Demob Happy

The Black arts

7/10

Susan Hill’s ‘Woman in Black‘ is a spine-chilling, if fairly conventional ghost story. While reading it I was reminded of the brooding atmosphere of Daphne Du Maurier’s somewhat subtler ‘Rebecca‘; by coincidence Hill wrote one of several sequals to that novel, entitled ‘Mrs De Winter‘. Unlike in Du Maurier’s eponymous classic the Woman in Black is a malevolent spirit of an entirely spectral nature, and you must suspend your disbelief to really immerse yourself in this short novel. If you like being scared witless, it is best read alone at night. If you don’t, then you are clearly looking in the wrong place. Readers seeking the more multilayered, implicit tensions of ‘Rebecca‘ – for example – may find this a little prosiac, although the descriptive language is highly evocative.

Moreover, having seen the West End play of ‘Woman in Black‘ beforehand, I was a little over-prepared by the frights of this novel. Indeed the play is arguably a more refined work, told as it is so economically – with only two (credited) actors – but lacking none of the book’s atmosphere. The play – like much of the best theatre – plays very effectively with the tensions between the audience and the performers, and when reading the book afterwards I couldn’t help thinking something was missing. I’d recommend to anyone who likes this book – or ghost stories and horror in general – to catch the play, but ideally after reading it.