Susan Hill - Dolly: A Ghost Story

[dem]

Susan Hill - Dolly: A Ghost Story (Profile, 2012)

iStockphoto: design: Peter Dyer

Blurb:
Orphan Edward Cayley is sent to spend summer with his forbidding Aunt Kestrel of Iyot House, her decaying home deep in the damp, lonely fens. With him is his spoilt, spiteful cousin, Leonora. And when Leonora's birthday wish for a beautiful doll is thwarted, she unleashes a furious rage which haunts her quiet, subdued cousin for years afterwards.

Much later, and now each others' only surviving relative, the cousins return to Iyot House. And it becomes horribly apparent that Leonora's act of violence has had dark and sinister consequences that they can neither anticipate nor escape ....


It is now thirty-five years since Edward last set foot in Iyot House. His Aunt, Kestral Dickinson has recently died, leaving Edward and his spiteful cousin, Leonora Von Vorst, to inherit the once cheerful but now unremittingly gloomy house on the Fens. On arrival at the hamlet of Iyot Lock, and with no Leorora in sight, Edward explores the local churchyard on a whim. A rustling beneath the ground, as though something were struggling to break out from beneath the soil, soon decides him that perhaps it would be better to brave the lonely house and get it over with. But revisiting the cold, empty house makes him uneasy, and, on reaching the cupboard in the attic, he can stand it no longer. Something happened in there, something he has blocked from memory. Edward drives ten miles to Cold Eeyle to book a stay at the nearest inn. Still he can't sleep on account of the distant moaning in the night.

"Deep under the earth, inside its cardboard coffin, shrouded in the layers of white paper, the china doll with the jagged open crevasse in its skull was crying."

So begins Susan Hill's recent novella (150 or so very short pages in this edition). Am currently a third through and we're back in the summer when Edward and Leonora, both aged eight, were thrown together for the summer holiday. Edward had been only two when his parents died, and remembers neither of them. He's been passed around the family ever since, always treated with scrupulous kindness but self-aware enough to realise that he's a nuisance. Leonora, the daughter of a globe-trotting, temporarily single mother (Violet Von Vorst, "the most beautiful woman in the world." according to a recent fashion magazine article, has already gone through husbands Mk I-IV), is selfish, haughty, utterly indifferent to the feelings of others - and clearly, very very troubled. "She is too like her mother" observes Kestral, after witnessing the girl's trademark furious-rage-over-nothing for the first time. Edward can't decide whether he likes her. She seems obsessed with death and the prospect of Hell. With her pale face and red hair, he thinks of Leonora as a ghost, and her periodic sleepwalking episodes do nothing to dispel the image.

Leonora has taken an instant dislike to the surly housekeeper, Mrs. Mullens, and decides to play a nasty trick on her, but first, there is the garden to explore. She cajoles goody-goody Edward into following her through the gate and out toward the lake. What is it that she alone sees reflected in the water that brings on another of her turns?

To be continued, I sure hope it continues like this!

[dem]

Well! That was an engrossing and, ultimately, surprisingly bleak reading experience, but now I'm undecided whether to place it up top of personal 'best' of 2013, or if it even belongs on such an oh so prestigious listing. For this reader, Dolly seemed to go off on a tangent when the action briefly shifted to Eastern Europe and, while the episode sets us off for a nice horrible conclusion, gut reaction was that, after 120 effortlessly flowing pages, all of a sudden the story wasn't sure what to do with itself.

The running commentary below is likely a snake-pit of spoilers, so best avoided, especially if you've yet to read the novella.

"Mrs. Mullen said I was possessed by a demon. I think that may be true."

Stormy weather. It is Leonora's birthday on August 10th, and in the days leading up to it she receives several parcels from her mother. Fine dresses, baubles, sweets - everything but the one gift she has set her heart on, a doll. "An Indian royal bride, with elaborate clothes, and jewels and braiding in her hair." From Leonora's description, Edward paints a picture of this exotic creature. Leonora leaves it out in the rain.

