A Kind Man by Susan Hill
- JetBlackDragonfly
- 21 minutes ago
- 2 min read
Eve Gooch met Tommy Carr by chance at the riverside of their small factory town. When her sister Miriam moved out of the bedroom they shared, Eve stayed up into the night to help sew the wedding dress. Like many men, Miriam's husband paid little attention to the household or the continual addition of sons each year.
Her mother's concern for Eve was whether Tommy was a kind man. The rest would follow. Or it would not. Eve had been able to tell this after an hour of knowing him. Steady, calm, and quiet, it was his nature.
They wished to make a family of the two of them, in their brick row cottage across the fields from the noise of the brickworks, the printworks, and the pottery, but their daughter Jeannie passed away at three years old.
Still, they managed, until Tommy developed stomach pains and a swollen neck. The doctor could do little except manage his pain. He was at death's door, with it standing ajar. After a severe cold and a burning fever, something odd. He became healthy, to the suspicion of the town. And not only that, he discovered he had the power of healing touch. Fearful of what that was, he was reluctant to use it, but word spread of his abilities until he could no longer refuse.
Hill's writing is quiet and steady befitting her characters, a pleasure to read no matter what the subject. A dying man and a dying town, and this gift or blessing is resonant. She writes to the heart with a single sentence or paragraph, giving this story a melancholy feeling, and a plot which resolves itself naturally.
I always enjoy her writing and recommend her.
Among her novels, Susan Hill has written several chilling ghost stories, including The Woman in Black, adapted into a 2012 movie starring Daniel Radcliffe, two BBC radio plays, filmed for TV, and a London play which has been running for thirty-six years, making it the longest-running non-musical play after The Mousetrap.
2011 / Tradeback / 224 pages
My other Susan Hill reviews: