I remember how I just had to have this book when it was published, so I purchased and shelved it immediately. But somehow I never got around to actually reading it until now - I guess it's accusing glare finally worked on me...
The story is quite fascinating: while it starts very slow and gets even slower throughout the story,it never failed to hold my attention nor was it boring to me. Of course, sometimes I thought 'hurry up', because I wanted to know what would happen next. But somehow this painfully reduced pace only added to the tension. The claustrophobic stuffy feeling of the house - due to its always closed doors and windows - added a numbing quality that further enhanced the foreboding feeling of some inevitable evil to happen. At the end, my patience was rewarded with a very creepy (and also creeping) story about the legend - or maybe not - of an evil creature called Long Lankin, who comes to take little children away.
I really loved Cora's character, her suspicious curiosity and ever-present frustration at being left out of some important secret by the adults, especially her weirdly acting and a bit frightening auntie Ida. However, I did have some problems with her younger sister Mimi, which seemed to say don't want/don't like to all and everything. This could have been used as a clever way of showing that she somehow sensed the danger she was in, but without further explanation it only served to irritate me.
All in all, a haunting story with a high level of creepiness, though its snail pace may put off especially its younger readers. I already ordered the sequel...