A disappointment. I kept hearing about how this was a real honest-to-god, old-fashioned ghost story steeped in the tradition of James and James (Henry and Montague Rhodes)that delivered a frisson of genuine terror and some very fine writing as well. Alas1 I didn't find any of this to be true.

For starters, I didn't believe the narrator. He is a man in his forties--self-described as "unimaginative"--who years before suffered a scarring supernatural experience, yet he sounds for all the world like a timid watered-down version of a young Bronte heroine (or should I just say "du Maurier heroine?), sensitive to nature and hell-bent on describing everything that comes "his" way, relevant or not. The book is a pastiche of 19th century stylistic cliches, starting with a half-hearted Pickwickian Christmas, moving quickly to a Bleak House inspired description of fog (dangerously close to plagiarism), and soon settling into page upon page of lengthy sentences resembling those of middle-period Henry James, yet which--unlike those of the master--contain no fine distinctions of intellect or sensibility to justify their continual qualifying clauses. The story itself, although not remarkable, could have been interesting. The first sight of the spectre in the graveyard is chilling, and the subsequent scenes where the hero wanders alone in the fog, hearing horrors rather than seeing them, are undoubtedly effective. But there is only enough material here for a 4,000-6,000 word short story, and this is a 40,000 word novella. It is short as horror books go, but far too long for what it has to say.