Susan Hill (1998 [1983]) The Woman in Black.

I watched the movie and it was as scary as a box of melted Maltesers. Part of the reason for that is my fault. I’m old and cynical and nothing much on the telly can scare me as much as looking in the mirror. I thought I’d give the book a chance. After all it inspired a film and an extended  run on stage as a play. Nineteen years one of the blurbs on the book tells the reader. Wow. The book must be really good. It’s only 160 pages (including blurbs). I read it in a few hours. It’s one of the few things I’m good at. The characters have Dickensian sounding name. The narrator Arthur Kipps, for example, had me thinking of Pip in Great Expectations. An analogy with Miss Havisham duly appears in the text. Listen to the place names: Mrs Alice Drablow the sole inhabitant of Eel Marsh House in Crythin Gifford. Mr Jerome the agent who dealt with the property. Mr Samuel Daily is a fine sounding fellow. He’s taciturn: ‘Mr Daily continued to regard me steadily’. Flick through the pages and you’ll find he does this several times a day. Mr Daily has a habit. There is a chapter paying homage to M R James: ‘Whistle and ‘I’ll Come to You’. The Women in Black has connotations of the Jane Eyre’s madwoman in the attic and the narrator follows in the tradition of Henry James, The Turn of the Screw. Wow.  ‘Spider dropped dead in his tracks’ [cliche] ‘Bright lights...boring into me’ [cliche] ‘lungs almost bursting’ [cliche] ‘my arms...dragged from their sockets’ [cliche] ‘How I reached the green in front of the house I shall never know’. Yep, this book truly is frightening.