Where I got the book: purchased on Amazon.

As this is the movie tie-in edition I feel justified in talking about the movie as well. I was a big fan of Susan Hill's ghost stories way back when, so it's fun to revisit them - inspired, of course, by watching one of the hands-down creepiest movies I've seen in a long time. Brrrrrrr.

The novella follows the old-fashioned ghost story format: leisurely set-up with a story-within-a-story structure, the "now I must tell my tale but I really don't want to" method. The narrator takes his time bringing the reader into the story, with some superb atmospheric location shots (so to speak) - I could really see the flat water of the estuary with sea blending into sky, or was I remembering the scene from the movie? (The location you see in the movie, by the way, is apparently a composite - not really an island.)

Then you get to the really creepy stuff - and it was, although not nearly as much as the film version. But still, I wouldn't recommend reading this one alone in a dark house at midnight with the wind howling. And we finish up with a kicker, or Carrie moment as I like to term them - again, in a style consistent with older ghost literature. I would have preferred some more foreshadowing of the ending, for the atmosphere of the earlier chapters to be sustained right up to the finish; I felt that Hill was reaching to finish with a bang.

What was interesting, though, was that a plot point that was made much of in the movie is not brought into the book until the end. The movie, in fact, imposed a structure on the story that the author didn't give it, and I think it was an improvement. I ended up feeling as if the novella was a first-draft sort of affair that provided plenty of atmosphere and all the important elements but needed work, and the movie was the finished version. Would I have thought that if I'd read the book first (and maybe I did, but it would have been 25+ years ago and my memory's not that good)?

Recommended, anyway. Susan Hill's always good value.