The woman in black

by Susan Hill

Ebook, 1999

Library's review

This 1980s novel reads like a book written decades earlier; it had a real throwback feel to the classic horror of Shirley Jackson for me. Part of that was undoubtedly the setting, which seemed to be the early 20th century. While I found the plot — a lawyer is dispatched to an isolated English
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village to settle the estate of a mysterious recluse and is beset by hauntings galore — to be somewhat unsettling, the horror never really kicked in for me.
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Description

Fiction. Horror. Thriller. Historical Fiction. HTML: The classic ghost story by Susan Hill: a chilling tale about a menacing spectre haunting a small English town. Arthur Kipps is an up-and-coming London solicitor who is sent to Crythin Gifford--a faraway town in the windswept salt marshes beyond Nine Lives Causeway--to attend the funeral and settle the affairs of a client, Mrs. Alice Drablow of Eel Marsh House. Mrs. Drablow's house stands at the end of the causeway, wreathed in fog and mystery, but Kipps is unaware of the tragic secrets that lie hidden behind its sheltered windows. The routine business trip he anticipated quickly takes a horrifying turn when he finds himself haunted by a series of mysterious sounds and images--a rocking chair in a deserted nursery, the eerie sound of a pony and trap, a child's scream in the fog, and, most terrifying of all, a ghostly woman dressed all in black. Psychologically terrifying and deliciously eerie, The Woman in Black is a remarkable thriller of the first rate..… (more)

Media reviews

I love this style of writing... very detailed and descriptive. Although some of our students have said that they had a hard time getting through the first few chapters, I was immediately captivated.

Language

Original publication date

1983
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