This is the most recent of Susan Hill's ghost stories, and in reading it I have completed the author's quartet of novellas of the supernatural. This one deviates from the previous three in that it's set in something like the present day; though much of the story has a timeless feel, references to a few modern innovations let us know that it's taking place in the modern age (email is mentioned, for example). Other aspects display reassuring similarities to the others, however, with a backdrop of More...

Straight forward ghost tale, cleany told, but I would go for waters' 'little stranger' over this

Susan Hill, who wrote the woman in black (not that i've read it or seen the film due to my aversion to a certain Daniel Radcliffe) is the author of this little ghost story. Like Kelly Clarkson this is short and perfectly formed.
A brief synopsis would be a man, a dealer of rare valuable books stumbles across an old dilapidated house while driving to a client. Drawn to the house and its gardens he gets out and has a look around. He feels as though a child is holding his hand ('the small hand'). H More...

This book was a 2.5 star, only because I wanted to see what happened at the end.

I'll start with what I liked best, the cover. This is a beautiful book, I liked the blue and gold. It was lovely to hold and the pages are a nice quality, it will look lovely on any bookcase.

Its very easy to read,at 167 pages long and I read it in a few hours.

It all starts with Adam, a book dealer who gets lost on his return to London. He happens upon a drive way, which he follows in hope of finding help, instead h More...

I started this book at 22:53 and have turned the last page ... At 01:46!!!


Susan Hill is a master craftsman working in a tradition that doesn't suffer fools gladly.

The gothic leit motifs, whilst essential can sometimes feel contrived or cliched, but in Hill's skilled hands they feel fresh and intoxicating, heightening suspense with ease.

The major flaw of this novel is too many unanswered Whys? I know that gothic tales often rely upon never having to explain, but there is a very natural event t More...

This chilling tale of concealed trepidation has to be the most exciting horror story I have read in ages, by a spectacular author.

This exceptional and bestselling ghost story is by the author of The Woman in Black and The man in the picture. It is about Adam Snow, a blameless antiquarian bookseller who has a series of supernatural experiences; when a small hand grasps his, sometimes passively and sometimes with malevolent intent. Wherever he goes and wherever he travels he is almost certain to More...

Having recently re-read The Woman in Black I decided to read Susan Hill’s most recent ghost story “The Small Hand”. I wanted to try and review it without giving the ending away as I felt that this would spoil a truly wonderful piece of traditional storytelling.

Hill’s gentle nod to M R James is not just in the structure of this slight tale, but also in the emotionally barren life of her central protagonist, who is a dealer in antiquarian books.

The plot structure is straightforward and uncomplicat More...

I've not read anything by Susan Hill previously, although I saw The Woman in Black on the stage nearly 20 years ago. I enjoyed The Small Hand, and I thought the ending was fine - perhaps I'm slow, but I didn't see what was coming until I was nearly at the end. The settings were lovely, although I felt the Monastery turned out to be a bit of a red herring - it didn't have any connection with the story except for being where the Shakespeare First Folio was located. However, I couldn't figure out w More...

In this little ghost story, Hill reworks some of the elements of the Turn of the Screw to create a haunting psychological tingler. Adam Snow is an antiqarian book dealer, travelling all over the world to find rare books for his clients. Returning to London by car across the Downs he becomes lost and ends up at a dilapidated abandoned house with extensive gardens. As he wanders in the dusk he feels quite distictly the hand of a small child slip into his own, but there is no one there. The owner o More...

I suspect - although I can't be bothered to find out for certain - that the "ghost story" is considered almost a genre in itself, and that complaining about what is and isn't found in A Small Hand would be akin to complaining about all the wise-cracking in a noir novel. However, I'm about to do it just that...

I've wanted to read this ever since it first came out in hard back and I came across a summary of the plot in some paper or other. So it would be fair to say that my expectations were high, More...

