It's Autumn, Therefore I Read Ghost Stories...

Every year when the mists descend and the evenings draw in I turn to ghost stories. I can't help myself. I usually wallow in the master of the form M R James. James is unimpeachably the king of the genre, but this year I have tried Susan Hill's The Woman in Black. As a modern literary novel it does little more than tell a spooky story well, but at the moment, this is enough. For me, the experience of reading Susan Hill's fiction is rather like swimming on Hastings beach. Her opening chapters are often clumsily and lumpily written as if she wishes to defer the main event with necessary preliminaries - these always feel forced and a bolt-on chore. It is like hirpling (it's a word!) over pebbles barefoot to get to the ocean. Once into the plot it is all sweet swimming and no more lumps. Unfortunately for me the last Susan Hill I read was the execrable Mist in the Mirror (last years spook-fest). This was all pebbles and no sea. Pitiful. Still, as I type this at work I am looking forward to drawing the curtains and getting into bed with the mysteriously emaciated and malevolently purposeful Woman in Black.