SOURCE: "McCrum on Susan Hill," in Observer Review, December 8, 1996, p. 15.

In the review below, McCrum offers praise for Listening to the Orchestra, which he observes "is a reminder of the virtues of the traditional English story."

Susan Hill is, of course, an established English writer who first caught the attention of the reading public in the early Seventies, with her stories and novels I'm the King of the Castle (1970), Strange Meeting (1971), Bird of Night (1972), and A Bit of Singing and Dancing (1973). In recent years she has written for children, She is, in the bald, blunt language of the book trade, a 'name' author; a name, moreover, that is an almost cast-iron guarantee of a certain kind of English fiction. And now here in Long Barn Books, the publishing imprint she has created for herself this season, we have a re-patenting of her trademark Englishness.

There is nothing wrong...