Fanny is an old woman now, but a Christmas snowstorm brings back memories of a special time when she was 9 or 10 years old -- a Christmas that brought sorrow and joy, wonder and pain.

"A happy childhood is like a magic circle," Hill writes. "Lit from within, it throws a beam forward into the present. Snow always fell on Christmas Eve, fat and soft as goose feathers, to lie like a quilt upon the ground all winter. That is what Fanny remembers, now that she is old, at another Christmas time."

It's a child's view of an English country Christmas that Fanny brings us. Happy memories of a warm and comfortable home and family. The breathless excitement of childhood is in every page, as well as the sense of mystery and wonder at the Christmas story. As her father, the rector of the local church, reads the Bible to his family on Christmas Eve:
"Fanny said the words as her father read them, and they sounded a beautiful as music to her, and just as strange, too, simple, yet infinitely difficult, as close and familiar to her as her own name and yet far remote."

It's a special Christmas, full of surprises and happiness but before St. Steven's Day is over, Fanny must say goodbye to a special friend and welcome a new one.

Susan Hill is an English novelist and broadcaster who lives near Oxford with her husband and two daughters. She has written a simple book that's easy to read and hard to forget.

When I picked up Night Waking, I expected being disapointed because it was kind of old. But to the contrary I was impressed. It was riveting, shoking, and had me wondering the whole time, who could the killer be? If you want to be at the edge of your seat, dying for more, I recommend reading this book. A quick hint: don't think the obivious.

Everyone will acknowledge that to adapt a novel for the screen always amounts to a difficult - and in many cases a downright impossible - undertaking. This is not any different with "Snow Falling on Cedars", a novel that is remarkable for its use of different time levels as well as an array of characters complex enough to scare off most scriptwriters. Given the difficulties Ron Bass and Scott Hicks must have faced while adapting the novel, I am all the more pleased with the result of their work. All in all it is fair to say that they have succeeded in writing a script that never runs the risk of cutting the novel's central thread and that pays attention to a great many of the book's intricate details. One drop of bitterness, however, is exactly the use of the aforementioned time levels - or "time frames", as Hicks calls them in his commentary that closes the script - as their complex arrangement both threatens the smooth evolving of the story and tends to confuse those readers not familiar with the novel. But then this may have to do more with the general problems associated with bringing a novel to the screen than with Bass' and Hicks' qualities as scriptwriters, and I would still recommend this script to anyone interested in getting to know more about the filming of "Snow Falling on Cedars" and about adapting a novel for the screen in general.