Wednesday, December 14, 2016

Books read in 2016: No. 64 -- The Woman in Black

by Susan Hill

Started: Dec. 12
Finished: Dec. 14

Notes: It is most definitely time to get back into some fiction, so I thought I'd get started with this ghost story. I've seen the movie starring Daniel Radcliffe, but I don't remember a lot of the details, so hopefully most of this will seem new to me. Besides, movies are often so far from the books they are based upon as to be nearly unrecognizable, so I don't mind giving this one a try.

Mini review: It has been many a year, perhaps a decade or longer, since I have a read a book which I had difficulty putting down, which kept me up all hours of the night, but this book did that for me. It's not generally as frightening as a true horror tale, being more akin to the works of someone like Shirley Jackson, more haunting mystery than horror, but this is one of the best English ghost stories I've had the pleasure to read.

3 comments:

The Wasp said...

I've been curious about her having read she's purveyor of traditional ghost stories. Now I'm really interested, thanks to this post.

Ty said...

If you like gothic material, old houses secluded in a marsh, tragic pasts, etc., then you should like this one. I'll also point out I found this one a quick read, which is not always the case with gothic novels because they tend to focus so much on atmosphere; here the author does the same, but with more of an economy of words.

Charles Gramlich said...

excellent. I'd been a bit curious but not enough to bite the bullet. Sounds like it's just what I'd like, though. thanks for the heads up.