The Woman in Black

For today’s countdown to Halloween reading suggestion: The Woman in Black by Susan Hill. Because you don’t want a Halloween without a proper English ghost story. I first saw the movie, which I enjoyed, but the novel is far superior. It shows that one does not need a hulking maniac running after the protagonist with a machete or a chainsaw to create terror. An ugly woman wearing black, showing up without explanation is all it takes. Evil is a mere presence, an unexplained, eerie occurrence in a remote setting. Although it was written decades after Gothic horror was the big thing, it uses the tropes of the genre to great effect: a quaint English village with superstitious inhabitants, a mild mannered city dweller everyman as its hero, gloomy weather with mist and fog, an old abandoned house that is scary before we even learn it is haunted. It was my scary story discovery this year. Moral of the reading experience: when in doubt, go Gothic. Or neo-gothic.