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The Mist in the Mirror

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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. A chilling, classically-inspired ghost story from Susan Hill, our reigning mistress of spine-tingling fiction. 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. enveloped everything - this alliteration emphasises how completely the mist has descended and creates a sense of entrapment.

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. His quest leads him eventually to the old lady of Kittiscar Hall, where he discovers something far more terrible at work than he could ever have imagined.We learn that Sir James Monmouth spent his childhood abroad, and as a young man travelled all over the globe, following in the footsteps of an earlier great pioneer, Conrad Vane. For the last twenty years Sir James Monmouth has become almost obsessed with both his quest, and Conrad Vane himself. Now he has returned to his family home in England, the remote Kittiscar Hall, which he cannot remember. He aims to research and trace Conrad Vane, having discovered that Conrad Vane’s life is inextricably entangled with his own. 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.

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. 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. 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? 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 ] The themes of a ghostly presence and a haunted house, are commonplaces of atmospheric writing from the 19th century. A musty old house, an edgy young man as narrator, overly subject to nervous anxiety, and gradually succumbing to his paranoia as he chases shadows through an old university library. Where have we seen this before?

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As Hill’s novel unfolds, psychological explanations are eventually ruled out as explanations for Monmouth’s visual and olfactory experiences, many of which are beautifully described. It’s a pity that Hill does not explore the psychological aspects more than she does, because Monmouth is really doubly haunted: metaphysically, he is plagued by ghosts; existentially, he is beset with alienation and a middle age crisis in meaning. Such carefully controlled mounting tension creates a feeling of an earlier time, perhaps the 19th century, when in most classic novels of English literature, fear was merely a suggestion in the mind. And it continues: 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. I loved it !I virtually inhaled it.In other words it's not very original but it's beautifully assembled.It doesn't really make a lot of sense and it's strictly for aficionados of the genre.

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. And for most of the book that's what happened to this reader. I settled down in bed with just the low glow of the bedside lamp and intended to just read until I got sleepy. And I finished the story before that ever happened...But he soon begins to feel as though something is warning him away at every turn; there are the intense feelings of being watched and the strange apparitions of a sad little boy. All the while, Monmouth is haunted by images of a young boy following him around as well as crying in the night. He also comes across a strange mirror in a former abode of Vane's that instantly mists up when he tries to see into it. What unsettles Monmouth the most is when his own family name comes up in the research into Vane's past. It seems that his ancestors may have been linked in some way to Vane and that his curious urge to investigate Vane may have been preordained. yellow filthy fog of London; - the comparison between the dense fog that Kipps knows from London and this more delicate mysterious thing reminds us of our narrator's isolation. He is far away from home and even the 'yellow filthy fog' he knows well seems safe in comparison with the sea mist. And the ending, the denouement? Surely this must be terrifying, and possibly tragic, after all this suspense; these heightened feelings of paranoia?

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