The old adage of quality and not quantity rings true in this ghostly novella of only 167 pages. The Small Hand: a Ghost Story is physically small in size, quick to read and yet packs a powerful supernatural punch. It has all the ingredients befitting an old fashioned ghost story – the antiquarian bookseller, Adam Snow, who becomes possessed by a child’s hand, a rundown Edwardian country house, a child’s death, foggy English nights and much more.

A haunting begins which is not tied to the traditio More...

Since the Woman in Black, Susan Hill seems to have cornered the market in the English ghost story. I enjoyed the Woman in Black immensely but her previous ghost story, the Man in the Picture, had some serious flaws. The Small Hand is more a novella and opens promisingly with the narrator, Adam, an antiquarian book dealer, becoming lost on the South Downs whilst travelling to visit a client. He ends up turning into an overgrown drive that leads to a derelict, abandoned, Edwardian house surrounded More...

In The Small Hand, an antiquarian bookseller comes into contact with a ghostly child in an abandoned house, then nearly dies in a remote monastery in France. That's not a spoiler, it's pretty familiar territory for this kind of novel, which draws very much on the gothic - as if you couldn't tell that from the front cover. The trick with this sort of book is not what you tell, but how you tell it. It should be familiar territory. I want the entire weight of Victorian literature to be foreshadowin More...

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I'm not usually the biggest reader of horror or ghost stories. In all honesty, they tend to cause my imagination to run away with itself - I'm usually very easily disturbed, and I don't mind admitting that.
I thought I'd give this one a go though, especially as it had come recommended, just over a year and a half ago, when I first bought it, and again more recently.
It didn't seem as though it would be too bad - and it wasn't, reall More...

From the author of The Woman in Black, this is a cosy British mystery/Supernatural to which the reader can settle in like curling into a padded armchair under an afghan in front of a roaring fire on a wintry, snow-filled night. Ms. Hill has such a talent for writing that she conjures literary fiction and makes me love it. This book is totally re-readable (and I will reread it). Unlike The Woman in Black, I’m not racing through this one-instead, I’m savouring it as I would a walk through an exten More...

It was with great anticipation that I opened up my beautiful copy of The Small Hand - I'd known it was lurking in my Christmas stocking for weeks and had been looking forward to getting my own small hands on it.

Susan Hill again conjures up an air of unease and menace in her writing. Set in modern day times, this story has a dark and gothic feel to it, yet it is set mainly in the summer months, not as one would expect, in the dark of winter. It is Hill's brilliance that can portray such terror to More...

Rather than scared the feeling on competition of this story was one of sadness. Mysteries of the past have the ability to emerge into the present and do great harm to those that thought they had left the past far behind them.

Having introduced the idea of a decrepit house and a ghostly presence of a child in just the few pages the story of the house and the small hand then unfold over the rest of the story.

The main character, rare book dealer Adam Snow, stumbles on the White House and its over gr More...

Autorka této knihy se do povědomí českých čtenářů dostala především knihou Žena v černém. V českém překladu vyšla její další kniha, a to Malá ručka. Jedná se o velice útlou knihu, přesto v sobě dokáže obsáhnout velice zajímavý příběh.


Adam Snow působí jako obyčejný muž, jehož jedinou vášní a láskou jsou staré knihy, obrazy a další cennosti, které získává pro své klienty. Osobní život nemá, je zavalen pouze svou prací a občas zajede navštívit svého bratra s rodinou. Působil na mě takovým nemastným More...

The premise of the book sounded great and let's face it - finding a good ghost story is quite difficult these days. Even though the book was quite short, Hill succeeded in writing a coherent story. I was fascinated by Adam's profession and it gave that extra spice to the story. All in all the book was nice and refreshing as it used first person viewpoint (although it cuts down the possibilities story-wise).

The problems then? I thought it was a bit annoying that Hill ended all her chapters with a More...

