The Mist in the Mirror

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In an effort to learn more about Vane’s early life, and his own, Sir James sets off for the remote Kittiscar Hall on a cold and rainy winter night. The soft breathing came again, from a different place, in the darkness just ahead of me and I began to edge forwards, and then to stop, move and stop, but it was always just out of reach. I looked down into the great barrel of the room below. Every shadow seemed like a crouched, huddled figure, every corner concealed some dreadful shape. There was no one there. There was nothing ... I wanted to run but could not and knew that this was what was intended, that I should be terrified by nothing, by my own fears, by soft breathing, by the creak of a board, by the very atmosphere which threatened me.” 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.

Before long he realises he is being followed too. A pale, thin boy is haunting his every step but every time he tries to confront the boy he disappears. And what of the chilling scream and desperate sobbing only he can hear? 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.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 ] For the last twenty years Sir James Monmouth has journeyed all over the globe in the footsteps of his hero, the great pioneering traveler Conrad Vane.

My future,’ I said blankly. I had no idea what that might be. Everything I had been planning, and the book I meant to write… seemed to be part of another life altogether. I wondered if any of it would ever interest me again, my mental powers seemed so debilitated. But if not that, then what? What purpose had I? I had none, and could not imagine what the future… might possibly be”. The story's very ambiguity steadily feeds its mysteriousness and power, and Danielewski's mastery of postmodernist and cinema-derived rhetoric up the ante continuously, and stunningly. One of the most impressive excursions into the supernatural in many a year.urn:lcp:mistinmirror0000hill_v2d7:epub:b4ef2ad6-5741-4456-9701-183e063efeb5 Foldoutcount 0 Identifier mistinmirror0000hill_v2d7 Identifier-ark ark:/13960/t8mf1973r Invoice 1652 Isbn 1856191672 All is impression, and hints. What is the mysterious mirror? Does it show the future, or or something else? Susan Hill’s superbly crafted work enthralls the reader with its atmosphere and description. She is a master of the understated, using spare language when that is all that is needed: But the problem is we're told. We don't experience it, because, written as a sort of diary, he tells us how he was feeling without giving that level of detail which makes it feel present. Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 2021-09-16 03:07:39 Boxid IA40236316 Camera USB PTP Class Camera Collection_set printdisabled External-identifier As to the overall story - we, along with the protagonist, are left in the dark as to why things are happening. Unfortunately, we sort of end the story in the same predicament. We find out a bit of what *is* happening, but, alas, the why is left unresolved.

Of course, part of that was the repetition. There's only so many times Monmouth can talk about how some landscape of England impressed him just as much as any of the farflung locations he spent his life visiting, or how he found England different, but comfortably so, from what he was used to, or how he found part of England vaguely familiar... so on and so forth. 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?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. 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. Thanks to Hill’s deceptively simple plots and straightforward prose, you won’t even notice the noose she’s slipping around your throat.”

The manuscript tells the story of Sir James Monmouth. Monmouth has lived abroad all of his adult life, and he has little recollection of his childhood or his parents. When his guardian passes away, swept by the passion of youth, Monmouth travels in the footsteps of his hero, one Conrad Vane. His journeys take him to the Far East, to Africa. The name Conrad may or may not be an allusion to Joseph Conrad, but the story of Monmouth’s return to England in his middle years reads like the inverse of Heart of Darkness. In the most exotic locations, Monmouth was fine; it is in England where he suffers a sort of existential malaise. 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.millions of live fingers that crept over me, - this image is unnerving and particularly creepy. The personification of the mist makes it even more disturbing and threatening. The verb 'crept' adds to the sense of danger. Rain on all the silent streets and squares, alleys and courts, gardens and churchyards and stone steps and nooks and crannies of the city. abruptly, his hand shot out and he clutched my arm. "I beg you," he said in a low, urgent voice, " read it." The moody countryside wanderings of an adventurer Hill ( A Question of Identity, 2013, etc.) sends on a glacially paced adventure in search of the truth about his hero. Our story is framed by our unnamed narrator who sits and talks with Sir James Monmouth for a while at their club and then gets involved in an after-dinner ghost story fest. After the men break up their after-dinner chat, the narrator is joined by Sir James on his walk home. Sir James tells him that he'd like our man to read an account he's written up "of certain--events." He doesn't just ask him...