Susan Hill was born in Scarborough, North Yorkshire in 1942. Her hometown was later referred to in her novel A Change for the Better (1969) and some short stories especially "Cockles and Mussels".
She attended Scarborough Convent School, where she became interested in theatre and literature. Her family left Scarborough in 1958 and moved to Coventry where her father worked in car and aircraft factories. Hill states that she attended a girls鈥� grammar school, Barr's Hill. Her fellow pupils included Jennifer Page, the first Chief Executive of the Millennium Dome. At Barrs Hill she took A levels in English, French, History and Latin, proceeding to an English degree at King's College London. By this time she had already written her first novel, The Enclosure which was published by Hutchinson in her first year at university. The novel was criticised by The Daily Mail for its sexual content, with the suggestion that writing in this style was unsuitable for a "schoolgirl".
Her next novel Gentleman and Ladies was published in 1968. This was followed in quick succession by A Change for the Better, I'm the King of the Castle, The Albatross and other stories, Strange Meeting, The Bird of Night, A Bit of Singing and Dancing and In the Springtime of Year, all written and published between 1968 and 1974.
In 1975 she married Shakespeare scholar Stanley Wells and they moved to Stratford upon Avon. Their first daughter, Jessica, was born in 1977 and their second daughter, Clemency, was born in 1985. Hill has recently founded her own publishing company, Long Barn Books, which has published one work of fiction per year.
Librarian's Note: There is more than one author by this name.
Susan Hill is a talented author, who seems equally at home writing literary fiction, or a series of crime novels. In recent years she has written a ghost story to be published around Christmas, or at the end of the year. You may know her first one, which has had hugely successful adaptations round the world. It is 鈥淭he Woman in Black鈥�.
The Small Hand novella dates from 2004, but only this year has it been dramatised for television by the the BBC. I made the mistake of watching the dramatisation first.
Susan Hill鈥檚 ghost stories are traditional fare. The elements are familiar, and common to much of European literature. Perhaps this may even be a clue to their success. But a two hour dramatisation of a shortish ghost story, with the time to move slowly, begins to feel a little 鈥� hackneyed. The solitary antiquarian bookseller, the huge dilapidated building, the overgrown rambling garden, the ghostly child. Doors slamming, lights fusing, doorknobs rattling, spooky wailing in the dark 鈥� oh and did I mention the ornamental pond in the garden? Put all these together, mix with a big dollop of cheese, and what do you get?
What you get is two hours of predicting almost every single event.
Nevertheless, I do like the way Susan Hill writes, and so I read the novella it was based on, 鈥渏ust in case鈥�. And how glad I am that I did! Forget everything that went before 鈥� except perhaps the recommendation to ignore the TV dramatisation, which has removed almost everything of interest, dumbed down the content, and inserted almost unbelievable coincidences.
The novel is a very different animal. Susan Hill鈥檚 writing skills are well to the fore, and it is a joy to read this taughtly constructed tale. One of the author鈥檚 great strengths is the ability to evoke a sense of place, whether a gloomy abandoned Sussex garden, a remote French monastery and the turbulent weather as Adam drives to it, or a cosy Oxford restaurant. Not every author talks of an avenue of pleached lime, or the 鈥渟oft soughing of the sea鈥�.
Adam Snow is the narrator and protagonist; an old-fashioned, bookish bachelor who lives alone. We might expect to find him in a story set a hundred years earlier or more, save for the fact that he travels around the world for his work.
鈥淚 deal at the upper end of the market, in volumes worth many thousands of pounds. I do collect books much more modestly and 鈥� my Chelsea flat is filled with them.鈥�
Dealing as he does in high-end antiquarian books, Adam Snow only has a few customers, at all points of the compass. He is returning home from a favourite client, when he gets lost in the country lanes in leafy Sussex, with dusk closing in. Trying to find his direction, Adam comes across an overgrown garden, full of tangled briars and branches. He feels peculiarly drawn to it, and enters through the rusted gate, fully aware that this is an extraordinary thing for him to do:
鈥淚 ought to have turned back then. I ought to have retraced my way to the fingerpost and tried again to find the main road. But I did not. I was drawn on, through the gate between the overgrown bushes.鈥�
Susan Hill鈥檚 writing is imbued with a sense of impending doom. Adam Snow is a respectable and reserved man, keen to observe the proprieties. Why would he behave so atypically, not to mention oddly. Furthermore, he seems to no longer be completely in control of his own actions.
