The Woman in Black

The Woman in Black has always been a book that has been floating around my head as a book to read, talked about, mentioned when a good ghost story was required, but that I had never read, not even after the film with Daniel Radcliffe in it.

This blog gives me an excellent excuse to read books like that, especially books that I probably wouldn’t have otherwise.

From the start the language and tone used was that of Gothic Victorian novels, especially the ghost stories of the time, slightly ponderous, slightly archaic. This use of language really set the tone for the book as a whole.

The tale itself was none too horrifying but extremely chilling, with the tension and atmosphere being built slowly and steadily. The cast of characters added to this atmosphere, as did the isolation that Susan Hill brought to the story, the bleakness of the landscape was the equal of the bleakness of the story end.

Really pleased that I eventually got around to reading this well-crafted ghost story, tense and thrilling throughout.