Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 2021-09-16 03:07:39 Boxid IA40236316 Camera USB PTP Class Camera Collection_set printdisabled External-identifier Not only the 19th century, then, but perhaps the academic and religious settings of M.R. James? But who is our narrator? And why is he so unsettled? I]went to the spiral staircase nearest to me, and began to climb, my steps echoing harshly in the stillness of the room. A terrible curse has been passed down through the generations for hundreds of years. Concerned priests, elderly librarians, hysterical psychics — even total strangers counsel him with dire warnings: A chilling, classically-inspired ghost story from Susan Hill, our reigning mistress of spine-tingling fiction.

Coupled with this sense of unease is the strange arrival of a pale and sad, ragged boy in dirty old-fashioned clothes. He is about twelve years old, and appears and disappears with regularity. But why is it that he appears whenever there is trouble, and then seems to vanish without a trace? Who is the old woman behind the curtain? And why is it that only he hears the chilling scream and the desperate sobbing? Unfortunately, I found this book very flat. It's a very intriguing premise and having the story presented as the 'main character' reading James Montouth's letters is very well done. I love the idea of a character trying to reconnect with his ancestors, whilst also being haunted by them. However, the execution just wasn't very interesting. The first half was very engaging, but the second half was simply not interesting at all. Monmouth's journey starts off so well, but there are too many inconsequential characters and chunks of useless description. It makes Monmouth boring to follow, and makes me realise this book could probably do with some trimming down even though it's already relatively short. His quest leads him eventually to the old lady of Kittiscar Hall, where he discovers something far more terrible at work than he could ever have imagined. enveloped everything - this alliteration emphasises how completely the mist has descended and creates a sense of entrapment. Sir James Monmouth has spent many years travelling and now ventures to England. On arrival he feels like he is being watched by someone and as he continues on his travels he uncovers some dark secrets about his past.A nameless narrator opens the novel and shows his intrigue for a fellow club member named James Monmouth. It turns out Monmouth has a deep, dark secret that can be explained by reading his manuscript. The rest of the novel focuses on the retelling of this manuscript. Monmouth was orphaned at a young age and became a global traveler, enjoying the excitement of exotic locations.

It felt like some of the 'creepy' scenes were there just as an effort to try to be 'creepy' rather than to play any actual part in the story, which made them feel forced.evoking a sense of place as well as any author I know, before unleashing all the fears lurking inside her protagonist — and by now, her readers. moving in front of my eyes all the time - the mist is impossible to grasp. This seems to reflect the shifting and unstable nature of the place and ultimately of the effect Jennet Humfrye's ghost has on men's minds. I went to a window, and saw that the library ran along the north end of the buildings framing the yard, at right angles to the chapel. yellow filthy fog of London; - the comparison between the dense fog that Kipps knows from London and this more delicate mysterious thing reminds us of our narrator's isolation. He is far away from home and even the 'yellow filthy fog' he knows well seems safe in comparison with the sea mist.

No one," he said, "wants to revive the memory or disturb the shade of Conrad Vane. No one will speak to you of him--no one who could possibly be of use to you. No one who knows. Intent on uncovering the secrets of his childhood hero, the mysterious Conrad Vane, he begins to investigate Vane’s life, but he finds himself warned off at every turn. The Mist in the Mirror: A Ghost Story is a novel by Susan Hill. The novel is about a traveller called Sir James Monmouth and his pursuit of an explorer called Conrad Vane. [1] Summary [ edit ] An amazingly intricate and ambitious first novel - ten years in the making - that puts an engrossing new spin on the traditional haunted-house tale.

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Rain, rain all day, all evening, all night, pouring autumn rain. Out in the country, over field and fen and moorland, sweet-smelling rain, borne on the wind. Rain in London, rolling along gutters, gurgling down drains. Street lamps blurred by rain. A policeman walking by in a cape, rain gleaming silver on its shoulders. Rain bouncing on roofs and pavements, soft rain falling secretly in woodland and on dark heath. Rain on London's river, and slanting among the sheds, wharves and quays. Rain on suburban gardens, dense with laurel and rhododendron. Rain from north to south and from east to west, as though it had never rained until now and now might never stop. Susan Hill is a born story-teller of considerable talent. She can take a trope such as a mysterious, malevolent curse, mix it with her carefully described turn of the century London, plus the evocative North Yorkshire moors, imbue it with a feeling of doom and torment — the draughty, musty library, the sinister and threatening church — and a dash of something else.

A curious manuscript. The specter of a small child. Cold fevers. Unheeded warnings. Rain and a ubiquitous sense of gloom. That’s right, it’s a ghost story. The Mist in the Mirror, originally published by Susan Hill in 1992 and now available as a Vintage original, never strays far from convention, and while this is a bold choice, it is not altogether successful. But if you enjoy an exceptionally written piece of prose, with all the hallmarks of good supernatural 19th century fiction, where the menacing mood is paramount, you will very probably enjoy this. Prepare to settle down to explore sinister dark alleyways and corridors, a haunted library, spectres and apparitions, a crypt, creepy mansions on the Yorkshire moors — not to mention the unexplained “soft breathing”. You may find that from time to time you cast a glance over your shoulder ... just in case. There’s nothing like a goodold-fashioned ghost story, and the masterful Hill authentically channels such giants of the Gothic genre asPoe and Doyle in this eerily atmospheric yarn of restless spirits, both temporal and corporeal.” Ocr tesseract 5.0.0-beta-20210815 Ocr_detected_lang en Ocr_detected_lang_conf 1.0000 Ocr_detected_script Latin Ocr_detected_script_conf 1.0000 Ocr_module_version 0.0.13 Ocr_parameters -l eng Old_pallet IA-WL-2000057 Openlibrary_edition I turned away and began to walk softly between the bookcases, looking in awe to left and right, at the evidence of so much knowledge, so much learning, far beyond the level of school-age boys... It was as I approached the last few bays that I heard what at first I took to be the soft closing of the door at the far end of the room, but which went on, even and regular, like the breathing of someone asleep, a sighing that seemed to come out of the air above my head, as though the whole, great room were somehow a living thing, exhaling around me. I glanced up at the gallery. Someone was there, I was certain of it. The wood creaked. A footfall. I was as far from my way of escape as I could have been, trapped alone in this empty place with – whom? What?”

I settled into my chair, turning off all the lights save for one shaded lamp beside me. I suppose that I intended to read for an hour at most, expecting drowsiness to overtake me again, but I became so engrossed in the story that unfolded before me that I rapidly forgot all thought of the time, or my present surroundings.” Okay--I would like someone to explain some things to me. First, why on earth is that mirror in Pyre (the home of the Quincebridges and NOT of Monmouth and certainly not any relation of that innkeeper at the beginning of the story)? Second, we basically know why Monmouth is haunted by the boy's ghost, the misty mirror and all the rest, but why would our narrator start seeing things in the mirror? Just because he read Sir James Monmoth's notebooks? I also wish we were given a clearer picture of how the boy is related to Sir James. Obviously, they're kin of some sort, but what sort? Is that all related to the death of Monmouth's parents? If not, what really happened there? And why did Conrad Vane curse all the Monmouth men? (And--apparently anyone interested in them if we take our narrator's final vision as a preview of things to come.) There had been only heat and dryness for month after month, followed abruptly by monsoon, when the sky gathered and then burst like a boil and sheets of rain deluged the earth, turning it to mud, roaring like a yellow river, hot, thunderous rain that made the air sweat and steam. Rain that beat down upon the world like a mad thing and then ceased, leaving only debris in its wake.”