Subtitled “A Ghost Story”, The Woman in Black by Susan Hill had me sold after reading the blurb on the back, which reads, “What real reader does not yearn, somewhere in the recesses of his or her heart, for a really literate, first-class thriller … blah blah blah… blah blah blah… proof positive that this neglected genre, the ghost story, isn’t dead after all.” There was a lot of verbiage in between the yearning and the words “ghost story”, but I successfully made the connection. I love a good old fashioned ghost story!
Let’s talk about the ingredients of an old-fashioned ghost story. OK so obviously you’ve got a ghost. Very often you’ve got a haunted house. The house is probably somewhere out of the way and must be traveled to. So there is a travel component of a good ghost story. We take the train with the protagonist, or travel by horse and carriage. The landscape is described in detail. So is the weather and the season. The Woman in Black has all these elements and does a great job of creating atmosphere and pacing. It’s also a book where the reward for attention is delight. There are a number of factors that the story doesn’t make a big deal out of, but that become very important as the situation begins to reveal itself.
And that’s a good way to describe it, really. The book is a reveal. A veil is lifted, a corner is turned, and the reader thinks to themselves, “Oh. That’s not so horrible. Just a sad tragedy replaying itself in the fog.” Ah! But is that branch sticking out from behind the next corner just a particularly hairy twig, or is it the very tip of a leg that is attached to a giant black widow spider?
Our protagonist Arthur Kipps, a junior in a law firm, is sent by his firm to attend the funeral of a Mrs. Alice Drablow and put her affairs in order. What he finds is a small town of horrified men who refuse to talk to him, a very frankly haunted house, and a spectral woman dressed in black. Yes, the ghosts in this story are not coy by any stretch of the imagination. Instead, it is the townsfolk who refuse to divulge the true gravity of the situation to poor Kipps.
In terms of a ghost story, I think this one compares well to the stories of M.R. James, which you should be adding to your list if you haven’t read any yet. It is set in the same time period, and has very much the same flavor. For that matter, Hill pays tribute to James with the title of one of the chapters, “Whistle and I’ll Come to You”.
I loved this book! Incidentally, Susan Hill writes mystery novels, and has another ghost story out, The Man in the Picture.
STOP THE PRESSES! It also turns out that The Woman in Black is being made into a movie starring Daniel Radcliffe.
Creepy Factor: 4 out of 5
Suspense Factor: 3 out of 5
Weird Erotic Tension Factor: 0 out of 5
Funny and/or Strange Factor: 3 out of 5
Did I mention that this ghost story is little on the short side? It is the perfect length for a rainy day spent in a nice dark basement, listening to the things upstairs move their indelible trunks around and drop other things that clatter to the floor and then scuttle away after gaining their feet.
The Woman in Black by Susan Hill – David R. Godine, Publisher – 1983
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