In this 2003 piece in the Guardian, Susan Hill is quoted as saying this: “It’s not plot that interests me, but setting, people in a setting, wrestling with an abstract subject.” So it’s apt that the atmosphere and setting of this book were what made it a pleasure for me to read, while the plot, particularly the ending, felt less compelling. It’s presented as a story within a story: a nameless narrator talks about spending an evening at his Club and the conversation turning to ghost stories; when he leaves, an older Club member approaches him and says he’s got a ghost story of his own, if the narrator would like to read it. The narrator accepts his offer, and much of the book consists of that ghost story, as written by the older Club member, James Monmouth. Monmouth writes about returning to England at age forty, after having been sent abroad at the age of five, presumably after the death of his parents. He had grown up in Kenya and then elsewhere with his Guardian, and continued traveling after his Guardian’s death, often making a point to travel in the footsteps of one of his heroes, an earlier English traveler/explorer named Conrad Vane. He decides, in England, that he will try to find out about Vane’s early life, and perhaps will write a book about him, but along the way he starts seeing the ghost of a boy and experiencing other strangeness, and also keeps getting dissuaded from learning too much about Vane by basically everyone he asks about him. He’s told that Vane is evil, but scoffs: even if he was evil, he’s been dead for twenty years, and besides, no one will tell him any specifics about what Vane did, exactly. When he visits the school Vane attended, though, he learns of the death of another pupil there during the time when Vane was a student, and realizes the boy-ghost he’s seeing must be this boy, who, it turns out, shares Monmouth’s last name. Monmouth isn’t sure if this is just a coincidence, but realizes it can’t be: the boy is from a place called Kittiscar Hall, and Monmouth has a prayer book from his early childhood inscribed with the name of that same place. So, after a Christmas visit with new friends, and after recuperation from an illness that may be tied to the ghost and Vane, Monmouth decides to visit Kittiscar for himself, where the plot gets wrapped up in a rushed and vague way: we learn how Vane is connected to the Monmouths, sort of, but it doesn’t particularly make sense.
But the specifics of the plot aren’t necessarily the point. Monmouth is trying to figure out his past, and his future, and how they’re connected. He’s trying to figure out how/where he fits into the world, and into England, and as a character adrift, an orphan, his life is particularly his own to make. So he does, and that’s part of the book. And then there’s the setting, which is really perfectly atmospheric: there are wonderful descriptions of London rain, and early spring in the countryside, and Monmouth’s first time seeing snow as an adult, and how the open moorlands of the North make him feel. I loved this, from the very start of Monmouth’s story, about his arrival in England:
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.
Rain on all the silent streets and squares, alleys and courts, gardens and churchyards and stone steps and nooks and crannies of the city.
Rain. London. The back end of the year. (15)
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