The Woman in Black (Vintage) [Paperback]

No neat and tidy endings here, folks. Just strap yourselves in for a great ghost story, complete with nighttime hauntings galore. This is one of those stores that might keep you up at night, just envisioning everything again and again. The author does a great job of making the reader feel like he or she is there with this young attorney - suffering through the whole thing.

Enjoy! I'm now looking forward to the movie next year - shame they couldn't have released it around Halloween...

'Yes, I had a story, a true story, a story of haunting and evil, fear and confusion, horror and tragedy.

Storyline

Arthur Kipps is a junior solicitor from London who has been asked by his employer to attend the funeral of Mrs. Alice Drablow in Crythin Gifford. He must also visit her residence in order to collect any important paperwork that she may have been left behind. Arthur sees the woman in black at Mrs. Drablow's funeral and again at her residence at Eel Marsh House. She doesn't appear to be a malevolent spirit so Arthur doesn't worry too much and decides to spend the night at the house so that he can quickly finish his work and return to London. But that night, Arthur begins to hear unexplainable sounds and worries that he may have underestimated the woman in black.

'...piercing through the surface of my dreams, came the terrified whinnying of the pony and the crying and calling of that child over and over, while I stood, helpless in the mist, my feet held fast, my body pulled back, and while behind me, though I could not see, only sense her dark presence, hovered the woman.'

Thoughts
I quite enjoyed this quick little read and am glad I finally got around to reading it. I love ghost stories even though I tend to scare quite easily... and this book was no exception. The writing was beautiful and vividly creepy and definitely manages to get under your skin even though the real scary parts don't even start till the latter half of the book. The descriptions were spot on and the whole book is simply eerie even though, in thinking back to it, nothing real huge actually happens. The ghost doesn't come alive and smother him in his sleep or glue the windows shut or anything absurd like that. Nevertheless I was frightened enough to have to ask my boyfriend to walk upstairs with me to our darkened bedroom after I was finished. He still makes fun of me for that.

Enjoying it as much as I did, I still didn't give it 5 stars and the only reason for that was because of the ending. It left a bit to be desired for me and was a bit too abrupt for my liking.

From the first page of this exciting novel I am reminded of the pleasure of reading good literature, of the sensory acclaim of a Charles Dickens or a Henry James. I relaxed into the narrative knowing I should be on edge, expecting the subsequent horrors, but Ms. Hill's writing is simply so superb that relaxing quickly became the order of the day. What a pleasure, also, to encounter a protagonist who suffers from a form of Seasonal Affective Disorder, which he acknowledges but of course has no way of putting a title to it.

I am so enjoying this book-similar to Henry James' The Turn of the Screw and Charles Dickens' The Mystery of Edwin Drood, even to Wilkie Collins' The Woman in White, the terror creeps up on us subtly, with silent little cat feet, and we don't know at first it is all around us until we look into the eyes of others, read their expressions, listen to the fluttering in their voices.

But before very long there is a shift of consciousness, subtly yes, even unpredictably, until we find ourselves standing on solid ground just as flimsy as that of Eel Marsh, to which our protagonist, at first a simple and ordinary solicitor in London, repairs on an errand set him by his employer. Out there not only is the weather unpredictable and the tides unalterable, but reality is shifting and mutable-and frightening. Nothing is what it seems-and what seems to be is-terrifying.

The Woman in Black is a novel both to be savoured, for its beauty and poignancy, but also to be raced through, as our hearts' rate speeds up in companionship with the narrator, and his ever-intensifying fear and uncertainty. Altogether a wonderful novel-to read and reread and ponder and enjoy.

The Woman in Black: A Ghost Story (Vintage)