Changes

|title=A Kind Man

|author=Susan Hill

|reviewer=John Lloyd

|borrow=Yes

|isbn=9780099555445

|pages=224

|publisher=Vintage

|date=January 2012

|summary=A fascinating short novel about a man with a lucky gift, and his wife, who suffers ups and downs in life a bit more severely.

}}

Meet Eve, and her husband, the title character, Tommy. She's at a bit of a sticky wicket in life, for however much they want a baby, her sister and his feckless husband churn out son after son after son, and go no lengths at all to love them. So when Eve and Tommy do at last have a child, it's a tragedy for it to die when only three years old. But in this plot, which you'll thank me for not going into further, there will be a lot more swings and roundabouts, of torment and ecstasy, doldrums and delights, hell and heaven, to come.

The actuality in that bodge of a word shows we're in the real world, for her characters are so well evoked. Whatever happens here happens to real people. The dialogue is sprightly but realistic, and everything about the book conspires to make it a very enjoyable, intriguing short novel. It shows a craft to put the slightly unusual in such familiar, realistic surrounds - not so much so as in her most famous work, [[The Woman in Black by Susan Hill|The Woman in Black]], but with almost as much quality.

For more realistically odd rural happenings, I can't recommend [[Blackmoor by Edward Hogan]] enough.

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[[Category:Literary Fiction]]