SOURCE: "Enclosed Structures, Disclosed Lives: The Fictions of Susan Hill," in Contemporary British Women Writers, Narrative Strategies, edited by Robert E. Hosmer Jr., St. Martin's Press, 1993, pp. 128-50.

Below, Hofer provides an overview of Hill's fiction, tracing the movement away from an "enclosed" narrative structure to a more "open" one.

Susan Hill, now concentrating on writing plays and fiction for children, as well as idylls of country life, is chiefly known for a series of intensely realized narratives composed over a brief six-year period:

Quite suddenly, a door opened, something fell into place—it's hard to know exactly how to put it—and I began to write as I had known somehow that I could. Between 1968 and 1974—when I look back, I am astonished at how short a time it actually was—I wrote six novels, two collections of short stories, and half a dozen full-length radio plays...