Just as Adam is drawn on, so are we:
鈥渘ature had taken it back, covered it with blankets of ivy and trailing strands of creeper, thickened it over with weed, sucked the light and the air out of it so that only the toughest plants could grow and in growing invade and occupy. I should go back. But I wanted to know more.鈥�
Nevertheless Adam forges on, through the abandoned, neglected garden.
Susan Hill鈥檚 powerful description reeks of neglect and desolation, yet through Adam, the reader feels a strong presence, as if the strange garden is imbued with something other than rotting foliage and twisted roots. She occasionally disconcerts us with words which remind us of a physical body:
鈥淭he fingerpost markings were faded and there were no recent signs.鈥�
鈥淗igh banks in which the roots of trees were set deep as ancient teeth鈥�
鈥淭he banks were even steeper, the tree trunks vast and elephantine.鈥�
so that is is not only the protagonist who is on edge. And by the end of this first chapter, we understand the title; our imaginations gripped by Adam鈥檚
After such an unsettling experience, Adam tries to put the episode out of his mind. We too have been disturbed, and are sure things will not stay calm for very long, before the tension ratchets up once again. Sure enough, he is off to Berlin, Toronto and New York in quick succession. Is he trying to escape from his own mind, perhaps. Adam remains intrigued, having strange dreams, and resolves to find out more about the garden, and its history on his return.
He is then delighted to obtain 鈥渢wo rare Kelmscott Press books for my client in Sussex, together with immaculate signed first editions of all Virginia Woolf鈥檚 novels, near-mint, in their dust wrappers.鈥�
Not only is Adam Snow pleased to have secured such a prize, but he personally likes his client, viewing him as a true gentleman, who has a genuine interest in antiquarian books, rather than some of his clients, who buy them as purely as an investment:
鈥淪ir Edgar Merriman was elderly, modest of manner and incalculably rich. His tastes were for books and early scientific instruments.鈥�
Adam decides to combine a visit to his friend and client, with a proper search for the garden. It is the middle of June. Hardly a time for dark and brooding manifestations.
The visit goes well, and Adam even learns a little more about the mysterious house and garden. Alice Merriman found an old magazine article, about 鈥淭he White House鈥�, which had belonged to a Mrs Denisa Parsons, and was known locally as 鈥淒enny鈥檚 House鈥�. There was a photograph of Mrs Parsons in twinset and pearls, and holding a few delphiniums, rather awkwardly. She had been widowed and left with two children of nine and eleven.
But Adam could elicit little more from the charming couple, who proved to be rich beyond his wildest dreams. He discovered this when Mr Merriman casually asked him if he knew if a First Folio of Shakespeare would ever come on the market. The startled Adam Snow knew that only 230 or so copies of this were known to be in existence. Realistically, he was unlikely to ever hear of one, but what an opportunity it would be.
The next few weeks passed relatively uneventfully, until Adam Snow received a letter from Alice Merriman, with a newspaper cutting about 鈥淒enny鈥檚 House鈥�, But any interest Adam Snow had in this quickly waned when he heard from an old friend from his undergraduate days at Balliol College. Fergus McCreedy had stayed in Oxford, and was now a very senior man at the Bodleian Library, specifically, 鈥淒uke Humphrey鈥檚 Library鈥�. What his old friend told him over lunch, in strict secrecy, was enticing. .
Adam Snow enjoyed his leisurely lunch, and the feeling of being in academia again. Afterward he decided to visit another of his old 鈥渉aunts鈥�, the Botanic gardens.
Wandering around the garden and planning his trip to the monastery, his recent experiences could not be further from his mind. Susan Hill skilfully stresses the bright Summer鈥檚 Day, the ordinariness of the people there, relaxing and enjoying the calm and beauty of the garden, before she pulls the rug from under our feet:
鈥淎t that moment I felt the most dreadful fear. It was not fear of anything, it was simply fear, fear and dread, like a coldness riding up through my body, gripping my chest so that I felt I might not be able to breathe, and stiffening the muscles of my face as if they were frozen.鈥�
Adam鈥檚 experience is vividly described, riveting and terrifying by turns. Yet we see him trying to rationalise it, as we ourselves doubtless would. He remembered how his brother Hugo, older by him by six years, had gone through a mental breakdown, from which it took him a couple of years to recover. The truth was right there in front of him.
But the author is tightening the screws. Despite Adam鈥檚 dissembling and avoidance we know there is more to come. These strange experiences will not stop. Ever the rationalist, Adam decides to visit his brother and his Danish wife Benedicte, who are always welcoming. Hugo is now a teacher in a boys鈥� public school, in a pleasant market town in Suffolk. They have one daughter, Katerina.
