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Review 39: The Woman in Black by Susan Hill

The Woman in Black
Ghosts don’t exist. There’s lots of evidence we can use to support that position – where are the black and Indian ghosts in Britain? Poor people have always died in greater numbers and more tragic circumstances, why are ghosts usually of richer people? Why should the internal emotional state of someone as they die be able to externally determine whether or not they stay on and spook about? If they’re not bound by gravity, (seeing as they float about like intangible jellyfish), why do they appear on the spot on the Earth where they carked it, rather than somewhere in space, several million miles away, which is the actual geographical location that they died and from which the Earth has since tootled away? Ghosts are clearly a load of old ectoplasm.

But that said, I do really like a good ghost story, and so does pretty much everyone else. Despite their non-existence, the universality of ghost stories tells us that they’re still meaningful to people even if they’re not real, like the economy. They tell us things about ourselves, even if it’s just by the stories that strike up around them rather than actually telling us them in undulating voices backed by theremins.

That’s what drives The Woman in Black, and it’s what elevates it above a simple blood-and-wailing ghost story designed to scare. This is a ghost story concerned with injustice, and the repercussions of it.

It was written in 1984 but it reads exactly like the Victorian gothic novels it’s designed to sit alongside. Hill’s clearly spent a lot of time in this world, because it feels complete in the way that she doesn’t have to spend time describing everything – she just throws in enough detail to make the world she’s picturing crystal-clear.

Mostly set in an isolated country house, the plot revolves around a young lawyer, Arthur Kipps, who has to organise the affairs of the home’s late owner. Gradually it becomes clear that the house and the nearby village are traumatised by a malaevolent ghost, and we discover why through Kipps’ diligent paperwork and interactions with the villagers.

There’s a creeping sadness to this book that accompanies the growing tension as the ghostly occurrences multiply. Hill wrote this a few years after the death of her newborn daughter, and while I’m only speculating, it feels as though she’s ploughed the sense of grief and loss into this. There’s a depth to it that haunts the pages.

Ultimately the story is concerned with how the wrongdoings of the past can be passed down to haunt the living. Not just the culprits of the misdeeds, but the community as a whole. In a very different way, Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing explores similar territory. Hill’s choice of writing a ghost story to do this is a brilliant idea, precisely because of the universality of ghost. We all know the metaphors of things ‘coming back to haunt us’ or being dogged by ‘the spectre’ of something we’ve done wrong. In TWIB, Hill simply extends those metaphors into an absorbing and powerful tale.

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