Kestrel, realising that Violet knows nothing about her daughter and cares even less, heads to London to buy her a doll so at least she has one to play with, even if it's not entirely to specification, which is, of course, a fatal mistake. Leonora ambushes her weary aunt the moment she arrives home and demands to see her present. She unwraps the beautiful, very lifelike replica of ... a baby. Raving, good as frothing at the mouth, Leonora hurls the doll against the fireplace, cracking the china skull, and tears off to her room. Edward, apologising on her behalf, retrieves the broken figure - there is a gaping hole in its cracked head - places it back in its box and sticks it beneath his bed for the night, intent on repairing it the following day. He hears the doll crying. Not knowing what to do, he somehow soothes it to sleep, puts it away in the cupboard. After three sleepless nights, he buries the doll in the local churchyard.

It comes as a huge relief to Aunt Kestrel and Mrs. Mullen when Violet telegrams to inform them that she has arrived in London and Leonora is to join her. Only Edward is the slightest bit sorry to see her go.

Back to the present. After spending a peaceful night at the inn, Edward arrives punctually at the Solicitor's office to meet his late aunt's executor, Mr James Maunderville. His cousin, true to form, arrives in her own good time. Now 43, Leonora Sebastian is on husband Mk. III, a wealthy American twenty years her junior, and is expecting her first child. For reasons known only to herself, Leonora is also expectant of inheriting all her Aunt's worldly goods, so Mr. Maunderville's rather gleeful revelation that everything - bar one solitary worthless item - has been left to Edward sends her flying into another violent tantrum.

Edward decides there and then that he will share everything equally between them, but first, having taken it upon himself to bury it all those years ago, he must retrieve Leonora's "inheritance." Finding her back in the attic room at Iyot, he persuades his cousin to accompany him to the churchyard where, fortunately, the gardener has left his tool-shed unlocked. Taking a spade, Edward digs into the hard earth and retrieves the mouldering cardboard coffin and its occupant. Child no longer, the doll is a toothless, haggard crone ....

Edward's career in architectural conservation takes him to Szargesti on the outskirts of Prague, and it's here that he chances upon the strangest of curiosity shops. The aged proprietor, busy mending toys, barely looks up when Edward blows in shortly before closing time, but he knows instinctively what the Englishman seeks and points out a doll, the Indian royal bride as Leonora described her during that fateful summer. There is no question of his not buying it. Edward mails the parcel back to Iyot as a gift for Leonora's new born daughter, Frederica, and in doing so, unwitting brings down the curtain on all their futures ....

[jamesdoig]

Nov 1, 2013 19:31:05 GMT dem said:

Well! That was an engrossing and, ultimately, surprisingly bleak reading experience, but now i'm undecided whether to place it up top of personal 'best' of 2013, or whether it even belongs on such an oh so prestigious listing.

Thanks for the review, Dem. There are no rosy endings where Susan Hill is concerned. I've really enjoyed her other ghostlies and must pick this one up, even though you're not 100% sold.

[dem]

Take no notice of my moaning, James. Initial misgivings notwithstanding, I've no hesitation in recommending Dolly. Particularly like that she keeps the ghost books lean and mean in these increasingly flabby days. Vintage have recently published a combined Dolly/ The Small Hand paperback edition (Sept 2013). Am looking forward to making a start on the latter in the not too distant.

Susan Hill - The Small Hand (Profile, 2011)

Design: Peter Dyer Cover photographs: Arcangel Images

Blurb:
Late one summer's evening, antiquarian bookseller Adam Snow is returning from a client visit when he takes a wrong turn. He stumbles across a derelict Edwardian house and, compelled by curiosity, approaches the door.

Standing before the entrance, he feels the unmistakable sensation of a small cold hand creeping into his own, as if a child had taken hold of it.

At first he is merely puzzled by the odd incident but then begins to suffer panic attacks, and to be visited by nightmares. He is determined to learn more about the house and its once-magnificent, now overgrown garden but when he does so, he receives further, increasingly sinister, visits from the small hand.

`The mistress of spine-tingling fiction' - Tatler.

[Dr Strange]

I started on The Small Hand last night, and read about half of it in one sitting. It certainly clips along (and the edition I have is the one shown above, which has unusually large print and page margins, so not many words to the page) - and I am enjoying it a lot. I'm not expecting a happy ending though.

