Susan Hill’s evocative exploration of love and madness charts the relationship between a brilliant but unhinged poet and his faithful companion.
A chilling novel that explores the extremes of childhood cruelty, now published as a Penguin Essential.
‘Some people are coming here today, now you will have a companion.’ But young Edmund Hooper doesn’t want anyone else in Warings, the large and rambling Victorian house he shares with his widowed father. Nevertheless Charles Kingshaw and his mother are soon installed and Hooper sets about subtly persecuting the fearful new arrival. In the woods, Charles fights back but he knows that his rival will always win the affections of the adults - and that worse is still to come …
Susan Hill’s 1970 novel was longlisted for the Lost Man Booker, in 2010.
Susan Hill
About the Author
Dame Susan Hill is a novelist and publisher who was Booker Prize-shortlisted in 1972 for The Bird of Night. As a judge: ‘I took the mountain of submitted novels on my honeymoon.’Other nominated books by Susan Hill