Black Sheep, Susan Hill
Black Sheep, Susan Hill
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Black Sheep

Author: Susan Hill

Narrator: Alison Larkin

Unabridged: 2 hr 34 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 11/25/2014

Categories: Fiction

Synopsis

A searing family story from one of our most beloved writersThe village is called Mount of Zeal. It's built in a bowl like an amphitheater, with the winding gear where the stage would be. The pit lies below. Ted Howker's school is on the edge of Lower Terrace next to the chapel. Upper Terrace—in a thunderous echo of the Bible so loved by Ted's grandfather—is Paradise. Ted, his father, and his brothers live in Middle. In the beginning: a household of men, all of whom work in the pit.Susan Hill is an exceptional writer at the height of her powers. Every word is precisely right: the descriptions of the village and the pit, the people and the farm are exact and true; the heartbreak is inevitable yet new; and the imagery and imagination take your breath away.

About Susan Hill

Susan Hill’s novels and short stories have won numerous awards and prizes, including the Whitbread Award, the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, the Somerset Maugham Award, and the Yorkshire Post Book of the Year, and have been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. She was awarded a CBE in the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Honors. The play adapted from her famous ghost novel, The Woman in Black, has been running in the West End since 1989. Her crime novels featuring DCS Simon Serrailler—The Various Haunts of Men, The Pure in Heart, The Risk of Darkness, The Vows of Silence, The Shadows in the Street, The Betrayal of Trust, A Question of Identity, The Soul of Discretion, and The Comforts of Home—are all available from The Overlook Press and are currently being adapted for television.

About Alison Larkin

Alison Larkin was born in Washington, DC, adopted at six weeks old by British parents, and raised in England and Africa. After graduating from Royal Holloway College, London University, and the Webber-Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art, she became a playwright and classical actress on the British stage. Then, at twenty-eight, she found her birth mother, who was living in Bald Mountain, Tennessee. The experience turned her into a stand-up comic. She was soon headlining at the Comic Strip in New York and the Comedy Store in Los Angeles, while maintaining her theatrical career. She also spent three years under a studio development contract to star in her own sitcom with ABC, CBS, and Jim Henson Productions. Her unusually wide range of voices can be heard in cartoons and movies, from work by James Cameron and Robert Altman to Pocahontas and The Wonder Pets. The audiobook of The English American, narrated by Alison, won an AudioFile Earphones Award.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Dale on February 26, 2014

I've heard a lot about Susan Hill which is why I decided to start with this one. What can I say about it? It is told in a very matter of fact style and skips huge chunks of the character's lives at a time, so the style takes a bit of getting used to. It is as spare and bleak as the mining pit commun......more

Goodreads review by John on February 25, 2018

A good novella. The story revolves around a mining family and there lives. Rosie the daughter of Evie and John is the only girl with four brothers. One of her brothers Ted is different and does not want to be a miner. This is a bleak book and the family is plagued with bad luck. The setting is well......more

Goodreads review by Joseph on November 02, 2019

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. Bla......more

Goodreads review by Bryony on February 10, 2014

I've read and enjoyed several of Susan Hill's books, but found this one bland and depressing. Maybe I was just in the wrong frame of mind for something so bleak!......more

Goodreads review by Dave on November 07, 2016

This book by Susan Hill I'm unashamed to say, made my bottom lip quiver, brought tears to my eyes and brought a lump to my throat. Basically this is a simple tale of a family just going about the daily business of living. It has the feel of Catherine Cookson to it (the trials and tribulations of gen......more

Quotes

“A very slender novella but one in which Susan Hill deploys her not inconsiderable power to weave a haunting story.” Daily Mail (London)

“Hill’s beautiful, soulful descriptions of pit village life make this every bit as gripping as her longer spine-chilling stories.” Sunday Mirror (London)

“Taut, tense story, written with that unsparing economy which is such a feature of Hill’s recent fiction.” Times (London)

“A perfectly judged story of people living hard, narrow lives.” Observer (London)

“Gripping all the way to its unexpected end.” Spectator (London)

“This is a story of people living hard lives, narrow lives which nevertheless have their own dignity. It is beautifully, even lovingly, told, with not a superfluous word…Characters are sketched in a couple of sentences and fixed in your imagination. Manner is perfectly matched with matter; it’s impossible to suppose that the story could be better told.” Scotsman

“Hill’s taut prose exudes a constant darkness…You are left unsettled and haunted by the seeming inevitability of their troubled lives.” Stylist

“In this taught, tense story, written with that unsparing economy which is such a feature of Hill’s recent fiction, everyone longs to escape…Ted is thoughtful, compassionate, loving, and misguidedly chivalrous…The sparseness of Hill’s style provides the perfect medium for exploring his predicament.” East Anglian Daily Times

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