There’s a good reason why this book is still popular after more than thirty years in print and has often been adapted for different media. I watch the film behind a cushion and nearly had a heart attack when I saw the stage play. The book drips with dread and atmosphere from start to finish. Arthur Kipps is sent to the abandoned and forbidding Eel Marsh House to put the affairs of the deceased Mrs Drablow in order. The villagers shun Arthur as the rumour is that when the vengeful ghost of The Woman in Black appears one of the local children will die. So when the ghost of Jennet Humfrye starts to haunt Arthur we know from the off it’s not going to end well. A creepy story in the classic British tradition.
Proud and solitary, Eel Marsh House surveys the windswept reaches of the salt marshes beyond Nine Lives Causeway. Arthur Kipps, a junior solicitor, is summoned to attend the funeral of Mrs Alice Drablow, the house's sole inhabitant, unaware of the tragic secrets which lie hidden behind the shuttered windows...
Arthur Kipps, a junior solicitor, is summoned to attend the funeral of Mrs Alice Drablow, the sole inhabitant of Eel Marsh House.
The house stands at the end of a causeway, wreathed in fog and mystery, but it is not until he glimpses a wasted young woman, dressed all in black, at the funeral, that a creeping sense of unease begins to take hold, a feeling deepened by the reluctance of the locals to talk of the woman in black - and her terrible purpose.
'No one chills the heart like Susan Hill' Daily Telegraph
**If you love The Woman in Black, try The Various Haunts of Men, the first book in Susan Hill's Simon Serrailler series**
