BOOK REVIEW: The Woman In Black

There were several reasons why I wanted to read THE WOMAN IN BLACK by Susan Hill. One, I had read her sequel to Rebecca and felt that she had captured du Maurier's voice perfectly so I needed to know if the style was her own. I also had seen the play based on the book and really enjoyed it. The play, incidentally, has been running for over twenty years in London.

The plot has all of the elements of a good ghost story. A young lawyer, Author Kipp, has been sent to a remote house to attend the funeral and settle the estate of an elderly client. The house is only accessible during low tide and the path is surrounded by salt marshes laden with patches of quicksand.

At the funeral and on several other occasions, Kipp sees a mysterious woman dressed in black watching him. The residents of the small, local village seem unwilling to talk about the house or its history. What Kipp expected to be a routine task of clearing up an estate soon turns into a horrifying experience: sounds of a child screaming out in the marshes, a nursery waiting for its young occupant, and the mysterious woman in black.

This is a true ghost story and as such requires some temporary suspension of belief on the part of the reader. Hill’s style of writing was once again the formal writing that we expect from the 1800’s (Ms. Hill is a contemporary author). Because the story is told in first person, this formal tone suits Kipp’s voice perfectly. It also suited the mood of the story, the old vacant house, the desolate salt marshes, the standoffish townspeople, etc.

THE WOMAN IN BLACK has been made into a movie that I plan to see. The dark, moody setting of the story would lend itself nicely to the big screen. It is an old fashion ghost story, meaning that it is a gentle story without the gore and violence that we have come to expect from modern “ghost” stories.

I still have to find if this formal style of writing is Susan Hill’s only voice. She tells a “rattling good yarn” as one reviewer put it and I feel that she is worthy of further investigation.