'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.'
As is so often the case for me I watched the film adaptation of this book long before I read it, not even realising that it was a book when first seeing the movie. I find that I come into books that have become films with certain expectations, thinking that I'm going to know a good deal about the story before I crack open the cover. As such, I was extremely pleased to find straight away when starting Susan Hill's The Woman in Black that it appeared to be a very different animal to the film.
Beginning long after the events of the main story, the book sees an elderly Arthur Kipps spending Christmas with his wife, step-children, and grand-children. When the night turns to his children telling spooky stories around the fire late at night it brings to mind horrific events from Arthur's past, events that still shake him to his core decades later.
What follows in Arthur recalling his encounter with a frightening supernatural force when he was just a young man, an encounter that would go on to change the course of his entire life.
A traditional ghost story, The Woman in Black uses many of the expected tropes of the genre and Victorian setting to craft an incredibly creepy tale. Thanks to the introduction where Arthur is an older man, and then his journey to the village of Crythin Gifford, the chief setting for his story, it's a fair portion of the books relatively short 200 pages before anything supernatural actually happens.
Thankfully, by this time we've already become somewhat invested in Arthur and his tale, and I felt that I had a good sense of not only the character, but the world in which he was inhabiting. This continued for much of the book, as Arthur employs some excellent descriptive language to bring the world around him alive. Crythin Gifford and Eel Marsh House both feel like living breathing places, and they're described so well as to jump off the page fully formed.
This is one of the strengths of Hill's writing, she creates a world filled with atmosphere, one that fills the reader with tension and suspense. It's often this atmosphere that creates the horror, rather than ghosts jumping out at Arthur. It's a slow, traditional kind of ghost story, where the tension keeps on ramping up in order to keep the reader on edge, rather than relying on jump scares or moments that are visually shocking.
The Woman in Black followed many of the same beats that I had seen in the film, yet thanks to the film having changed a lot of aspects the book was able to remain engaging and interesting. I was expecting something of a quick, throwaway read that wouldn't really engage me a great deal, but instead I was drawn in and kept on edge throughout. A masterful example of how to write effective horror in such a small amount of pages, one that draws you in, keeps you hooked, and doesn't overstay it's welcome.
Buy Amy A Coffee
Go to Amy's Blog
No comments:
Post a Comment