SOURCE: "Susan Hill: A Soviet Critic's View," in Soviet Literature, No. 11, 1976, pp. 166-69.

In the following essay, Sofinskaya identifies the hallmarks of Hill's fiction, especially her short stories, indicating the significance of psychology, place, and death for her narrative art.

The Soviet reader first became acquainted with Susan Hill's work at the beginning of the year, when three of her short stories were translated into Russian and published in the magazine Inostrannaya Literatura ("Foreign Literature"). A collection of her stories to be published in English in Moscow is also in preparation. Articles about Susan Hill and the first reviews of her books had, in fact, already appeared in Inostrannaya Literatura several years before her stories were published. Like their English colleagues, Soviet critics consider her work to be one of the notable examples of English prose today. For instance, the well-known Soviet authority on English literature, Professor Valentina...