The Woman In Black

So remember that time when I said I wasn't going to buy any books this year? Well, I kinda went and failed that by purchasing my very own copy of The Woman In Black by Susan Hill. I originally read this donkeys ago in secondary school where we also got to watch the film adaptation from the eighty's. I vaguely remember the film being a little on the silly side (the part that really stands out in my memory is the woman in black flying through Arthur's window with a manic grin on her face... this never happens in the book and whoever decided it should happen in the film should be slapped) but I absolutely loved the book. So much so that years later when I saw that the play was coming to Edinburgh, I rounded up some friends and convinced them it would be good. You have no idea how skeptical people can be of going to see a horror on stage ("But it won't be scary!").

But there we go. It's a short book, my edition has bang on 200 pages, but it certainly packs a decent punch! In some ways, it's quite a typical ghost story; the woman in black is always kind of floating around at a distance so our protagonist can't quite decide if she's dangerous or not. A lot of the spinetingling is due to Susan Hill's writing which I found to be absolutely fantastic despite the fact that I needed the Dictionary.com app glued to my hand. At least I learnt a lot of new words!

One of my favourite aspects of this book has got to be the setting: Eel Marsh House is isolated, impressive, daunting and you get a real sense of coldness at the thought of having to spend the night there. I also love the fact that the villagers of Crython Gifford exhibit traits typical of a little farming village with their apparent suspicious attitude towards the house and the woman in black.

It's true that not much happens but I personally liked this about the tale as it added to the suspense. The only negative thing I will say about this book is the stupidly long sentences as I would get lost half way and have to restart.

The main reason why I read this book was in order to refresh my memory for the new movie which I hope to watch sometime this week!

Rating: *****

Let The Right One In

When it comes to Let The Right One In, I feel like I'm missing something. On the surface, it contains all the right ingredients of a film that I would usually rush out and buy: it's horror, it has vampires (not sparkly ones), and it's from Sweden therefore allowing me to brush up on my world cinema. Additionally, the reviews it has received are incredibly favourable! For example, Rotton Tomatoes gives it a very generous 98%!

And it's not as if this film "fell short" of impressing me; the more I watched it, the more bored, irritated and down right disappointed I became to the point that once it finally finished, I felt nothing other than relief.

Unfortunately, I'm not really able to pin point exactly what my issue is with this film. I mean, the acting was fine, the dialogue was alright and the story itself was endearing. There just seemed to be no backbone or structure to the tale. No real direction in what was happening. And let's not forget the part where a woman gets attacked by CGI cats only to fall down the stairs moments later. Actually, that was probably my favourite bit.

So yeah... I might try reading the book in the hope that it may possibly shed some light on what it is that the movie is lacking...

Although, I'm in no real hurry to do so.

Rating: */****

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Despite being an avid bookworm, my mother isn't the easiest person to please when it comes to books and I have often told her that I've never met anyone as cynical as her. That's why, when she thrust her copy of Stieg Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo in my hands instructing me to read it ASAP, I knew it must be good. Of course, everyone else in the whole world seemed to think the same thing and I had several other books to read last year before I could get around to this one. I took so long (have I mentioned I'm an incredibly slow reader?) that I got instructed to lend the copy to my sister. Almost a year later, I can now finally exclaim that I have read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

The book tells the story of Mikael Blomkvist, a disgraced journalist hired by an elderly business man to investigate the disappearance of his great-niece Harriet from over forty years ago. Blomkvist then ropes in the help of one exceptionally strange individual by the name of Lisbeth Salander. While the investigation into Harriet's disappearance is interesting, the star is without a doubt, Salander and I thought it was a shame that she wasn't focused on as much as Mikael.

If it wasn't for the atrociously slow start to the book (200 freakin pages before anything interesting happened!), I would gladly assign 5 shining stars. However, 200 pages is a helluva lot to wade through but I still give this book a respectable 4/5.

Be warned though, there are some seriously brutal sex scenes that explain why the original Swedish title is Men Who Hate Women.