Susan Hill's "The Small Hand" and "Dolly"

[Extollager]

This is a single book with two short novels. I've just read the first one and liked it as I might have enjoyed a midcentury ghost story like this several decades ago. If I were going to make a television film of the story, that's probably how I would do it, as a story set in the 1970s. The main trick would be to convey to the viewer the important element of the story that involves feeling a child's hand in one's own. I suppose a voice-over narration from the main character could be used. The story has lovely potential for television drama and eye candy, with a drive on a mountain road during a thunderstorm and sequence in a monastery that reminded me of the film Into Great Silence.

The main locale in the story, however, is an abandoned house with derelict formal gardens in the English countryside.

 

[Randy M.]

Another on Mount TBR. Maybe later this summer ...

Have you read her novels The Woman in Black or The Mist in the Mirror? Both are nice throwbacks to the early 20th century ghost stories, the former arguably more powerful for the central image of the woman in black. I believe she's published a few others over the last few years, and her mystery series looks interesting, too.


Randy M.

 

[Extollager]

Yes, I've read those two, Randy -- The Woman in Black at least three times, and Mist a couple of times, though it seemed inferior to its predecessor. My memory is that I started reading The Woman in Black to my wife, the first time I read it, one evening, and finished reading it to her the next morning, so reading the whole book aloud in the space of 12 hours or so.

 

[Randy M.]

Another I should reread before barging on but, hey, it's the Internet so what the heck ...

I thought ...Mist had a better narrative flow than TWiB, but not the power because it lacked a central, recurring image that focused the sense of evil and impending doom.


Randy M.