BIBLIOTECA TECLA SALA January 17, 2019 A Kind Man Susan Hill All are ultimately powerless – not simply on account of their economic precariousness but because each, like a puppet, is jerked this way and that by external forces which brook no resistance. Human life is seen as fragile, impotent. Hill's justice is tough and unrelenting, the sort of harsh predeterminism once attributed to pagan deities. But such is the Contents: warmth and humanity of her writing that the reader continually Introduction 1 dares to expect the impossible, Brief Author 2 with the result that, despite its Biography shortness, this is a novel of huge Too Good for 3 Words - A Review emotional impact and moments of of A Kind Man immense poignancy. Susan Hill: “I was 4-6 never good at [https://www.independent.co.uk/arts- anything else” entertainment/books/reviews/a-kind-man-by- susan-hill-2183845.html] Notes 7 Page 2 Brief Author Biography life in Scarborough. Her books for children include The Glass Angels (1991); Beware, Beware (1993); King of Kings (1993) and The Battle for Gullywith (2008). She has also written radio plays, a number of books of non-fiction and has edited several anthologies of short stories including two volumes of The Penguin Book of Modern Women's Short Stories, Novelist, children's writer and Sunday/John Llewellyn Rhys Prize published in 1991 and 1997. playwright Susan (Elizabeth) Hill for The Albatross (1971), a Her latest collection of short was born in Scarborough, England, collection of short stories. stories is Farthing House: And on 5 February 1942. Since then she has written many Other Stories (2006) and her latest She was educated at Scarborough other novels including Strange novel is Black Sheep (2013). Convent School and at grammar Meeting (1971), set during the Susan Hill is married to the school in Coventry, before First World War; In the Shakespeare scholar Professor reading English at King's College, Springtime of the Year (1974); The Stanley Wells. She moved back to London, graduating in 1963 and Woman in Black (1983); Air and the sea, but this time to North becoming a Fellow in 1978. Angels (1991); The Mist in the Norfolk, in 2013. Mirror (1992); The Service of Her first novel, The Enclosure, was Clouds (1998); and Mrs de published in 1961 when she was Winter (1999), a sequel to still a student. She worked as a Daphne du [https:// freelance journalist between 1963 Maurier's Rebecca. The Woman in literature.britishcouncil.org/ and 1968, publishing her third Black (1983), a Victorian ghost writer/susan-hill] novel, Gentleman and Ladies, in story, was successfully adapted 1968. She became a Fellow of the for stage and television and is Royal Society of Literature in one of Susan Hill's most 1972 and was a presenter of BBC commercial successes. Her Radio 4's 'Bookshelf' from 1986 to recent novels include the series 1987. In 1996 she started her own of Simon Serrailler crime novels publishing company, Long Barn and various further ghost Books, editing and publishing a stories. quarterly literary journal, Books and Company, in 1998. Susan Hill is also the author of two volumes of memoir, The She won a Somerset Maugham Magic Apple Tree: A Country Award for I'm the King of the Year (1982), about her life in Castle (1970); the Whitbread rural Oxfordshire during the Novel Award for The Bird of 1970s, and Family (1989), in Night (1972); and the Mail on which she writes about her early Page 3 Too Good for Words - A Review of A Kind Man I confess myself baffled by this separate them. Thrifty, sober fable. The narrative is as clear, and hardworking, they have a The tale is so clean and spare the prose as uncluttered, as one loving, inarticulate mutual that every detail is telling, or expects from Susan Hill, but its understanding. Their one child, feels as if it ought to be. The very simplicity leaves me Jeannie Eliza, is perfect in every problem is that when a false note wondering whether I’ve missed way, in contrast to the many is struck, it resonates. Would an the point. unruly, uncared-for sons of uneducated woman like Eve Eve’s downtrodden sister perceive the spring sky as ‘lapis’? The strapline tells me to expect Miriam, just as Miriam’s lazy Why does she say ‘the eggs are a tale of ‘greed, goodness, and an husband is the opposite of so good just now’ straight after extraordinary miracle’. Well, it Tommy — the opposite of kind. Christmas, when it’s unlikely the doesn’t seem to be about greed Tommy and Eve have hens, a hens would be laying at all? Why at all. There isn’t a greedy