Susan Hill Redux - "The Man in the Picture", Review

HILL, Susan, “The Man in the Picture – a Ghost Story”, Profile Books Ltd., London, 2007.

Octavo; hardcover, with gilt spine-titling; 145pp. Near fine in like dustwrapper.

Lest anyone think that I was overly harsh with my assessment of Susan Hill’s other ghostly offering “Printer’s Devil Court”, let me just follow that review up with this observation. Prior to my friend lending me that other book, I thought that I’d never encountered Susan Hill before – ‘turns out, I was wrong. It’s been a few years but I had read “The Man in the Picture”, so I skimmed over it again to refresh my memory about it; as well, I’ve picked up a copy of one of Hill’s police procedurals The Shadows in the Street, a detective story featuring her sleuthing mainstay Simon Serrailler, just to compare and contrast. See people? I really do do my research.

HILL, Susan, The Shadows in the Street, Vintage/Random House, London, 2011.

Octavo; paperback; 372pp. Moderate wear. Good.

To be frank, I’m not a fan of police procedurals – they tend to be more than a little splatterpunk-y for my taste: too much wallowing about in the entrails, dogged but nevertheless world-weary police officers, and (yawn) the inevitable serial killer at large. It smacks of pornography. To compare, I read Peter Robinson’s Aftermath, one of his DCI Banks stories, and it ticked all of the boxes: messy crime scene? Check. Weltschmerz? Check. Serial killer? You guessed it. In Hill’s case, the elements are all there, but she approaches them quite differently. Whereas Robinson (and I’m only using him as an example here because he’s the one I’ve read most recently) has female characters who are all long-legged with swishing hair, Hill’s women are far more nuanced with an actual internal life beneath their costuming. Coincidentally, both tales are written such that the crime is at one remove to the character development: in Robinson’s book, the crime and its committer are over and done with; the twist comes when the “victim” turns out to be anything but, and starts the rampage again. In Hill’s tale, much of the book is taken up with church politics, one character’s grieving process, and an examination of the grim lives of prostitute single mothers. The hero detective doesn’t even show until it’s almost all over.

In the final analysis, Hill’s book is the better of the two: the police procedure is well in the background, rather than being rammed down the reader’s throat; the characters are not stereotypes but are far more three-dimensional and interesting; and the story is interestingly constructed and satisfyingly paced. It’s not my kind of horror, so Tentacled Horrors are out of the question, but I’d give it a solid 4 out of 5.

Now we turn to “The Man in the Picture” and far more familiar territory.

This, like “Printer’s Devil Court” is pastiche – it must be said. Hill is trying to write M.R. James ghost stories, and obviously, she enjoys the exercise. This is a far better story than the other one and incorporates all of the tropes of a Jamesian spook tale: the setting at an Oxbridge university, the Edwardian overtones, the weird story, the nebulous explanation – it all works a treat. It’s almost as if the master was at work once more.

My hesitation with this stuff is that while it’s nice to see someone paying homage to James in this fashion, there is a lot of M.R. James out there. If you want to read James, then read James, not someone pretending to be him. Of course, if by reading Hill you find yourself in Jamesian territory then fine, forge ahead. I just feel that his contribution is not being recognised here – Hill is standing on a giant’s shoulders, and that giant is all but invisible to the unknowing.

It’s true that M.R. James has fallen somewhat out of fashion. In the 70s and early 80s, the BBC made many short films from his tales and these all clearly referenced the original author. There was a series of Christmas ghost stories in which Christopher Lee (RIP) basically read the short story to a group of students in a college study room surrounded by candles and port, in the same manner that James did, and even without special effects and visuals, these are very spooky and effective. Again though, we were explicitly told that we were watching a recreation of James’s work. I’m sure Hill is getting adequate recognition here (even after her book The Woman in Black was made into a long-running stage play and movie), but I’m wondering how James’s sales are looking?

I don’t begrudge Susan Hill for demonstrating her influences in the course of making sales and pushing units: it’s a cutthroat world out there in the writing game and you do what you have to. Still, she owns her own publishing house (Long Barn Books Ltd.) and so you’d think her concerns about getting into print would be negligible. Pastiche is the thorny trail towards sloppy writing and is dovetailed into the current trend for “more” not “good”. Frankly, I’d like to see more of ‘Susan Hill’ and less of ‘Susan Hill trying to be M.R. James’.

Again I haven’t gone into the story or its features – if you’ve read M.R. James, there’s not a lot to say. Still it’s a praiseworthy effort – four Tentacled Horrors.

In the meantime, look up Simon Serrailler...