As the nights get longer: ghosties and ghoulies and things that go bump in the night
Susan Hill’s transmogrified-into-many-media “The Woman In Black” remains a wonderful, atmospheric ghost story, still holding its own after its 30 plus years in print. Though I’m – amazed/amused/shocked to find that it is now listed as a best seller on Amazon in the CHILDREN’S ebook category. I don’t believe it was initially written, or published, for that market. So I’m not quite sure what this shows – the literary sophistication of children? Sure, post a-film-starring-Daniel-Harry-Potter-Radcliffe, probably new audiences are coming to the book, but it is quite a slowly paced, literary piece of writing (hence its standing the test of time on a re-read for this reader). It’s a properly paced, slow-burn, atmospheric piece of writing, with a wonderful sense of lonely place – set on the North-East coast, much of the horror arises from Hill’s ability to create an eerie, beautiful, mysterious and isolated tidal estuary landscape, complete with the suckings and soughings, the glimmers, glistens and dankness of wind, water and sea-frets.
Arthur Kipps, now a middle aged man on his second marriage, is immured in a family Christmas. His teenage stepsons embark, in high spirits, on the telling of ghost stories
Unwillingly, the years roll back memories of a quarter of a century and more ago, when Kipps, as a young solicitor, was sent to deal with the estate of a recently deceased reclusive woman in her eighties, who had lived in isolation in a house at Eel Marsh, some distance from a little market town called Crythin Gifford. Eel Marsh can only be reached when the tide is out, and is then completely cut off from the outside world, and the outside world from it, once the tide comes in again. There was some unexplained horror to do with Eel Marsh. Locals drop veiled hints, but Kipps, a pragmatic, modern young man, not given to flights of fancy is of course dismissive…………..until.
This is a proper Victorian Gothic style story, even though set in a modern era. Everything is done through its effect on Kipps, the slow drip drip of fear and horror into his psyche. It’s a superb ratcheting up of horror, and there is nothing to cynically laugh at, no crass clankings of chains and slamming doors, opening graves and the like. Hill takes normality and just progressively makes it go wrong, chill and definitely evil.
We had travelled perhaps three miles, and passed no farm or cottage, no kind of dwelling house at all, all was emptiness. Then, the hedgerows petered out, and we seemed to be driving towards the very edge of the world. Ahead, the water gleamed like metal…..I realized this must be the Nine Lives Causeway…..and saw, how, when the tide came in, it would quickly be quite submerged and untraceable……..we went on, almost in silence, save for a hissing, silky sort of sound. Here and there were clumps of reeds, bleached bone-pale, and now and again the faintest of winds caused them to rattle dryly
And that’s BEFORE the sea-frets come!
A short, chilly, chilly, read. Hill is a writer who understands less is more and has no need for crude schlock effects.
Lady Fancifull 
Her writing style is very ‘proper’ – her every word sears itself within your mind’s eye as she takes you exactly where she wants you to be….. well done on the review Lady.
Thank you Wordman. I think that’s the reason i come back an re-read her – knowing the plot means I can resist the growing intensity of ‘what happens next’ page turn and allow myself to settle into how well she does moment to moment, and makes, as you say, every word work hard – I love that description of the reeds as ‘bone-pale’ – not only very descriptive but of course hinting at the horror, subliminally, as you say ‘sears itself within your mind’s eye’
Oh, OK! You’ve convinced me… the fretful porpentine and I shall choose an appropriately dark and stormy night… 😯
Hurrah! I DID think this one might be the straw that breaks the camel’s back of resistance-is-futile.
If the porpentine doesn’t quiver and whimper and break out in a cold sweat, I can only assume your sinews are steelier than they have any right to be
It must be All Hallow’s Eve, surely, for the best effects of this one..
Ah but I also have The Haunting of Hill House… by mid-November you may be having to send comfort parcels to me in the Home for Quivering Wrecks…
Oh Hill House is WONDERFUL. I’ve got her Bird’s Nest earmarked for later in the month, it’s (I’m so relieved) my on line book club’s choice I was horribly afraid some sub-zombie effort would get the vote., which, rather than shivering porpentines starts the unholy combination of irritability and vomiting with distaste! But not a quiver of true porpentine unease.
But should YOU quiver too much you could always re-read Northanger Abbey (Austen’s original, I mean) and chuckle whilst you quake
Oh, another that sounds irresistible.You and FF have me in your sights! I must be in the mood for a Dark and Stormy. Pass the Gosling’s Black Seal Rum and ginger beer. Must pour myself a tall one to ward off the ghouls…
I’d rather have thought that concoction would prove powerfully attractive to them ghouls