The Woman in Black (The Susan Hill Collection) (Acting Edition S.)

by Susan Hill

'Heartstoppingly chilling' Daily Express

Arthur Kipps, a junior solicitor, is summoned to attend the funeral of Mrs Alice Drablow, the sole inhabitant of Eel Marsh House.

The house stands at the end of a causeway, wreathed in fog and mystery, but it is not until he glimpses a wasted young woman, dressed all in black, at the funeral, that a creeping sense of unease begins to take hold, a feeling deepened by the reluctance of the locals to talk of the woman in black - and her terrible purpose.

'No one chills the heart like Susan Hill' Daily Telegraph

**If you love The Woman in Black, try The Various Haunts of Men, the first book in Susan Hill's Simon Serrailler series**

• ISBN10: 0099288478
• ISBN13: 9780099288473
• Publish Date: 21 October 1998 (first published 1 January 1983)
• Publish Status: Active
• Out of Print: 30 June 2024
• Publish Country: GB
• Publisher: Random House USA Inc
• Imprint: Vintage Books
• Format: Paperback (US Trade)
• Pages: 208
• Language: English
• URL: https://penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/isbn/9780099288473

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.