I read this book in the early 80's and like another reviewer stated, I've read it periodically over the years. I am sad to hear that it is out of print and i am glad that I hung on to my copy, cover intact. I will pull it out for old times sake. This is one of my top ten favorite books. I wish there was a sequel and someone should make a movie.

This is the book that started me reading, once my kids were old enough to not need every waking minute of my time. It is a laugh-out-loud, genuinely funny book. I'm sorry I lent my copy out - they must have liked it too!

I loved this book so much that I read it twice - about 10 years apart! It is funny, sad, & poignant. A book for chicks or guys....

From the repertoire of one who wrote 'Summer of '42', 'Sublime Amor Juvenil', and 'Maynard's House', this is as good as, if not better than, the rest. Enjoy!

For all those who would like to read something other than, yet very much like, 'Summer of '42' (for the umpteenth time, at that!), this one's a must!

...Having just finished a long and dense slow-read (a Salmon Rushdie novel), I pulled out "Summer of '42" and saw how easy a read it appeared and fell right into it.

The book began innocently and kept me entertained. It brought me back to those great age-old days of fumbling adolescence and the poignancy just snuck up on me. I won't describe the plot except to say that if you've ever been a teenager - and the longer ago, the more this is true - then you will relate to this book.

I saw the end coming but didn't mind. The author allowed a few page intermission from the laugh-out-loud humor for a touching and sad-but-at-the-same-time-sweet climax. I didn't cry but could have.

Although I'm 39 and married with a son, for the late night evening I chose to complete the book - with a scotch in hand - I was a kid again, for an hour. Not a child and not an adult, but somewhere in between.

For a dime it's the best bargain I've ever had.

-Jack

For any young girl who wants to know what really goes on in the mind of adolescent males, this is the book for you. An achingly accurate recounting of coming of age and unraveling the mysteries of the opposite sex. The drugstore scene alone is worth the entire read, and that is not even the best part. One of the few books that really makes you laugh helplessly out loud.

The poignant story of one boy's coming of age during the first American summer of World War II. The drugstore scene alone is worth the read. If you want to understand how 15 year old boys think, read this book.

Anyone who has travelled or lived in the northern hinterlands of Maine, specifically the Moosehead/Kahtahdin region, can attest to the fact that this book truly captures the atmosphere of a beautiful and remote area. On the surface it appears to be a ghost story with a young Vietnam veteran as the protagonist. He inherits a remote house from a buddy who was killed in action and once taking residence, is subjected to a multi-layered attack of witchcraft, time shifts, poltergeists, and the like. This keeps the reader off balance and is a good and satisfying story in the occult genre. But the real power of this work is in Raucher's ability to capture the feeling of this area and the quirky demeanor of its inhabitants including speech mannerisms and slightly off center sense of humor. In all, this writer would recommend it to any person with an interest in ghost stories, life in the north woods, the occult, and maybe even love stories; for this story has a surreal romance that in places reads like the books that Raucher is better known for[ Summer of 42, for example].

I read Herman Raucher's MAYNARD'S HOUSE a long time ago, when it first came out in 1980. Crossing paths once again just a week ago, I remembered not so much the story as the feeling it gave. It is a tale imbued with considerable atmosphere, a profitable thing for a ghost story if it is to work.

At it's heart, MH is the story of a young bedeviled Vietnam war vet with issues, Austin Fletcher, who is willed a small house deep in the woods of northern Maine by a fellow soldier and confidante, Maynard Whittier, killed in action by a wayward mortar shell. Austin--"a sailboat awaiting a breeze"--makes the trip for his new home. The landscape is an intoxicating blend of claustrophobic interiors and endless frozen wastelands. Little by little, the mysterious force in the house asserts itself until neither Austin nor the reader is exactly sure what is in his mind and what is real. Raucher plays to his strength here: "A man can be crazy only if there's someone around to tell him that such is the case." Austin's disturbing isolation is well managed and chillingly realized. And just when our hero's had enough and is ready to quit the place, a blizzard arrives and the real haunting begins.

There are problems here, however. The story strains and struggles to explain itself in many places. The often-elegant prose is peppered with outdated language, loaded with extraneous simile and metaphor. Drawn tight, this would have made a superior novella. There is a price to pay for stretching. It is the stylistic difference between extrapolation and interpolation.

A good ending--so often lacking in novels of this type--can go a long way toward saving a book. MAYNARD'S HOUSE has one. And maybe, just for that reason, twenty years from now, perhaps I'll read it all again.

A fascinating, scary read that contains vivid imaging, putting the reader right in the middle of the action ... and the nightmare. This story contains all the elements that scare us half to death when we're home all alone at night....the chair rocking when no one's in it, a fire in the fireplace that never stays lit, and frightening animals wandering through the woods just outside the safety of the house. The best phrase to describe the house setting comes from the book itself.."Robert Frost by day, and Nathaniel Hawthorne by night." Although I've read this a number of times, the ending still makes me think that I need to read it again, that there is more in there, but we have to find it ourselves. A must read for anyone who likes a good old fashioned ghost story....no special effects, no fancy gadgets. Just a man against an old house and his inner demons. The reader will often wonder "what would I do?" Sometimes Austin follows your advice and sometimes...he doesn't.