“The Man in the Picture” by Susan Hill

In the apartment of Oliver's old professor at Cambridge, there is a painting on the wall, a mysterious depiction of masked revelers at the Venice carnival. On this cold winter's night, the old professor has decided to reveal the painting's eerie secret. The dark art of the Venetian scene, instead of imitating life, has the power to entrap it. To stare into the painting is to play dangerously with the unseen demons it hides, and become the victim of its macabre beauty.

When you go into a Susan Hill ghost story, you know what you’re expecting. She has shown over and over that she is a master of the gothic horror story. And with The Man In The Portrait, you get exactly what you expect. 

The irony of Hill’s work is that while her settings and plots are unsettling and eerie, reading them is like wrapping yourself up in a warm blanket. They are comfortable, relaxing, and make you feel like you’ve come home. 

With some authors, I could see how this could seem derogatory, but that’s not the impression I want to give at all. Not every author needs to be groundbreaking. Not every author needs to be pushing back the envelope. 

Hill’s masterstroke with books like this is she doesn’t try to make them something they are not. She knows the nature of these stories. This isn’t a long book, and it doesn’t need to be. The downfall of too many horror novels is authors stretching out the length unnecessarily. And she doesn’t try to create something “new” for its own sake.

And while the style and themes of the story are standard Hill, the story is its own thing. Just because she has a style doesn't mean she writes the same thing each time. Its characters fit into set types without ever seeming too generic. And, most importantly, it is familiar without being predictable. It was pleasantly surprised by the ending, which I thought I could see coming but took a turn I hadn’t predicted. 

One criticism I do have it I wasn’t sure of the time the story was supposed to be set. I had been assuming something along the lines of the 1920s, but then at the end a character refers to a mobile phone, which threw me out the story for a moment.

The Man in the Picture is a comforting yet satisfying read. Something that would be perfect to pick up to relax after finish something more complex. A gothic palette cleanser, refreshing the reading muscles with a quick chill.