Jane Gardam

People keep appearing

Jane Gardam

issue 03 November 2007

Susan Hill knows exactly how to please. This small, smart, elegantly printed little notepad of a book is a delicious Victorian ghost story, nostalgically and expertly comforting.

It opens as smoothly as an M. R. James or Conan Doyle short story, over a good fire in a shadowy room on a winter’s night:

The story was told me by my old friend, Theo Parmitter, as we sat in his college rooms one bitterly cold January night. There were still real fires in those days, the coals brought up by a servant in huge brass scuttles. . . .

We know this room and we know the professor’s story, too. It is the fine old chestnut to roast upon the coals: the story of the haunted painting. Oscar Wilde examined it in The Picture of Dorian Gray and M.

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