From now on, the story is crafted with even more skill, as normality lurches into crisis, followed by another crisis. The welcoming cool modernity of the Scandinavian decor, is followed by a cathartic talk between the three. Even Adam鈥檚 next encounter does not worry him as much as it does us:
But this chapter, just over a quarter through the book, ends on a jarring note full of threat and foreboding:
鈥淚 was to look back on that night with longing - longing for the sense of peace I knew then.鈥�
But was this the wind? Adam was certain, but are we? Perhaps he might be an unreliable narrator. He seems to be on the edge of a nervous breakdown.
Adam stays at the monastery for a long time. He is in his element - and so too are any readers who love antiquarian books. The library is an awe-inspiring space, reminiscent of the Bodleian鈥檚 Duke Humphrey鈥檚 Library, but even more spacious:
鈥淭he place smelled as all such places do, of paper and leather, polish and age and wisdom鈥�. On the first day:
鈥淭he librarian had brought me book after wonderful book, simply for my delight - illuminated manuscripts, rare psalters, Bibles with magnificent bindings. He was an old man, rather bent, and he moved, as I had noticed all the monks moved, at a slow and measured pace, as if rush and hurry were not only wasteful of energy but unspiritual.鈥�
Remembering his commission, Adam is interested in two icons, the Islamic objects in which Helena is so interested, and three medieval manuscripts. And of course a Shakespeare First Folio. He could tell that it was genuine. Plus, incredibly, on the title page, was the signature of Ben Jonson, the fellow Elizabethan playwright.
The monastery is a restful place; a silent order which gives him inner peace, as long as he does not venture out. When he does 鈥�
And the text is doom-laden, despite the friendly concern of the librarian, Dom Martin, and the other monks:
鈥淚t is true I had had a strange encounter and been touched by some shadow, but I had pushed them to the back of my mind; they had not changed me as I was later to be changed. I was able to forget. Now I cannot.鈥�
And of course there is much more to come.
Susan Hill has crafted a ghost story which has the feel of an earlier style of writing; the narrator probing into the reader鈥檚 recesses of hidden dread:
鈥渕y last carefree, guilt-free, blithe moment. Aren鈥檛 there always those moments, just before the blow falls that changes things for ever?鈥�
and the imminent approach of terror:
鈥淚t may sound unbelievable to say that it was then that I knew, that precise moment. That I knew everything, as if it had been given to me whole and entire and in every detail. I knew. But then what I knew shattered into fragments again.鈥�
And on it goes:
鈥淚 thought that was an end to it. I thought there would be no more to tell. But there is more, another small piece of knowledge I was given and which I can never un-know.鈥�
The events draw you mercilessly in, even past the final inevitable tragedy, although it remains a mystery as to who or what it will entail.
If you enjoy classic chillers, do give this one a try.
I have no idea why this isn't more popular. I am bound and determined to make sure horror readers, lovers of ghost stories, read this one! It's so incredibly good! Please read if you enjoy stories with the following: -Creepy houses -Ghosts/hauntings -Creepy children -Books/Book lovers/Book Collectors -Madness -Brotherhood -Secrets & lies -Mysteries -Short books/Short chapters -Chilling, eerie tales (no sex, violence, gore) -Religion cannot "save" you from your paranormal problem -Relentless obsession
I mean, if I stop and think about that little hand ... *shudder* There's just something special about evil kids, even if they are ghost kids.
But there was a relative lack of creepy occurrences, and the chill factor was slightly underwhelming. I'd probably appreciate this story more as an episode of Supernatural. Get some sass into this ghost story.
It's got some lovely descriptions but it never really builds a haunting atmosphere because he's always moving. TBH I was probably more interested in his work as an antiquarian book dealer. I loved the stuff at the monastery.
It was a good, short little ghost story but nothing particularly special.
That being said, I won't be holding hands with kids any time soon ...
Having recently re-read The Woman in Black I decided to read Susan Hill鈥檚 most recent ghost story 鈥淭he Small Hand鈥�. I wanted to try and review it without giving the ending away as I felt that this would spoil a truly wonderful piece of traditional storytelling.
Hill鈥檚 gentle nod to M R James is not just in the structure of this slight tale, but also in the emotionally barren life of her central protagonist, who is a dealer in antiquarian books.
The plot structure is straightforward and uncomplicated. Adam Snow takes a wrong turn down an overgrown country lane and discovers a derelict Edwardian country house which seems to draw him into its abandoned garden. As he explores he experiences the strange sensation of a small child鈥檚 hand creeping into his own. This sets off a train of events which becomes progressively more sinister and malign, prompting Adam to experience debilitating panic attacks and nightmares as he tries to unravel the secret of this small hand.
