What Books Scared the Pants Off Me
The world's most compulsively readable writers share the novels that unexpectedly thrilled and terrified them. (Wait till you see what the author of Wolf Hall chose on slide two).
"I remember, as a 9-year-old, first reading
Jane Eyre. I didn't like the love story but I liked the fright. The scene in which the meek governess of the title sits through the night, listening to her employer's mad wife rampage behind a closed door, is one of the most frightening in fiction. It's the closed door that works on the imagination. Jane doesn't know what she's guarding. Neither do we at that stage. The reader becomes a keen collaborator in spooking herself."
— Hilary Mantel, author of
Wolf Hall and
The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher.
Published 09/15/2014
