Black Sheep by Susan Hill.
Vintage Books 2014 (2015)
Whenever he clambered down the steep track home he felt the walls closing in on him and his spirit shrivel and darken.
Chapter 11
Unremittingly bleak, Susan Hill’s novella set in a fictional pit village focuses on the Howker family, sometime in the 1930s. Villages built up around collieries exist only for the colliery’s needs, with the miners’ day based on the progression of shift, meal, sleep and return to work, the chapel or the weekend dance at the Institute bringing some scant variety, and the woman’s role confined purely to servicing the requirements of their menfolk’s work.
Life beyond the pit village of Mount of Zeal can scarcely be imagined by its inhabitants, but at least two and maybe three of the Howker family dream of escaping the misery of the daily treadmill. When they make the attempt, one to try his hand at sheep farming, say, or another to marry outside of the workforce, they run the risk of being regarded as the black sheep of the family.
Will they make their own way in life or will circumstances force them to return to the fold?
Continue reading “Walls closing in”
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