Students

STUDENTS - click here for the message board.

Before you e-mail Susan direct with your questions about the books you are doing for exams and coursework PLEASE read the FAQs first and please check the list of books in which you can get help.

Susan is happy to help but cannot spend time answering questions to which the answers are already provided.

AND please note, she will not do your coursework or write your essays for you !

MANUSCRIPT COLLECTION

The manuscripts and working notebooks of most of Susan`s early novels are held in the collection of manuscripts at Eton College. It is possible for students and scholars to access these by arrangement.

NEWS FOR STUDENTS - SEPTEMBER 2006

From this week beginning September 11th, Susan will be answering questions and promoting discussions of the set books I`M THE KING OF THE CASTLE and THE WOMAN IN BLACK on her blog. There are separate sections for each book. Please look there for frequent new stuff and PLEASE feel free to comment.

I'M THE KING OF THE CASTLE - Answers to FAQs

ESSENTIAL READING FOR STUDENTS

PENGUIN editions of I'M THE KING OF THE CASTLE and STRANGE MEETING have an Afterword by Susan which you should read BEFORE e-mailing your question to her.

Also, SUSAN HILL. THE ESSENTIAL GUIDE by Margaret Reynolds and Jonatha Noakes (Vintage £6.99) has an interview with Susan and answers a lot of questions.

Susan does NOT receive any form of royalty from sales of this book but it is very useful and highly recommended.

In September, 2006 LONG BARN LEARNING will publish the only authorised guides to I'M THE KING OF THE CASTLE and STRANGE MEETING, with THE WOMAN IN BLACK to follow.


NEWS FOR STUDENTS - OCTOBER

Hello. By now, everyone is not only back at school but is having half term so it’s a good time to say something to the people who are studying my books for GCSE and A Level.. mainly I'M THE KING OF THE CASTLE and THE WOMAN IN BLACK.

I waited till now because you need time to settle in and start getting to know the books. But I have already had a lot of enquiries and queries via the website so here are some general points which I hope you will find helpful.

The books you should certainly buy or borrow – and your school should have are these.

I'M THE KING OF THE CASTLE.. PENGUIN. With my Afterword

LONGMANS IMPRINT editions of I'M THE KING OF THE CASTLE/ THE WOMAN IN BLACK.. both have very useful notes and coursework/questions. I did not have any input on these but do recommend them.

SUSAN HILL. THE ESSENTIAL GUIDE by JONATHAN NOAKES and MARGARET REYNOLDS. (VINTAGE PAPERBACK.)

Absolutely essential reading. Has a long interview with me with much about both books, and some very useful notes, suggestions for work etc.

FILMS, VIDEOS ETC

I am often asked about these and there are NONE AVAILABLE.

BUT if you are studying THE WOMAN IN BLACK you should definitely try and see the play adapted from the book. It is at THE FORTUNE THEATRE, in London’s West End. See the website www.thewomaninblack.com. Your school may have arranged a visit anyway. I did not adapt the play but highly recommend it.

OTHER POINTS

1. I really cannot do your essays or coursework for you ! Nor can I put up sample essays on the website.

2. There a good message board on my website which does become very lively during term time. You can put up comments and questions, communicate with other students etc. and sometimes teachers go on there too. A lot of students find this very helpful.

Good luck and I do hope you enjoy the books… remember they were written to be read for pleasure. If you have to study them for exams.. well, I had to study something in my time but it didn’t spoil my life-long pleasure in books. Someone has to be a ‘set book’ – just my luck !

On this page you will find information on Susan Hill's novels for GCSE or A level, books that have particular relevance to students.

Several of Susan's books are set texts by a number of examination boards.

You'll find Susan Hill's notes and comments on these books plus some general notes on studying them for your coursework and examinations.

I'M THE KING OF THE CASTLE is set for GCSE English Literature.

STRANGE MEETING is set for A Level English

In addition, both of these are on the most recent list of Government Preferred Reading for ages 13-16

Some examination boards for GCSE Drama set the ghost novel THE WOMAN IN BLACK as a package for study together with the play adapted from the novel by Stephen Mallatratt - for more about the play, visit www.thewomaninblack.com.

Of Susan's other titles, THE ALBATROSS has been a set book for GCSE and is now available alone in a new format from Penguin Books.

Her collection of short stories A BIT OF SINGING AND DANCING has been set for A level.

NOTES ON THE NOVELS

If you are being examined on one of the books, you may be asked to discuss what a novel, a scene, a part of the novel ' means'.. this always seems to me a rather hopeless question. It means what it is and what it is is what it means.. I am not writing sermons, I am writing stories.
I cannot stress too strongly or too often for you though that YOU may find a 'meaning' in a novel for yourself.. a message, something which speaks to you. If so, then, in part and for you, the book means just that… but warning..
1. I did not put the meaning there. YOU found it.
2. Stick to your guns.. so long as you can use the text to back up what you believe. Don't be bullied by teachers who are literal minded.

HINT
ATMOSPHERE and the build up matters almost more than anything in my novels.

