The Small Hand and Dolly (Vintage Original)
Versatile, prolific, and polished British writer Hill presents two elegantly constructed ghost stories. Each evokes vengeful spirits relentlessly haunting the bleak English countryside in the wake of impulsive childhood wickedness. Hill further accentuates the malevolent persistence of the past by creating protagonists who are connoisseurs of history. In “The Small Hand,” Adam, a self-possessed, urbane antiquarian bookseller, is on his way to see a client when he stops to explore an estate that has fallen into ruin. There a small hand takes hold of him, as though an invisible child has placed its hand in his. Even when his quest for a Shakespeare first folio leads him to a remote French monastery, the insistent, increasingly alarming small hand follows. In “Dolly,” Edward, an architectural conservationist, returns to the scene of a stormy boyhood summer spent with his willful, wildly unhappy cousin, Leonora. Slowly he discerns, to his horror, that her violent ingratitude may have appalling repercussions. Steeped in folklore, Hill’s supremely atmospheric and utterly unnerving tales of otherworldly retribution lead us deep into the dark labyrinth of the psyche. --Donna Seaman