The Woman In Black - Chapters 5-8 Not Enough Creepy

Sorry it's been so long - I was away for Easter with no access to the internet, but I have a lot of reviews from all the reading I did and so prepare to be bombarded with posts today!

I will start at the very beginning (Chapter 5 anyway), and I am pleased to say that it was definitely creepy. He goes off to Eel Marsh House after the funeral and (I may have mentioned this last time) is told that he can only access it when the tide's right... convenient. The guy taking him, Keckwick, states that he will return later to pick him up, refusing to leave him there which, you have to agree sounds worrying. So Arthur goes for a walk around the grounds and of course goes over to the graveyard, I mean why wouldn't you? That's not tempting fate at all is it? He sees the Woman again and has this inexplicable feeling of terror, runs away and locks himself inside the house. This book has so many gothic conventions it feels like it should have been written in the Nineteenth Century!

Of course, this is when it gets creepier. As the day wears on a thick, suffocating mist descendson the house and Arthur cannot see anything through the window. This obviously means that there is no way Keckwick can come and pick him up, and he's now trapped in this house with the likelihood of a ghost being nearby =S He goes outside, trying to walk back to the village instead, but nearly falls in the marshes and gets stuck, but THEN he hears this strange sound of a pony and trap and then the cry of a young child and the sound of the carriage falling and being sucked under, the child's and an adult's voices screaming the whole time. Arthur can't see anything at all, and this worked really well, making it feel claustrophobic and blind. He manages to get back to the house, but can't help the people and is left with the knowledge of their death. Keckwick comes later to save him and take him back to the inn.

So the next few chapters didn’t have that much happening. It was mainly him recovering from the terrors of the night before. After arriving in the Inn, he refused to go anywhere near Eel Marsh house ever again. Of course, the next morning he feels differently and, completely ignoring how petrified he had been the night before, he decides that he will go back again. Only this time he’s not so keen to go alone and asks around, but of course no one wants to because they’re sensible and pretty terrified of that place – although we still don’t know why.

Why is it that people like Arthur Kipps refuse to take the hints of people who know what’s going on and instead go gallivanting around trying to look impressive and then epically fail? (Don’t you just love the word gallivanting?) So anyway, after asking around about getting someone to help, he writes to his boss, updating him, and then gets insanely excited about a bike ride. Yes. A bike ride. Maybe it’s just because I used to cycle to school every day for seven years and really hated it, but I really didn’t understand his enthusiasm. I mean seriously, it’s just a bike! Then he stops of and gets excited about having some bread and cheese. This is another thing about people in books who go on journeys: all they ever seem to eat is bread and cheese. Look it up – they never bring anything else, no fruit, no meat, just bread and cheese. It’s in Heidi and Eragon and the Belgariad books. If I was having a bike ride and stopped at a pub, I would make sure to eat more than bread and cheese. Ok rant over!

He comes back, has supper with a man he met on the train, who again warns him against going back, but Arthur, stubborn as he evidently is, insists. The man therefore lends him a dog called Spider to take with him as company/protection.

As you can see I don’t have much to say except summarise what happened. I have to say that nothing important seemed to happen in these chapters, but I might just be missing something. There hasn't really been much creepiness in this book so far - I expected more after everything I'd heard from it, but hopefully it's get better as I go on.