Why write a book that's just a succession of sad events? Giving it 2 stars regardless of the writing being decent as rebellion against it. I have no idea if any of the events depicted in the book are realistic (is this what a mining village was really like? who knows!) but it's just a cavalcade of misery happening to a single family who are apparently ridiculously unlucky in every way. They have some choice over their fate but they always make the bad decision. The thing is the writing is pretty solid - it doesn't go in for florid descriptions, there's no deep conversations, but the 2 main characters still feel reasonably fleshed given the short length of the book. Yet at the same time I didn't feel much emotional connection to them: I think I just tuned out after a certain point when I realised they exist just to have bad things happen to them. I don't know if there's anything to take away from it either. That life is cruel and you're screwed whether you stay within the pattern set or if you try and get out of it? I think I'm being too harsh here. Maybe I'm just really not in the mood for fiction right now. I don't know.

Re the ending I don't buy at all that he'd get the death penalty for that, given the killing was clearly not intentional, the attack was provoked and it wasn't pre-meditated. but hey You can't say for sure cause there's 0 indication of when this book is set. Oh well ( )

Susan Hill is possibly best known for her unsettling supernatural tales squarely in the tradition of the “English ghost story”, stronger on suggestion than on gore. Her series of crime novels featuring Chief Inspector Simon Serrailler also rely hugely on setting and description for their effect. Black Sheep is a very different work – a miniature “family saga” set in a fictional mining village. However, Hill’s skills at building a haunting atmosphere are equally evident. Her style is deceptively simple, and yet it evokes Thomas Hardy in its bleak fatalism and D.H. Lawrence in its portrait of a community simultaneously shaped and crushed by the mining industry.

One of the more intriguing characters in the novella is Reuben, the grandfather in the Howker family, who spends the day quoting fire-and-brimstone passages from his black-covered Bible. Perhaps therein lies one of the keys to appreciating this book. Indeed, for all its gritty realism, the novella often reads like a Biblical parable or allegory. The village where it is set is named “Mount of Zeal” and is described as a series of concentric terraces leading down to the mining pits at its heart. In an interview with the Guardian, Hill claimed to have been inspired by a 19th century engraving showing just such a village. However, given that the upper terraces are named “Paradise”, it does not take much imagination to recall Dante’s circles of hell. The date of the events described are also left vague, though there are suggestions that Hill might have the early 20th century in mind – this lends the book a timeless quality. And the characters seem quite set in their ways, coming across as symbolic figures in a latter-day morality play.

Whatever you think about the book, there’s certainly no questioning Susan Hill’s versatility. ( )

https://shawjonathan.com/2019/10/06/susan-hills-black-sheep/ ( )

This book stayed with me for a while and made deciding which book to read next, very difficult. The lives of pit folk is never easy but this is such a tragic story! I don't feel I can say anymore without giving away some part of the story. You need to read this slim book yourself. The writing is brilliant, made me feel as if I was watching rather than reading! As I write this my mind goes back to Mount of Zeal and the life endured by those who make up the village. ( )