This is a very similar offering from Susan Hill as "The Woman in Black". One can't help but wonder if she's planning on starting her own franchise for Hammer Horror, because this would make another marvellous Hammer film (just as The Woman in Black did).

Adam Snow visits a desolate country house and its ruined garden one day quite by chance and feels the ghostly hand of a child fold itself up in his own. At first the childish hand of the ghost is quite benevolent and comforting, but things aren' More...

This is such a small book and it's wonderful. I love the way Hill uses language and the simplicity of her stories. The protagonist is an antiquarian bookseller. His is a calm life filled with quests for beautiful books. He only accepts commissions from people who love books as he does. On a summer evening on the way to such a client he gets lost and arrives at an abandoned house with a massive garden now being reclaimed by the wild. Standing in a dim green-lit clearing he feels a small hand cree More...

It was ok - perfect on the cold Autumn Sunday at home when I read this.

The atmosphere was good, the suspense less effective, and ultimately a bit predictable - but Hill writes elegantly and I chose this (for a reading group) because we were coming up to Halloween and I wanted a classic ghost story. In that respect, it didn't disappoint.

My reading group find a few plot holes, which I won't go into so I don't inadvertently provide spoilers. Similarly, most of the group were a bit 'meh' about the More...

I've never read Susan Hill before and chose to read this after rave reviews of her previous books - often saying she's great at writing scary stories. This story was the complete opposite despite it being a ghost story. It came across as friendly and paternal almost. Although the mood of the story wasn't what I expected, I found it to be beautifully written. As it's only a novella there are parts of the story that left question marks engraved on my mind. I felt some parts could have been develop More...

One spring evening, while driving home to London, Adam Smith loses his way and stumbles onto a derelict old house, set in a ruined garden. As he pauses there in the twilight, he feels a small hand--a child's--take his own, though there is no one else there. At first, Snow is oddly touched by this strange occurrence; the hand, in his memory, seems benign, even comforting. But when, after he returns to his normal routines, the hand begins to seek him out again and with increasing urgency, Snow rea More...

I love Susan Hill, her versatility is incredible and I can't usually fault her books. The Small Hand was however, only o.k. It was predictable and by no means as chilling as The Woman in Black. It's a short book, I read it in a couple of hours, between a series of books I am currently reading, so it made a good filler. The story is basically about a book dealer, who takes a wrong turn one evening and ends up at a derelict property with vast over-grown gardens and a large house. There, he encount More...

As a huge fan of Susan Hill's chilling gothic novel The Woman in Black I must admit I was slightly disappointed by this one, if only because my expectations were ridiculously high. The Small Hand is a very quick and easy read, perfect for a quiet afternoon. This is a perfect ghost story, and while I didn't find it as creepy as I had anticipated, Susan Hill's prose is as gorgeous and rich as I remembered it to be.

The Small hand was a very gentle ghost story, really, you will not be terrified reading it, but it is a good short story with a bit of edge to it.
Adam Snow an antiquarian book dealer gets lost and stumbles across an old delapidated house and garden, long abandoned. As he is looking at the house he feels a small hand take hold of his, but there is no-one there, and the story begins. He is unaware of the consequences of this event and is drawn back to the house and garden, in the weeks afterwards More...

Profile Books, 2010.

Adam Snow is driving home when he gets lost and discovers an old Edwardian house in the middle of nowhere, the house seems derelict and the garden badly overgrown.His instincts tell him to go home but something inside him tells him to take a closer look. There is something about the house that seems to be pulling him in and that's when he feels a child's hand curl around his own. And then the nightmares begin.

This book jumped out at me on a visit to my local library. If you w More...

“The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.” – H.P. Lovecraft

Adam Snow is a dealer in antiquarian books and travels extensively in search of rare & seemingly unattainable volumes for his clientele. By chance, he finds himself accidentally lost in the English countryside and stumbles upon The White House. The White House is a derelict Edwardian house and the once extensive show garden a wilderness, now lost to time; w More...