Friday, October 17, 2008

High Praise for Susan Hill's THE MAN IN THE PICTURE in Rocky Mountain News

The Man in the Picture: A Ghost Story by Susan Hill receives a "A" grade from Mark Graham of the Rocky Mountain News in Colorado: "Hill's tightly woven spectral novella begins in traditional ghost-story style as horrors are revealed to an unfortunate narrator. Just listen to the first line: "The story was told to me by my old tutor, Theo Parmitter, as we sat beside the fire in his college rooms one bitterly cold January night." You know that nothing good can follow. In his younger days, Parmitter bought a painting of masked revelers near one of Venice's canals. To the Cambridge don, the picture appears to contain faces of people in the throes of terror, people who don't want to be in it. The story he tells his former student reveals the painting's curse and threatens the existence of both of them. Final word: This exquisite little tale should remind readers of great writers in the genre, such as Dickens, Poe and Peter Straub. Don't miss it."

No comments: