Another e-book bargain is to be had with today's Kindle Daily Deal, Susan Hill's ghost story The Small Hand
. This is what you'll get for your 99p:
Adam Snow, a dealer in antiquarian books and manuscripts, takes a
wrong turning while driving through deepest Sussex one evening and finds
himself stopping at the gate of The White House in an effort to get
directions. What he finds on walking up the drive is a deserted, half
derelict house and a once grand, now wildly overgrown garden, but
instead of turning back, Adam lingers a while in the Spring dusk,
intrigued by the strange, sad place. All is still and quiet, nothing
moves; but then Adam feels a small hand creep into his own.
That is the first of a series of increasingly frightening
experiences which Adam has in places as far apart as Oxford and a French
monastery, and when what had first felt like a benign presence becomes
instead a powerful and threatening one, Adam tries to discover the
history of The White House and what binds him to it.
Susan Hill's The Small Hand
is - typically of the author - economical, clear and straightforward.
No words are wasted, no fancy devices used, it is well-dressed, mannerly
story-telling at its best. It's a short book, but I found myself taking
it at a measured pace - which I think it demands for its full effect -
not wanting it to end, keen for the next exquisite episode. I've read
two of Susan's earlier ghost stories, The Woman In Black
and The Mist In The Mirror,
and I recommend them thoroughly, but there was something about the
contemporary setting of this latest book which made it all the more
chilling. It's simply, beautifully done.
~~~~~
Susan Hill's latest ghost story Dolly
has recently been published, and I wrote not long ago about her 'mainstream' novels In the Springtime of the Year and A Kind Man. I'm way behind with her Simon Serrailler series, but I see that book 7, A Question of Identity, has just come out.
