The Woman in Black — by Susan Hill

Rarely does a person ever say that the movie adaptation is better than the original book. And while I haven't actually seen the movie yet, the trailers for the latest Daniel Radcliffe flick "The Woman In Black" (an original book circa 1983 "The Woman in Black" by Susan Hill) looks SOOOOOOOO creepy good.


I first saw the trailer while on the Goodreads website immediately requested a copy from the library, which of course took months to get to me. Compared to other books currently on the market, the 164 pages was less-than-intimidating, and I looked forward to a quick, creepy read with a good plot. Instead, the book was a huge disappointment.

For example, the main character Mr. Kipps (played by Daniel Radcliffe in the movie) hears an unusual sound coming from a room, which the author describes as "bump bump, pause, bump bump, pause, bump bump..." (p. 116). I'm not sure if it was from the trailer (which I had seen months previously) or just my supreme intellect, but I immediately knew the sound was a rocking chair.

Now don't those trailers look great??!

In my opinion, the author took too much time setting up the story line in the beginning of the book, which is actually more of a flashback to something that occurred 20 or so years previously to the beginning of the book. In the introduction the main character is so deeply disturbed by what has happened, and has not ever told anyone about it, that he decides to write out what happened in an attempt to rid himself of the alleged daily remembrance of what happened.  Throughout the book the writer brings the reader back into the "present" by referring to how the main character is recounting the events and that it wasn't actually occurring at this point in time — pointless in my opinion. The author also uses odd word choices too, writing things such as that the character "decided" to do something, and then telling us that he did it. On first reading the passages I thought the character was completing the action twice. For these reasons, I sadly rate this book 1 star out of 5.

After viewing the trailers again for this post, I still want to see the movie. Especially since so much has been changed about the story (for example, in the book Mr. Kipps is single, but engaged) and apparently in the movie he is married with a child that I can't help but think that idea would have made a greater impact on the book itself. I also get the impression that in the movie we see more of "The Woman In Black" and her effects on the town and house inhabitants. This time it looks like "Hollywood" got it right, if not better, than the original!