vegetable patch, bright china on does Tommy, who’s wasting person in it. Needy, yes; it deals the dresser. Their happiness away, put ‘fresh notches’ into his with need. ‘Goodness’ is more seems complete, until Jeannie belt with his awl — surely he’d like it. It is an analysis of Eliza dies of a sudden fever. only make one notch at a time? goodness, and more specifically Tommy is accused of being of kindness, of the moral Her loss takes physical shape in ‘perfectly fit’ by a factory woman interconnectedness of human Tommy, who within a few — is that the kind of phrase beings. months is devoured by she’d use? malignant growths. But as he is The ‘extraordinary miracle’ (is on the point of death, the I wouldn’t mind, or even notice, there any other sort?) befalls burning heat that carried off such details were I convinced by Tommy Carr, the ‘kind man’ of Jeannie Eliza transfers itself to the whole, but I’m not. I find the title, a man who has ‘a deep Tommy and resurrects him. myself impatient with the sense of what was good or even Soon he discovers that, by a boringly perfect Tommy, and I holy but no connection with any laying-on of hands, he can cure long for a character who can church or chapel’. To create others with this mysterious string more than three words universality of meaning, Hill heat. People pester him for together. ‘Nothing was said by avoids anchoring her tale too treatment, which he gives, any of them’ — this phrase, or fixedly in time and place, but it refusing payment. something like it, crops up all feels like the 1930s in the too often. I’m an admirer of industrial north. Tommy marries His gift, and the purity of his Susan Hill’s work, but I’m not Eve and takes her to live in the kindness, however, come to be sure what she’s getting at here, last cottage between the gritty viewed with suspicion, not least though I accept this may be my manufacturing town and ‘the by the formerly friendly doctor fault, not hers. peak, touched by sunshine’ that who accuses him of fraudulence. represents freedom and, Isolated by his specialness, he [https:// perhaps, the spiritual world. becomes unemployable. The www.spectator.co.uk/2011/01/ temptation to accept money too-good-for-words/] Thus Tommy and Eve are placed becomes too great, but of apart from their families and course, as soon as he does so, workmates; other factors also the gift deserts him. Page 4 Susan Hill: “I was never good at anything else” Last Thursday, Susan Hill, who is a already rich in achievement. her course was set. vigorous 68, celebrated half a Come the summer, she will also century as a published novelist. In be sitting in judgment as a Even as a classic only child, "I was what she describes as "a weird member of the Booker prize jury. always wanting to tell stories, to coincidence", her latest book, A Her ghost story, The Woman In my friends, to my dolls. I was Kind Man, a short, deceptively Black, comes out as a movie, always writing." Her defining simple fable of loss and grief, starring Daniel Radcliffe, at moment came at the age of eight. appeared 50 years to the day after Halloween. Then, next Christmas, "I wrote a nativity play for my her precocious debut. BBC2 will screen a television class. I learnt so much from that: version of The Small Hand, about editing, adaptation and Nevertheless, despite a lifetime of another ghost story. revision. I learned that a play, like published work, Susan Hill defies any piece of writing, is never categorisation. "I hate being pigeon- Meanwhile, she will be finishing off really finished." The storytelling holed," she says when we meet in a new Simon Serrailler crime became a way of making sense of her Gloucestershire farmhouse just novel (an ITV series is also in the herself. "I was an only child who after Christmas. Nor does she go works) and incubating a new was never really good at anything out of her way to guide the novel entitled The Summer Before else. I had no other option. I common reader. Her answer to the War. If the time should hang could write; I wanted to write; I the question "What kind of a heavy there's always her wrote," she concludes, simply. writer are you?" is a cheerful "I publishing imprint, Long Barn "Otherwise, I was unemployable." don't know". Books, and her involvement with a local bookshop. As if this were Today, this kind of self-expression This breezy, rather English, not enough, she'll also be would be indulged and celebrated, approach to her art extends to A providing a running commentary but in the 1950s, Hill's precocity Kind Man.