Susan Hill writes for students

The following are some more general notes to try and answer some of the questions often put to me by students, and address some of the issues. If you do not find out what you want to know here, try posting your query on the Notice Board. Someone else may have an opinion, help, advice – or even an answer ! Otherwise, you can e-mail Susan Hill. But please don't do that until you have made quite sure what you want to know isn't already somewhere on this site !

FIRST AND MOST IMPORTANT. If you are studying any of my books (or anyone else’s books, for that matter) for an examination, or in order to write an extended essay, it is your opinion that counts, not mine. What you think about the book and what you think it is about , as well as what it means to you – those are the things the examiners want to know. And if you have been reading carefully, attentively and thoughtfully, then your opinions and thoughts are as valid as those of any published commentator or literary critic. Remember, the study of fiction, of literature, is not like the study of Maths. There are few answers which can simply be marked as ‘right’ or ‘ wrong’ If you have read intelligently, and asked questions along the way, and if you have read up some background, and gone over the text again, trying to puzzle out anything you do not find clear, then you will have something to say about it. I do not know what you think about the book, and I cannot tell you what it ‘means’. I can give you some general guidance, that is all. If, after careful reading and thought, you decide that this or that novel or story contains a particular meaning, or if you feel you can explain all, or part of it, in a certain way, then you should say so; your opinion is valid, provided you can produce cogent arguments and evidence for it. But what you must always beware of doing is going on from there to deduce that because the work contains this meaning for you, I deliberately put that meaning there. It is not necessarily so. A writer writes out of the unconscious, and a great deal of what goes into a work of fiction goes in unconsciously. It is not simply a question of deciding on deep meanings and planting them. I write stories, about people. I am interested in people, their relationships with one another, in particular settings, and in what they have to say and do, and the dramatic, internal or external events, that arise. I am not a philosopher or a preacher, and what you are reading is fiction, not a sermon or a tract.

ALMOST AS IMPORTANT. The simple approach is always best. I am alarmed and concerned when students write to me with questions based on an improper grasp of certain fashionable critical theories, and when it is clear that they have not even carefully read and understood the books on the simplest level. So – don’t worry about critical theories, or abstruse meanings, or the influence of A or B on me. Look at the text, the prose, the character, the incidents, the dramatic tensions. Understand the emotions, be sensitive to the descriptive passages, and the visual elements too. Above all, it is important not to expect me – or your teacher, or a commentator - to do your work for you. Do not believe that if you have some quotations from me about how I came to write the novels, and making some comments about what is in them, that these, if set down in your exam papers or coursework, will automatically get you top marks. They won’t. The teachers and examiners don’t want to know what I think about the book, though it may be interesting to you, and helpful too, to discover how it came to be written. They want to know what you think, and why.

REMEMBER that none of the books you are studying was written very recently.

I’M THE KING OF THE CASTLE was written in 1969 and published in 1970, thirty years ago.

STRANGE MEETING was written in 1970 and published the following year.

THE WOMAN IN BLACK was written in 1982.

In one sense, of course, it doesn't matter when a book was written. Every new reader comes to it afresh and for themselves, as if they were the first reader. But the form of the contemporary novel changes all the time, and subjects writers deal with are viewed in a different way by each generation, perhaps in each decade.

So, for example, when I'M THE KING OF THE CASTLE, was first published, many people were shocked by Kingshaw's suicide at the end of the novel. They said that such things never happened, could not happen – or would be very, very rare. We now know differently. Since then, a distressingly large number of children and young adults have indeed committed suicide because they have been bullied to an insupportable extent and felt they could neither stop it, escape from it or get any help. They have also killed themselves because of family unhappiness, just as they have run away from home because they do not get on with step-parents – that might just as easily have happened in I'M THE KING OF THE CASTLE. Exam and other work and peer pressure have also led to some suicides.

But there is also a much more open climate. People in society discuss these matters more openly and freely, there are many books, magazines and newspaper articles about bullying – not a word I like ; I prefer the simple but more telling word ‘unkindness’ – and about step-families, problems at school and so on. There is more help available, and both teachers and parents are made more aware of the problem. So – what has happened since the novel was written, and our ability to read it with hindsight, can and does affect contemporary readings of and opinions about, the book. The novel itself, the text, has not change, and does not change, and yet it in a strange way it changes all the time, in response to a new generation of readers, new events, opinions, a new climate.

SIMPLE IS ALWAYS BEST. Clarity in discussions of characters, themes, style and etc. An orderly presentation of opinion and quotation… as well, of course, as good, plain, grammatical English prose in your answers.

You are writing an exam or an extended essay, but the subject is literature – imaginative literature. You have to be clear and to present your arguments, marshal your facts, answer the questions – but still, you might remember the examiner and the teachers. If you write in a sloppy, ungrammatical, dull, boring, puddingy style, you will not impress. If you try not to use the obvious adjective where a more interesting one would do, try to be a little more colourful and lively - within reason ! – in your writing, you will hold the attention of the examiner, and make a stronger impression. When someone is reading 200 essays on the same subject, the one which is enjoyable and interesting and unusual to read will get a head start !