Hill鈥檚 skill as a writer is to create ambiguous space between her sparse lines, almost as if constructing a poem. She has an unrivalled ability to make your nerve ends tingle with her precise and carefully structured prose. Her contemporary tale distils the essence of a ghost story, distorting the reader鈥檚 perceptions like shifting reflections in a pool, which seems an entirely appropriate image.
Honestly I am annoyed that I didn't just wait for this via the library, but since my house is empty of furniture and my bookshelves are wrapped up, I don't want to have a pile of books just sitting around from the library. "The Small Hand" starts off very well and then flounders from there to a very disappointing and confusing ending. I was left with way more questions than answers and kept trying to see if any reviewers had any insight into this book. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be any explanations out there regarding the ending, so maybe I will post on 欧宝娱乐 and see what people say.
An antiquarian book seller named Adam Snow ends up getting lost and finds an abandoned home. Once called the White House, it was famous far and wide for the gardens that the owner had installed. Adam stumbles around and realizes as he is there, that a small cold hand takes his own. Only problem is that there is no one there. After taking hold of the small hand, Adam is in essence haunted. He starts to find out drips and drabs about the White House and a tragic accident that takes place there.
I don't know. Adam was intriguing, but Hill doesn't do enough to develop him. I was most disappointed that Hill spends time on Adam looking into a rare book that a friend of his tells him about. We spend way too much time on that than on Adam having a panic attack that almost leads to him drowning himself.
I felt the most frustrated though when Adam realizes a slim connection to White House and doesn't pursue it.
When we get to the ending and the reveal it just fell flat. I had a lot of questions and wanted to know the why behind some things.
If you really want to read this, suggest getting it at a library, not worth buying it via Kindle or Nook.
Susan Hill's first ghost novel, 1983's "The Woman in Black," had recently surprised this reader by being one of the scariest modern-day horror outings that I've run across in years. Thus, I decided to see if lightning could possibly strike twice, and picked up her more-recent "The Small Hand" (2010). This latter title is the fourth of Ms. Hill's five ghost novels to date, following "The Mist in the Mirror" (1992) and "The Man in the Picture" (2007), and preceding her recent "Dolly" (2012). "The Small Hand" was Hill's 24th novel overall since her first one, "The Enclosure," was released in 1961, when the author was only 19 years old. Unlike "The Woman in Black," which was a period piece that took place in what the reader must infer was the early 20th century, "The Small Hand" is set in modern times, and its inclusion of such words as "Internet" and "e-mail" may strike the many fans of that earlier work as a bit jarring. The latter novel is not nearly as spine-chilling as the earlier book had been (but then again, few novels ever do attain to that level of shuddery terror), but yet remains a most gripping and at times truly eerie exercise. And sadly, both books end on a tragic note, making the events that had come before all the more horrible, indeed.
In "The Small Hand," our narrator is a middle-aged (one assumes) man named Adam Snow, whose occupation will strike most bibliophiles as one to be envied; as he puts it, he is "a dealer in antiquarian books and manuscripts." While driving home to London from one of his wealthy clients in Sussex, Snow finds himself lost on a lonely back road and comes upon a deserted old house, adjacent to the overgrown remains of what had once been a world-renowned, showplace garden. While walking through the forlorn and dreary grounds, Snow is startled to feel a child's hand press into his own...although no one seems to be in the vicinity! Over the next few weeks, the gentle clutch of the child's hand returns ever and again, but Snow is now aware that the grip has become more insistent, and indeed, is even trying to pull him into park fountains. On a trip to France to acquire a rare Shakespearian First Folio from a group of mountain-dwelling, cloistered monks, the ghostly image of a boy almost causes Snow to wreck his car during a thunderstorm, after which the invisible hand practically pulls him off a precipice! And at the cloister itself, the face of a young boy looks at Adam from beneath the waters of one of the courtyard fountains. Thus, it is with an ever-mounting sense of panic that our good book dealer decides to return to the abandoned home and try to riddle things out. The abode was once called the White House, he had recently learned, and its sole living occupant turns out to be almost as frightening a proposition as the White House occupant we currently have here in the United States! But even this living relic of a bygone age cannot fully explain Adam's problem of the small, ghostly hand....
