Chantel's Reviews > The Woman in Black

** spoiler alert ** I cannot even fathom where to begin this review. This book was one of the very worst stories I have ever come across both in terms of writing & plot. Being a total of 200 pages I was flabbergasted by my own struggle to make it through without repeatedly stumbling in my reading & wanting to abandon the book every couple of pages.

I should say that, if you are someone for whom Horror is not the preferred genre or if you are young & seeking something that is light; both in terms of storyline & the paranormal, then you might very well enjoy this book. My full support to you if you do.
 
I have read that some people really disliked the introductory chapter wherein Arthur, our main character & narrator, is introduced to us on the eve of Christmas; sitting in a large country-side estate, while his family shares spur-of-the-moment ghost stories. My reason for enjoying this chapter so much was because it was the only instance that felt authentic.

Arthur is a very boring, bland, sullen type of character & everything he encounters & pursues follows suit of those characteristics. However, him sitting idly by, as his step-children (which is most often emphasized in a way that makes me assume that this might be due to the time period or culture), share stories by a dying fire, fits his character in such a way as to make him almost likeable.

His simple tendency to not actually share anything with his family, of whom he has been a part for over 14 years, instead of making the decision to wander off alone & write down his past experiences with the paranormal, is fitting & overall makes sense for his character. Unfortunately, we are meant to rely on this person to share a gruelling story of terror & dread. Therein lies my main issue; nothing happens because Arthur is invaluably unable to recount anything in any effective way so as to render the weight of his experiences anything other than far-fetched ridiculous memories.
 
Hill spends a great deal of time wandering in circles throughout her writing; we read about ambiance & setting, often. This is not necessarily a bad thing but, I understand that the mist is looming, I understand that you cannot see through it. I understand what mist is & if I were truly uncertain, having it described to me four (4) different times was not going to make it any clearer.

After the scene was set, we have to read about Arthur’s interpretation of the weather in every chapter as though we couldn’t gauge for ourselves how unpredictable the weather would be in the English countryside; as though this isn’t, in current times, well-known for the majority of us. We spend so much time on weather, environment, & Arthur’s observations of meteorology that the actual girth of the story was lost in the process.
 
Seeing as Arthur doesn’t have many redeeming qualities about him when the ‘Woman in Black’ appeared to us I was so underwhelmed that I couldn’t even bother to care. We walk in circles about a sickly woman appearing at random & then read about Arthur being kept in the dark as to who she is & the impact she held over society. Then, that’s it, we’re at the end of the 200-page book where, you guessed it; everything happens within a couple of pages & voila, fin. Stella dies, his son dies & everyone is riddled with dread & guilt & sorrow.

There was no tension built-up throughout this book, no sentiments summoned to hint at looming terror, no foreshadowing of horrors; there was mist, marshes, a big house & rooms filled with the scent of damp.
 
I wish that this book had been edited in a different way. There was potential for the story to be scary but, we required a different narrator—one who underwent some form of distinguished regression throughout the story. Arthur reads as being exactly the same in his youth as when he is writing the story in his midlife. I appreciate that his self-reflection could impact the translation of his personality over the years however, even when he was being fully honest with himself about his innocence; was he really young & innocent or was he always glum & dull?

In any case, Hill’s writing of a character with few redeeming characteristics was well-done. I felt absolutely nothing for Arthur save annoyance. He would tell us about something happening in the house only to, a couple of phrases later, recount that same event or go over an action to counter something he had done (here’s looking at you—opening all the curtains only to close them again several moments later as though we couldn’t have filled those lines with other things).

To conclude, this was not a book I enjoyed in the least.