The spooky Halloween offering for our wellbeing reading group was The Travelling Bag by Susan Hill, the author of the spine tingling The Women in Black. A little different to our usual reading diet of novels, this collection of ghostly short stories was perfect Halloween reading.
The stories varied from Victorian London to 1950s suburbia and were full of ghosts, evil grandmothers, body snatching medical students, and creepy co-workers.
The group enjoyed the stories on the whole, and we were glad that they were more ghost stories than horror. There are always limitations with short stories and sometimes characterisation was sacrificed for plot, but the group accepted that, and found the short story format easy to read and perfect for dipping in and out at leisure. There were a few unexpected plot twists and turns which we very much enjoyed.
These are our highlights of the stories:
Boy Number 21. Opinions were divided about this story of two boys’ ghostly friendship and a fire. The ending felt rushed to some and it wasn’t our favourite in the collection.
The Front Room. An unsettlingly horrid reward for a good deed, we loved the evil grandmother and the air of menace throughout the story.
Printer’s Devil Court. Medical students were the focus here and we genuinely hope none of our med.ed. colleagues have experiences like those in this story. It was a different take on a Frankenstein/ corpse reanimation theme.
Alice Baker. This was a more modern tale with an unsettling main character and a visceral quality to the writing. We could almost smell Alice…
The Travelling Bag. The first and titular story. Moths. Ugh. Shudder…
We gave this book a solid 8/10 and would probably recommend it to those not of a nervous disposition! We could see the stories being adapted into a TV series, but wouldn’t be watching alone late at night!
Over the Christmas and New Year we’ll be reading A Terrible Kindness by Jo Browning Wroe. Based around the Aberfan mining tragedy it has wonderful reviews which use words like wonderful, moving, compelling, and beautiful. If you’d like to join us in January to discuss the book, pop into the library to pick up a copy.
Find out more about our reading groups here
Take a look at the blog posts for our previous reads here.
