January review for the Eclectic Reader's Book Challenge 2014: The Woman In Black by Susan Hill, 1983. [Gothic Fiction category]
I'm going to be very honest and say that I picked this book off my shelf because it was short and I was almost out of January for reading and writing! But I've had this on my shelf for a few months and I've decided I'm going to try to do as much of this year's challenge as I can with books I already own, so it was a win-win all around. The Woman in Black is a gothic horror story written in 1983 by Susan Hill and remade into a period film in 2012 starring everyone's favorite wizard, Daniel Radcliffe. {Fun fact, the original version of this film was made in 1989 and Daniel Radcliffe's character, Arthur Kipps, was played by none other than Adrian Rawlins, everyone's favorite dead wizard dad, good old JAMES Potter!} I saw the film last summer when I was fresh on my horror flick kick and decided to see what our man Harry could do without his funny glasses. I enjoyed it, thought it was thoroughly scary, especially when I went to the bathroom afterward and my boyfriend's mom had written "YOU COULD HAVE SAVED HIM" in lipstick on the mirror and I screamed. Needless to say I'm pretty jumpy and I thought the book wouldn't affect me as much because I already knew the ending. I was wrong.
The Woman in Black is a great little novella. I really enjoyed Susan Hill's writing style, the short, sweet, to the point phrases, with a flourish thrown in every once in a while to remind you the kind of story being told. In particular, I like the way Hill deals with time: there is no demarcation between present and past save context. The first chapter, "Christmas Eve," is in the present and delineates the seemingly inconsequential moment that plunges Arthur Kipps back to grisly memories of the worst few days of his life. He says after the holiday, he is going to tell his story, convinces himself he'll get it out, then takes the plunge on the very next page without so much as a deep breath. The next chapter simply says "It was a Monday afternoon in November and already growing dark," with not even a nod to the fact that we've just swept back in time. The total submersion of the character and the narrator in the past is perfectly indicative of a mind forcing itself back into bad memories: just plunge in, get it over with, it'll be done soon.
Arthur Kipps is a solicitor in London, toiling away at a law firm where he deserves much more than what he is given, so he jumps at the chance to take some of Mr. Bentley's responsibility and go finish off the affairs of old friendless Mrs. Drablow who has just recently died in an unheard-of part of London's surroundings. He packs up and heads to Crythin Gifford, pretty much ignoring every look askance or sudden silence that inevitably comes when he tells a stranger that he is on his way to Eel Marsh House to finish off the legal affairs of Mrs. Drablow. Really, there could not be any more signs that something is wrong here, but our Mr. Kipps is a singularly stubborn fellow, and more than once talks himself back into confidence and not being afraid of whatever shadows may lay across the Nine Lives Causeway. (Really? Nine Lives Causeway? That didn't trip you up, Artie?) Classic ghostie things happen, like apparitions and noises you can't quite place, as well as more than a few near-death experiences--but at the hands of the weather. As if the entire environment of this place has been tainted with its history, as if the fright won't kill him then the marshes surely will. But Arthur soldiers on, renewing his confidence with each sunrise and the new companionship of a canine, digging for clues and trying to piece together the strings of the story. Although, the letters...apparently they had pretty much all of it but Arthur never goes back to them until he leaves...he keeps saying he's on a search for truth but doesn't utilize the resources available to him until he is comfortable again.
Toward the end, once he figures out what the strange noises are and thinks he has solved the mystery, Arthur makes a comment that I found particularly staying:
"The wind continued to howl across the marshes and batter at the house but that was, after all, a natural sound and one that I could recognize and tolerate, for it could not hurt me in any way." (page 126, emphasis is my own.)It made me think of something that I said in my interview with Chris for the Three Corpse Circus job when he asked me what I thought the point of horror was. To me, it seems like horror is almost a sort of religion. And I don't mean that people get all fanatic about it, although that surely happens as well, but rather that it serves as a tangible attempt to explain the unexplainable. That's what horror is, a way of life, an attribution of some substance to the shadows and the nightmares. And I think that is incredibly noble.
