The Woman in Black: A Ghost Story (The Susan Hill Collection) (Acting Edition S.)

by Susan Hill

John Lawrence (Illustrator)

Part of a series which is intended for class use and for GCSE examination and coursework and also provides material for wider reading programmes. It aims to offer varied and stimulating material for reflecting male and female interests and a real awareness of our multicultural world. The literature is chosen for its accessibility to young readers and the pupils are encouraged to consider alternative ways of looking at the play or story and to express their own view using supporting evidence from the text. There are also suggestions for writing which give pupils a chance to respond to what they have read through imaginative writing and dramatic reconstructions as well as through tradtional critical essays. "The Woman in Black" tells haunting testimony of a young solicitor, Arther Kipps, who records in detail the nightmarish events of his stay in a house on a marsh in northern England, and the terrible events that were to alter his life forever. The author who is a writer, playwright, literary critic and broadcaster has also written "I'm the King of the Castle" amd "Strange Meeting".

• ISBN13: 9781567921892
• Publish Date: June 2002 (first published 1 January 1983)
• Publish Status: Transferred
• Out of Print: 9 February 2021
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: David R. Godine Publisher
• Format: Paperback (US Trade)
• Pages: 144
• Language: English

Reviews

[clq]

I found The Woman in Black to be disappointing. It's really a shame, as it was a personal recommendation, but for me it didn't work on any level.
When starting the book, I was surprised at how short it appeared to be. I'd heard that this book was "really scary" and figured it had to be pretty amazing to deliver such a punch in so few pages. It never delivered.
I should disclaim, I have yet to find myself properly spooked by the supernatural, be it by books, films, or tv. However, I can appreciate the emotions of characters, and usually find myself empathising with them to the point where I am on the edge of my seat with my heart beating quickly along with theirs. The Woman in Black didn't come close to making me feel anything at all.
The entire story seems to rely heavily on an atmosphere of suspense, horror, and mystery that never even gets close to materialising. The main character hardly shows any emotion at all, and when he does it is along the lines of "I was scared". Done. No proper atmosphere, no build-up, nothing. The "scary" parts then last for all of a few sentences before the air fizzles out of a balloon that might as well have been in a vacuum the entire time for all the good it did.

The real pity is that the concept itself isn't too bad. I haven't seen the film based on this book, but I've heard good things about it, and I can see how it might have been turned into a good movie. A movie could add all the things this book sorely lacked. This book badly needed to be longer. It needed to have build-up, atmosphere, suspense... actually, anything it all. Just something more than what it is, which seems like a bare-bones concept on which the meat was intended to be added later.

I also feel a need to mention that I read the first bit of this book on an almost empty bus driving through the dark, then walked through said dark, into my dark flat, and read the rest while lying in a dark room with a mysterious sound on the other sound of the wall I still haven't identified. It would be hard for me to come by an atmosphere that would seem more fitting to this book. I couldn't get engaged with it at all.

I'm confused at the relatively high rating this book has received. Unless the reader is really scared at the story, I don't see what else this book has to offer. And for someone to get properly scared at this book I imagine they not only have to believe in ghosts, but they have to believe that ghosts are, by their very nature, out to do acts of evil. If creaking-noises scare you, and you think that shadow on the wall is about to attack you, you might appreciate this book. Otherwise I don't think you will.

[Michael @ Knowledge Lost]

What I loved about this book was the chilling gothic style of it, but what I didn’t like was the book what some of the language didn’t match up with the Victorian age. The Lady In Black is an atmospheric novel that reminds me a lot of The Turn of the Screw in the way it was written and what it was trying to do, but it just doesn’t live up to that standard. It’s a quick read and you can probably get through it in one sitting but at the end there just seems to be more questions than answers. While I enjoy the style of this book and the writing really matched that of a Victorian novel; there was just so much in the book that held this book back for me.