Prior to that I read Jonathan Aycliffe's new one (The Silence of Ghosts), which was a big disappointment - very by-the-numbers ghost story for the most part, with a seemingly tagged on ending that didn't make a lot of sense. The whole thing seemed rather rushed and not properly thought out.

And before that, I read Adam Neville's new one (House of Small Shadows) - which I enjoyed, though I'm not at all sure exactly what was going on in it. Recommended if you are freaked out by taxidermy.

[dem]

Nov 4, 2013 11:44:55 GMT Dr Strange said:

And before that, I read Adam Neville's new one (House of Small Shadows) - which I enjoyed, though I'm not at all sure exactly what was going on in it. Recommended if you are freaked out by taxidermy.

That will be another one to look out for then! Really must re-loan The Ritual from the library, too, or better still, buy a copy. Was getting along famously with it until some domestic disaster or other intervened and blew my concentration.

Not sure if we're supposed to do this, so let's think of attached recent (Oct. 30) interview with Adam Nevill as an advertisement for Metro, the freebie newspaper, available from a tube station near YOU every Mon-Fri!

Am going to make a start on The Small Hand once i'm through with Paul Finch's Sacrifice (gripping; reminds me of early 'Michael Slade' minus the obsessive trawls through annals of violent criminal history).

adamnevill.pdf (163.07 KB)

[The Lurker In The Shadows]

I wasn't too taken with The Small Hand, as I recall. It was nicely written but I found it fairly dull, even at such a short length, and fairly predictable. Dolly was a big improvement, I felt.

House of Small Shadows is pretty good, though you do find yourself wishing the heroine would get a bit of sense and get the hell out of there. Mind you, if characters in horror were gifted with common sense, there'd be far fewer stories, wouldn't there?

[dem]

Susan Hill - The Small Hand. A Ghost Story (Profile, 2010)

Began reading this late yesterday afternoon just as the sky completely greyed over prior to a thunderstorm. Talk about setting the mood.

The Small Hand hits the ground running with the narrator, Adam Snow, taking a wrong turn while driving home across the Downs and chancing upon the remote English mausoleum that is The White House, long abandoned, garden closed. Snow fatally interupts his journey to take a look around. As he stands alone in the clearing he feels the cold hand of a small child clasp his own.

Back home in Chelsea, he is soon uncomfortably aware that the phantom with the tiny hand has returned with him.

Some weeks later, Mr. Snow, who is a dealer in antiquarian books by trade, revisits his client of that strange evening, the "incalculably rich" Sir Edgar Merriman who has set his heart on obtaining a First Folio of Shakespeare. Snow, who's far from convinced he'll be able to comply but lives for the thrill of the chase, casually mentions his detour to The White House. Sir Edgar has never heard of the place but his wife locates a feature on the once magnificent garden in an ancient issue of Country Life. The property was known locally as 'Denny's House' after the owner, Denisa Parsons, a widowed mother of two, and, according to Lady Merriman, "something happened there but it was all hushed up." Further research reveals that a tragic drowning accident robbed Mrs. Parsons of her ten-year-old grandson.

The haunting is getting to Mr. Snow. His brother Hugo once suffered a mental breakdown during the course of which he felt a compulsion to throw himself under a bus or from the window of a tall building. Adam is now experiencing the same sinister urge, and worse, he feels the phantom hand dragging him into traffic .....

[ripper]

I bought copies of Dolly and The Small Hand a while ago, though I have yet to get around to reading them. I've been putting it off, hoping to read them on a suitably gloomy winter's night, with howling wind and lashing rain :-). I like Hill's writing style very much. She doesn't waste words and her books are well-paced. She can get more chills out of 150 pages than many authors can get out of their bloated 450 page doorsteps.

[clarence]

I read Susan Hill's 'The Woman in Black' some years ago (hasn't everybody) and also 'The Ghost in the Picture' and 'Dolly' - all good stuff.
In my (perhaps uninformed) opinion she is one of the best of the more traditional Ghost Story writers today - I always look out for her work and will be collecting them all over the next few months.

Clarence