The Small Hand by Susan Hill

This is a well crafted little ghost story. I think Susan Hill can write people deftly and with feeling. Yet I wasn't remotely scared, chilled or perturbed by this short novel.

Reflecting on this, I think the problem lies with me. Hill has crafted all the elements into a neat package - the ending isn't telegraphed early on, the characters are interesting and the story well paced. Even though I enjoyed the journey I felt more of an observer than a passenger.

This led me to think about what I do find scary. Looking back at the last few years, I can identify a few incidents or times when I was scared and to be honest, none of them had supernatural elements (which is perhaps reassuring...)

I was scared when I started my last two jobs; I was worried they wouldn't keep me, that the risk I'd taken in moving wouldn't pay off, that my family would suffer as a result.

I think of the time when I was most scared for my life (in East Germany surrounded by skinheads who 'demanded to talk to me'...because they felt compelled to tell me they weren't racist but chose skinhead gear because it made them feel part of something...) and I wonder about fear.

I'd rather climb a mountain than go on a rollercoaster - the feeling of overcoming danger is alive in the former (for me) and certainly not in the latter. Right now I feel a sense of deep anxiety when I consider the outcome of the Euro Sovereign Crisis and what it means for me and those I love (if you don't understand why, suffice to say I work in the City and live with it on a day to day basis - that kind of proximity gives a perspective you're not going to get from reading the papers or watching the news).

The prospect of loss, the prospect of damage that isn't final, is more chilling for me than ghosts. I'm not a believer in simple inevitability and often watch/read 'horror' with a feeling of incredulity because I know I would behave differently - if only because the faith I hold suggests a different way of looking at and handling the world than that I see portrayed in these kinds of fiction. If anything, inevitability - especially when expressed as consequences - is a source of tragic narrative not fear. Consider Oedipus or Crime and Punishment.

Yet they clearly do get to other people, they clearly do unnerve others in a way that I'm not touched by. We love to tell stories that frighten us - that nervous laugh elicited at the end of a story where we know that despite our identifying with the characters we, ourselves, are ok.

Fear is a funny thing. I sense it isn't something we westerners feel very often in an imminent sense and my own compass is definitely calibrated to a North that's defined by loss, not the unknown per se, but the fear of losing that I love.

Now, back to ghosts...I'm a physicist at heart but if you're interested in ghosts and the like...next time we grab a beer ask me about my thoughts on this and I'll tell you a couple of stories of my own.