’s body. She stabs Ted, only to discover that she and Lauren are other personalities inhabiting Ted’s body. The snakebite weakened her, but Dee is ready to take revenge. However, a little girl’s voice comes from Ted’s mouth, telling her that Ted is not a monster.

Olivia goes into her crate, a broken chest freezer with air holes drilled into it. She loves a tabby cat that she spies on through the peepholes in the plyboard that covers all the windows in the house. She is also religious, frequently turning to the Bible for answers to questions in her life. Ever since then, they have been connected by a golden cord, which only Olivia can see.

There are also the usual lights going on and off and mysterious footsteps. Several ghosts supposedly haunt the bridge, including possibly a worker who fell into the concrete during construction. The 1906 Alexandria, now low-income apartments, has been both one of the fanciest joints in Downtown and a rundown flophouse. Several dancers are said to haunt the second-floor ballroom, an angry teenager hangs around Charlie Chaplin's old suite, and Rudolph Valentino apparently leaves the Knickerbocker occasionally and visits his old 12th-floor suite.

Jessica Lange Says Some Of The Best Recent Films Were Not From The U.S.: "We're Living In A Corporate World"

With its release in 2024, readers were left in awe as they delved into the mysterious world within the last house on a seemingly ordinary street. In this article, we will explore the enigmatic ending of the novel, shedding light on its twists and turns. Additionally, we will present eight interesting facts about the book to further intrigue you.

Ted’s date fails because he cannot get up the courage to approach the woman he lured to a nearby bar. The city sends bulldozers and tractors to the forest behind Ted’s house to create new rest areas. They are dangerously close to where Ted buried his “gods” (pieces of his mother’s remains and her treasured possessions); he frantically moves them to a new spot that night. Dee attempts to follow him, but she retreats due to her fear of snakes. In July of 1974, Bundy abducted and murdered two different women—Janice Ott and Denise Naslund—over the course of an afternoon at Lake Sammamish State Park.

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I experienced a monumental life event whilst reading Last House–the birth of my first child–and thus I did something I never do and read several reviews of the book before sitting down to write my own. I wanted to ensure I hadn’t missed some crucial detail, some pivotal element, some early plot point that my brain may not have absorbed during the wee hours spent sleepless on a hospital room’s couch under COVID quarantine. Never have I witnessed so many professional journalists collectively struggle to say something resonant about a book, to come up with an incisive thought that wasn’t some watered-down cliché or horror novel platitude. The Last House on Needless Street is a difficult title to digest, and I fear many readers will find it unsatisfying once they’ve swallowed (or purged, as may be the case) what lies between its covers.

The novel explores themes of trauma, grief, and the blurred lines between reality and imagination, effectively immersing readers in the psychological depths of its characters. One of the book’s many surprises is that it is partly narrated by Olivia, a fastidious, deeply religious feline who refers to humans as “teds” and gives us an exterior perspective on her unreliable owner. (“Ted is not a very clean ted. His bathroom does not look like the bathrooms on TV.”) Olivia, Ward remarks, owes something to David Sedaris; she provides humorous respite from the otherwise harrowing narrative.

She finds evidence of a little girl’s presence and becomes doubly convinced that Ted is hiding Lulu. She makes the mistake of refitting the plyboard over the kitchen window with new nails. Dee tries to track Lulu’s kidnapper, but she has little luck. Detective Karen had helped her search, but after Dee confronted an innocent man in Oregon, Karen became more reticent. Dee manages to track Ted down thanks to a cruel rich man. She introduces herself and even gets Ted to let her in under the pretense of using his bathroom.

Thanks to this revelation, the police recover Lulu’s body and close the case. Ted lives in the shadow of his deceased mother’s influence, sometimes feeling her presence even though she is long dead. He visits a dubious psychologist, whom he calls the “bug man,” to try to help him deal with Lauren’s psychological conditions.