Like so many spook stories that have come before, "The Small Hand" does not bother to fully clarify all its spectral occurrences to the reader; just enough to make us understand why the ghost of a young boy might be doing what he's doing. Whether Adam was specially chosen for the ghost's attention, or Snow's advent at the house was merely a coincidence, is left up to the reader to decide. And yes, I am trying to be coy here, so as not to spoil any of the book's surprises, of which there are several. Hill ratchets up the suspense quotient in her story nicely, and adroitly spaces her scarier moments for maximum effect. She is an immensely readable author who writes simply yet effectively, and who has that rare gift of being able to evoke atmosphere and clear-cut images with little excess verbiage.
Besides Snow, who is a charming and sympathetic narrator, Ms. Hill provides us with some other interesting characters: Adam鈥檚 brother, Hugo, who lives in Suffolk with his Danish wife, and who had, many years earlier, also suffered with a compulsive mental problem or sorts; the kindly monks of the St. Mathieu des Etoiles monastery; Fergus McCreedy, Adam's librarian friend at Oxford; and Sir Edgar Merriman (the magnificently wealthy book collector in Sussex) and his wife, Alice. Hill's novel is replete with any number of memorable scenes (I've already mentioned that stormy road in the Vercors Mountains, the monastery fountain, the meeting with the White House occupant), but equally compelling is the book's final section, culminating in the aforementioned tragedy. "The Small Hand" is a short, compulsively readable novel that most readers will probably feel the need to gulp down in a sitting or two; preferably on an autumn night, with rain pattering on the windowpanes....
I might add that the author, besides making the occupation of being a book procurer seem an exotic and desirable one (during the course of a few months, Adam flies to New York several times, as well as France, San Francisco, North Carolina, Munich, Berlin and Rome in his pursuit of rare volumes), evinces a great knowledge of the world of books, of Oxford, and of rare works in general. Whether Ms. Hill has done laborious research or has come upon this knowledge naturally (I suspect the latter), I don't know, but she sure does seem familiar with the Kelmscott Press (of William Morris), First Folios, libraries (the Bodleian and Duke Humfrey Libraries in Oxford, Dr. Williams's Library in London, the Huntington Library in California), medieval writers (such as Aelfric, and Gilbert of Hoyland), psalters and so on.
I could only detect one flaw in Ms. Hill's work here, actually, and that is when Hugo, late in the book, seems to know all about Adam's experiences with the ghostly hand. However, much earlier, Adam had clearly stated that he'd mentioned all his problems, except that of the small hand, to his brother. But other than this one minor flub, "The Small Hand" is a very impressive piece of writing, for which I am personally giving (you will forgive me) a big hand. But to tell the truth, I would applaud this book for two lines in it alone, which Adam delivers early on, in the second chapter. As a book collector myself, and one who finds it almost impossible to get rid of any of my precious volumes, these lines of Adam's really spoke to me: "My resolution every New Year is to halve the number of books I have and every year I fail to keep it. For every dozen I sell or give away, I buy twenty more...." Adam, I feel your pain...just like you felt the touch of a child's ghostly and invisible hand....
(By the way, this review originally appeared on the FanLit website at ... a most ideal destination for all fans of Susan Hill....)
This is the most recent of Susan Hill's ghost stories, and in reading it I have completed the author's quartet of novellas of the supernatural. This one deviates from the previous three in that it's set in something like the present day; though much of the story has a timeless feel, references to a few modern innovations let us know that it's taking place in the modern age (email is mentioned, for example). Other aspects display reassuring similarities to the others, however, with a backdrop of traditional academia, and older friends acting as mentors/guides to a male narrator of indeterminate age. Said narrator is Adam Snow, a dealer in antiquarian books, who by chance (or so it seems) stumbles across an abandoned house, The White House, and its once-impressive gardens while lost on a journey to London. Observing the house, he feels a small child's hand slip into his own; yet there is no child to be seen. Afterwards, he finds it impossible to forget the small hand and is increasingly unnerved by this ghostly presence, even when he journeys to a remote French monastery to collect a rare book.
I definitely preferred this story to ; at least there is a properly established link between Adam's experiences and the source of the hauntings. There's also a definite attempt to make this more than just a ghost story, as the source of the ghostly events connects with the mental illness and breakdown suffered by Adam's brother Hugo - the narrator's fears become as much about his own sanity as they are about any paranormal threat. However, I didn't feel the book really had enough substance to carry off this development with any authority, particularly as the character of Hugo seemed significantly underdeveloped. I liked the fact that there was something a bit different about this tale, rather than the plot sticking to the same formula as the previous installments, as seemed to be the case with The Man in the Picture; but that said, I think I'd rather just have ghosts and spirits unless the themes are going to be explored properly.
