Unknown
Nathaniel
Mum?

Jennet
Nathaniel? Nat? Is that you, my love?

Nathaniel
Yes, it's me, Mum. Your Nathaniel.

Jennet
Nathaniel! My child, come to me, I missed you so much.  May I come and hug you, my darling? Who is with you?

Nathaniel
No, mother, you know that you can't. If you try, we will be carried away. There are the other children that you sent to me to play with. We have tried, but we are not very happy.

Jennet
Please tell me why you are not happy; I will do everything to help you, my son.

Nathaniel
We thought that in my old nursery room we may play, but it is dark and cold in here. Can't you feel it?

A child starts crying.

Jennet
Why is he crying?

Nathaniel
He is missing his Mum. He loves her so much. Do you know where she is? He does not to like to play all the time, he wants his Mum to sing him lullabies. And he misses his little brother, his name is Nathaniel, too. Mummy, can you take him to his mother, please?

Other children's voices:
And me, me too, please, I want to my Mum, take me to my Mum...please, please, please ... my Mum

One of the children:
And me, Miss; take me to Crythin Gifford, please, this is a small town where my parents live. I miss my family and school and friends and the marshes. You see, we often play there - my Mum does not like it - but we sneak there on a lovely sunny day in summer to watch birds that swoop to the ground, where they have their nests. Have you seen a baby bird? Or a baby fox? Foxes are clever; the parents of baby birds have to be very careful, one moment and their baby can be taken by foxes. Particularly when the mist comes; oh, the fret is very dangerous, and high tide, too, you cannot get back home, you are trapped at Eel Marsh House because the Nine Lives Causeway is completely submerged. Have you ever been there, Miss? Miss?

Jennet cries and throws herself on the floor. The children vanish quietly.
The sound of the pony trap increases: clip-clop ...

Jennet shouts in madness:
Nathaniel, do not die this night, please, at least not tonight...




Unknown
It is the beginning of Act 1 Scene 5, with the famous ‘kissing scene’, where Romeo and Juliet meet for the first time. The servants banter while preparing the house for the party; the pleasant, Renaissance music plays, the actors start dancing, the atmosphere is light-hearted and I am waiting for Romeo to take his mask off and to show how deeply he falls in love with Juliet.

At the very moment he does - I am shocked. This Romeo is black! It strikes me heavily, even though I am not sure why. This is not that I am a racist; after all, Otello is black too. I love the theatre, understand its conventions and I am open for experiments on the stage, but yet there is something not right with a black Romeo here. There are some implications concerning that fact: at least some of the other members of his family should be black, and the casting director should take note of this. If this were the case, the feud probably has its roots in racism and then we have another story to tell.

I think that the theatre has some conventions to follow, otherwise the story is improbable or maybe just different. And what if a Romeo is an old ugly man or an old ugly lady or an alien? I am sure that after the first negative impression I would watch the whole tragedy with great pleasure; furthermore, even a black Hamlet would not surprise me in the future. The theatrical conventions have changed, and I have learnt something new, maybe about myself, too.

Unknown
Susan Hill is a master of creating the atmosphere of suspense and of depicting the landscape as a monstrous space. She uses the gothic sublime craftily, as well as the other Gothic features to build and develop the overwhelming feelings of fear and isolation. The reader follows the first-person narration, sharing characters' fear at the various levels, including fear of: the physical danger, the supernatural forces, the psychological entrapment or losing mind.
Arthur Kipps reveals that [he] 'had a story, a true story, a story of haunting and evil, fear and confusion, horror and tragedy.' (p. 19). Susan Hill uses the literary techniques of repetition (a word 'story'), the rule of three and short phrases with commas to accentuate Arthur's tortured mind while he recalls the past events.

Unknown
Susan Hill wrote her book in 1983, shortly after she lost her four-week-old daughter, which presumably contributed to the major theme of the book that is how suffering and grief might change a human being into an evil.
The title of the novel with a description: 'A Ghost Story', evokes in the reader some earlier Gothic works such as 'The turn of the screw' by Henry James (1898) - where a woman in black appears for the first time in literature, or 'The Woman in White' by Wilkie Collin (1859) with a very similar title that accentuates the importance of the social context of both books because of the women's position in the society in Victorian and Edwardian eras.
Susan Hill employs all the elements of a gothic novel, which are repeated in many books, and yet she writes a masterpiece of fear and terror so great that putting her book down seems to be impossible.
The book starts with a very short and informative sentence, 'It was nine-thirty on Christmas Eve.' (p. 1) metaphorically nestling the reader in front of the fireplace, ready for more and aware of the Gothic convention. And then we meet our protagonist, the narrator of a story within a story, Artur Kipps, who takes us on a long and life changing journey to the East Coast of North England in the Edwardian Era.
The reader journeys into the feelings of isolation right at the beginning, '... there is an air of remoteness and isolation...' (p. 3), when Arthur Kipps describes his house, Monk's Piece, and anticipates fear when Arthur describes his feelings, 'I could not move, it ... paralysed me ... it was a long-forgotten, once too-familiar sensation.' (p. 17).