A Good Read


The Man in the Picture by Susan Hill


Susan Hill is best known as the author of Woman in Black and this short novel is in a similar vein. It certainly is short, at just 145 pages, and this makes it a perfect story to occupy a dark evening approaching Halloween. Oliver is a Cambridge graduate who is returning to his old college to visit his old professor, Theo Parmitter. The professor is well into his eighties but still attracts the attention of his old students and the younger fellows at the university. There is just something about him. It is during this visit, sitting in the old man’s college rooms on a dark January night with a fire burning in the grate that Oliver hears a story that will irrevocably change his life.


In addition to teaching at the university, Dr Parmitter spent his younger years as an art collector, travelling auction rooms buying known and unknown works. It is on one of these trips that he encounters a mysterious painting of a Venetian carnival, complete with gondoliers and revellers in costume and masks. As soon as he sees it he knows that he must have


it. After winning the auction he is approached by a man who insists that he must have the painting and tells Theo to name his price. He turns down the offer and the painting enters his life forever. A chance photograph of the professor in a newspaper brings a mysterious old widow into the story.


It is from the widow that Dr Parmitter learns the full horror of the painting: a painting with the power to trap and horrify you.


For this is no ordinary painting and Theo will find himself drawn into the story told within it, as others have in the past. Who is the man in the picture and why is he screaming and pleading with the viewer?


Like Woman in Black this story is told in the first-person as Oliver learns about the painting. The narrator switches during the novel to allow us to hear directly from the professor and the Countess. Using the story- within-a-story device, allows the narrative to unfold at a leisurely pace but one which still drives the reader on to learn more. The true horror is revealed at the end and it is guaranteed to leave you wanting more, with so many questions still unanswered.


Goosebumps: Be careful what you wish for by RL Stine


Keeping with the Halloween theme for the children we have a classic Goosebumps book. Samantha is a bit of a klutz: she trips over, drops things, and despite being tall, can’t manage to shoot on the school’s basketball team. As if that weren’t enough she is picked on by the popular star of the basketball team, Judith. One day Samantha decides that she has had enough and a chance meeting with a strange little woman in the rain gives her the opportunity to get her revenge. Granted three wishes in return for helping the woman Samantha thinks she knows exactly what she wants to wish for. But, as the title says, she learns that you do indeed need to be careful what you wish for as the outcome may not be exactly what you imagined it to be.


A great scary read for pre-teen readers this is another instalment of the successful Goosebumps series. The chapters are short with plenty of cliff hangers to keep you reading and a spooky ending that reveals revenge can never be sweet.


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