Like Hill's other ghost stories, The Small Hand is perfect for reading in one sitting, but it's also similarly brief and I'm glad I borrowed it from the library rather than buying. I still think my favourite of the author's is ; funnily enough, this is also the only one of her ghost stories that's now out of print. If you enjoyed this, I think it's worth seeking out a copy anyway - it's far more detailed and suspenseful.
Whenever I want a quick dose of spine-chilling goodness, I turn to Susan Hill! She has long since cemented herself in my eyes as a professional of the unsettling, and while her books are often short, they always deliver! . Having said that, The Small Hand is not the best Hill I鈥檝e read. I can鈥檛 quite put my finger on what was wrong, it was just lacking a little of the subtlety and menacing chill of say The Woman in Black or The Man in the Picture. . I enjoyed the unsettling presence of the White House (who doesn鈥檛 love a good sentient house), the incident on the winding mountain road to the monastery in France, and the main character himself! However, the resolution and involvement of Adam鈥檚 brother Hugo fell a bit flat for me. . What I鈥檇 recommend if you鈥檙e wanting to try some Susan Hill is getting your hands on the compiled version of her works! I was lucky to find my copies secondhand, but I do understand that 拢7.99 is a lot for a 180 page book. The compilation is called The Woman in Black and Other Ghost Stories, and I highly recommend it if you鈥檙e after some delightfully creepy reads! .
Maybe i was spoilt by ' The woman in black ' but this came nowhere close. As a story it was ok but I think it would have worked much better as a short story than a novel. If it had been then it would have been more stark and perhaps would have flowed better. Much of the detail seemed padding, it didn't really contribute to the movement of the plot. Why did we ned to be told about Adam's flights to US or Europe on book business; it served no real purpose? The denoument seemed contrived and I wasn't convinced. Trying not to give anything away, I just felt the 'solution' was shoe-horned in. As a ghost story it ran along ok but there was no chill or shock here. Disappointing
This reads like a classic ghost story set far before its time, and appealled to me immensely in that it delivered a sense of eeriness and foreboding without outright terror and horror. The perfect read to begin the spooky season. Full review to follow.
Another great ghost story by Susan Hill!!! Spooky, gloomy, and atmospheric!!!
Susan Hill is indeed a gifted novelist.. Reminiscence of "The Woman in Black", powerfully executed!!!
Adam is a dealer.. But no drugs, rather old and valuable books.. Then one day driving in his car he get lost, and wind up before a building..a white house.. Its influence on him is doom and gloom!!!
Something terrible happened in his early childhood.. Now its time to pay back the debt in full!!!
There were no actual "scares" in this ghost story, but I got so worked up anticipating one that the tension while I was reading this tiny book was the same as if it was a horror movie and there was creepy music playing. I was speed reading through most of the book, looking for the "scare" that never came. The story kept me guessing as to who the "small hand" belonged to for the whole book, I couldn't work it out until the book revealed it.
A fine and delightful read; a modern ghost story told in a classic M. R. James style. The plot follows Adam Snow, an antique book dealer, who takes a wrong turn and ends up at an old manor know as 鈥渢he White House.鈥� Once famous for an amazing garden, the house has fallen into disrepair (with some beautiful passages about how nature seems to have taken it back). There he feels a small child-like hand grab his own. What follows is his investigation into the hand.
The story is extremely atmospheric, and those who love M. R. James will recognize that our protagonist is a classic James character (an academic with a love of rare books who tells the story with little passion despite the oddities surrounding him). While it is not a particularly scary read, I would say it is more鈥� spooky. Nothing to really jump out at the reader, but lots of building a mood and subtle creepiness.
One of the most interesting aspects to me was how Hill blended the modern day setting with the classic ghost story feel. There are references to cars, planes and emails, but the story feels quite timeless. We鈥檙e even given many of the classic gothic settings as our protagonist travels in search of a rare book (including the a monastery where the monks have taken a vow of silence).
The story is not without its flaws (I personally found the ending a bit abrupt and not very satisfying), but it had the feel of a classic ghost story, well told in a modern setting. A quick and enjoyable read for one looking for a bit of horror, but nothing too scary.
"And as I stood I felt a small hand creep into my right one, as if a child had come up beside me in the dimness and taken hold of it." - Susan Hill, The Small Hand, page 15
I picked up a couple of Susan Hill novels at the library, because she's the master of suspense and, right now, I need to work on... ... ... ... ...building suspense in my writing.
The Small Hand follows Adam Snow, seller of antique books, to a derelict house he stumbles across. It's tumbling down, the gardens overgrown, completely abandoned. And there. In the garden. A small hand slips into his own.
The hand of a child.
At first, it seems benign. Just a child seeking comfort. But then strange things start happening and Adam begins to fear he's going mad... He stumbles through the story, drawn to the house and terrified of it in equal measure, desperately seeking advice from a brother who desperately seeks to avoid the topic.
For some reason (stupidity) I always think Susan Hill books are much, much older than they are. The Small Hand was written in 2010, but the setting feels timeless. At one point, email was mentioned and I almost dropped the book.
The explanation for the actions of the owner of the small hand were easy enough to guess, once you took everything together, but there are mysteries that remain unanswered even after you close the book. The lady at the house, for example, real or imagined?
If you're looking for a quick ghost story, this took me two and a half hours to read at most. Give it a go!
Me gust贸 todo lo relacionado con la mano fantasma y varias de las descripciones que hace la autora sobre la campi帽a inglesa. Lo que no me termin贸 de convencer fue la justificaci贸n que hace de la historia y que da pie al final, que sent铆 un tanto abrupto.
De cualquier manera, me gusta la autora y seguir茅 leyendo m谩s de sus libros.
I love a good ghost story and, while I really enjoyed the story and loved its atmosphere and descriptions, it didn't spook me in the slightest, hence three stars and not four.
It was a place which had been left to the air and the weather, the wind, the sun, the rabbits and the birds, left to fall gently, sadly into decay, for stones to crack and paths to be obscured and then to disappear, for windowpanes to let in the rain and birds to nest in the roof. Gradually, it would sink in on itself and then into the earth. How old was this house? A hundred years? In another hundred there would be nothing left of it.
I turned. I could barely see ahead now. Whatever the garden, now "closed," had been, nature had taken it back, covered it with blankets of ivy and trailing strands of creeper, thickened it over with weed, sucked the light and the air out of it so that only the toughest plants could grow and in growing invade and occupy.
I should go back.
But I wanted to know more.
I feel obligated to say up front that I am probably being unfair to this book. I am tempted to bump it up a star just because.
This is a much better plotted and neatly delivered little ghost story than . In this tale, she stays with exactly one source of supernatural tension, manifesting almost always in the same single way. The opening chapters made the hair stand up on my arms. The sensation of being lost on country roads, of finding a deserted place, of the small hand. And the book is filled with moments like that, moments I could easily reference real fears from my own experience and let them be drawn forward in the story. (Well, not the small hand. But she makes it seem like something I could experience, and that is the key to real suspense.)
And then the side trail intervenes and the plot is lost. And the side trail isn't just any side trail; it's a totally out of left field wholly unbelievable one. I appreciate the love for books that shines through in the lady's work, but this was just impossible for me. I put the book down for most of a week. The tension drained away. The story and the writing held up when I got back to it, but never recovered from that loss.
So, if Ms. Hill ever writes a book that stays on task, it will scare the jeepers out of me, I already know it. In the meantime, I will continue to wish that she would pare these things down. This one could have lost 50 pages and the whole trip to France and it would have been a very nearly perfect ghost story. If you are more patient than I am (or have fewer hang ups about Shakespeare), you may well enjoy this one quite a lot more.
(Note: read in but I prefer to review the separately published works in omnibus editions unless there is something unique to the omnibus. No such difference here.)
3 1/2 stars. Short and quite enjoyable in the "cozy ghost story for a cold, gloomy day" sort of way. I liked the antiquarian book dealer narrator and his "bookish" world, but the story's conclusion was a little disappointing. Abrupt. It was actually pretty much what I expected, but no explanation was given for an action that seemed uncharacteristic and seemed to call for a bit more elaboration than was given. Still, I enjoyed the story.
Misschien ben ik afgestompt door vele enge films die ik de laatste tijd gezien heb waardoor ik dit korte verhaaltje helemaal niet griezelig vond . Hoe dan ook .. ik vond het maar zozo .
We used to go on thrift-store adventures a lot, but then Covid hit and we don't do that anymore, but I've still got a bunch of unread books from those hauls in multiple piles, and this is one of them.
I wasn't planning to read anything today because I wanted to sort through these books, but once I started this one I couldn't stop. 馃槵
Adam Snow is an antiquarian bookseller who is going home after visiting a client, when he takes a wrong turn along a country road. That's how he stumbles on a derelict house with an overgrown garden. There's something about this place that he can't shake, and it's not just the feel of a ghostly hand taking his...
Wow. I actually read this book in two sittings because I couldn't put it down. I love a good ghost story, and this one totally hooked me in as soon as I started.
The creepy atmosphere spills into this story from the very beginning. The vivid descriptions of the garden Adam stumbles into really gives this story a strong sense of location. Actually, every place he visits is so well described that you can't help but be dragged into the middle of things.
Adam's voice is also very strong and so interesting. I loved his job and how searching for these old, rare books takes him all over the world. I mean, he even ends up in the mountains of France, where he visits a monastery full of silent monks and suffers through some pretty scary incidents.
The tension is thick and the more Adam suffers from panic attacks, gets lost in nightmares and even encounters ghosts, the spookier everything gets. Until the connection is revealed, and everything makes total sense.
This is a slow burn gothic tale that consumed me so deeply, I couldn't stop following Adam on his dark and confusing adventure. Also, it's so well written. Loved the writing style.
This story of a rare-book dealer haunted by the manifestation of a child's hand gripping his own started well, developed with sufficient interplay between the mundane and ghostly to make it creepily atmospheric, and Hill's descriptions of locale all added to the building tension which the ending, unfortunately, didn't quite pay off for me. Still a low pick, and if you like the classic ghost stories of and , then you'll probably like this, too.
This was my fourth of Hill鈥檚 classic ghost stories, after The Woman in Black, The Man in the Picture and Dolly. They鈥檙e always concise and so fluently written that the storytelling voice feels effortless. I wondered if this one might have been inspired by 鈥淭he Ghost of a Hand鈥� (above). It doesn鈥檛 feature a disembodied hand, per se, but the presence of a young boy who slips his hand into antiquarian book dealer Adam Snow鈥檚 when he stops at an abandoned house in the English countryside, and again when he goes to a French monastery to purchase a Shakespeare First Folio. Each time, Adam feels the ghost is pulling him to throw himself into a pond. When Adam confides in the monks and in his brother, he gets different advice. A pleasant and very quick read, if a little predictable.
This is a short novel, a term I prefer over novellete, novella, novel-ista. Just as I like the term: short story, as it states exactly what is it is, and you needn't go looking for, like, just how many words is that? And do I like reading THAT? IMO I like reading everything, shorts, short-shorts, long, and many thousands of words long...
The review:
A man is haunted by an old house in the countryside of England. It's creepy; it's derelict; it has old, abandoned, but obviously-once-beautiful gardens surrounding it. (Yay for England with its surfeit of creepy, abandoned properties! We've got them here in the US, and I love to watch as they get worse and worse and finally someone buys it all up, bulldozes it and puts up a McMansion. Actually, I don't like that last part.)
Back to review:
In the course of said creepy old house he feels a hand slipping into his. A little hand, with an urgency behind it; it/he/she wants to take him somewhere...
All this is in the first few pages, so no spoiler. What happens beyond that is a twisty-turvy tale which seems quite realistic as the MC also has a life outside the creepy house. He buys and sells old books and manuscripts; he travels around. Things happen elsewhere, too. And he's got this rather strange older brother.
This was a fun comfy kind of ghost story! An antiquarian book dealer, an old house, a rambling overgrown garden, and a small hand! Perfect for spooktober.
"'For me, everything is the better when faced. You draw the sting. But you only can make this choice.'"
Challenge: #ColourMeReadChallenge
October is of course the perfect month to read a creepy story or two, and I'm glad that I saved The Small Hand for reading last month (I originally hoped I would be able to post this review in October, but nope...). Thank you to Profile Books / Serpent's Tail for sending me a copy of this gorgeous book!
In this story, the protagonist, Adam Snow, tells of how he came to be haunted by 'the small hand'. After losing his way in the English countryside, he comes across a dilapidated house and has a strange compulsion to enter. It is when he approaches it that he suddenly feels a small hand, like a child's, creep into his own, and he later begins to have increasingly sinister experiences and dreams.
I really enjoyed Hill's writing. This is a pretty short book (less than 200 pages), and Hill's straightforward prose style means it would be easy enough to read the story in one sitting. One thing I was disappointed by was the fact that it was pretty easy to guess the ending, and Adam seemed quite slow on the uptake at times.
If you want to read a very scary book, I wouldn't recommend this one. It's definitely got a creepy factor though, and the fact that Adam is recounting his experiences and therefore says things like 'I was not to know this at the time' (not sure if he actually did say that, but you get the idea) means that the story is quite suspenseful.
Recommended for: people who are looking for a spooky rather than an outright scary read!