The Travelling Bag: And Other Ghostly Stories (2016) By Susan Hil

'Borrowbox' gives people access to books that they wouldn't normally be able to read easily, and it has allowed me to read several good books in the last two years or so. On this occasion, it was this collection of short stories from Susan Hill, most famous, of course, for writing 'The Woman In Black'. I am familiar with that story, but the rest of her work is mostly unknown to me, so I was keen to see how I'd find some of them.

The first story in the collection was 'The Travelling Bag', which set the tone for a very atmospheric set of stories. It felt a little Poe-esque in its cruel and harrowing sense of humour and irony - making its ghostly details even more spooky. I would have happily read an even deeper dive into the story - there was certainly enough room to add more. With that said, the story did not feel lacking in detail or plot. On the contrary, Hill packed a lot of story into relatively few pages.

'Boy Twenty-One' was more sad more than it was scary, and perhaps a little slower than the prior story, but I still found it fairly intriguing nonetheless. I enjoyed its themes and key character dynamics, but the lack of significant action did, perhaps, hinder it, from a pacing and overall entertainment perspective. Hill created two very interesting characters to centre this tale around, and it worked very nicely with the supernatural element of it.

The next story; 'Alice Baker', was very uneasy, and topped by a horrifying, if a little predictable, reveal. The contrast between the fairly mundane setting and the horrors of the story made for an interesting juxtaposition. Unfortunately, 'The Front Room' did not grab me nearly as much as the other short stories. However, it still had some pretty strong atmospheric elements to it. Even so, I was left disappointed by the uninteresting characters and tardy plot.

Hill is clearly able to make her stories feel very traditional, despite their slightly more contemporary setting, which lends itself beautifully to the distinctly gothic and ghostly themes of the book. Not all of the stories may have compelled me as much as I had hoped, but Hill's ability to create atmospheric and immersive world's, even for relatively short stories, was clear. I personally enjoyed the first two stories the most, but I saw at least some value in all of them.