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A chilling and vividly rendered ghost story set in postwar Britain, by the bestselling and award-winning author of The Night Watch and Fingersmith.
Sarah Waters's trilogy of Victorian novels Tipping the Velvet, Affinity, and Fingersmith earned her legions of fans around the world, a number of awards, and a reputation as one of today's most gifted historical novelists. With her most recent book, The Night Watch, Waters turned to the 1940s and delivered a tender and intricate novel of relationships that brought her the greatest success she has achieved so far. With The Little Stranger, Waters revisits the fertile setting of Britain in the 1940s — and gives us a sinister tale of a haunted house, brimming with the rich atmosphere and psychological complexity that have become hallmarks of Waters's work.
The Little Stranger follows the strange adventures of Dr. Faraday, the son of a maid who has built a life of quiet respectability as a country doctor. One dusty postwar summer in his home of rural Warwickshire, he is called to a patient at Hundreds Hall. Home to the Ayres family for more than two centuries, the Georgian house, once grand and handsome, is now in decline — its masonry crumbling, its gardens choked with weeds, the clock in its stable yard permanently fixed at twenty to nine. But are the Ayreses haunted by something more ominous than a dying way of life? Little does Dr. Faraday know how closely, and how terrifyingly, their story is about to become entwined with his.
Abundantly atmospheric and elegantly told, The Little Stranger is Sarah Waters's most thrilling and ambitious novel yet.
Review:
"Waters (The Night Watch) reflects on the collapse of the British class system after WWII in a stunning haunted house tale whose ghosts are as horrifying as any in Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House. Doctor Faraday, a lonely bachelor, first visited Hundreds Hall, where his mother once worked as a parlor maid, at age 10 in 1919. When Faraday returns 30 years later to treat a servant, he becomes obsessed with Hundreds's elegant owner, Mrs. Ayres; her 24-year-old son, Roderick, an RAF airman wounded during the war who now oversees the family farm; and her slightly older daughter, Caroline, considered a 'natural spinster' by the locals, for whom the doctor develops a particular fondness. Supernatural trouble kicks in after Caroline's mild-mannered black Lab, Gyp, attacks a visiting child. A damaging fire, a suicide and worse follow. Faraday, one of literature's more unreliable narrators, carries the reader swiftly along to the devastating conclusion." Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)
Review:
Sarah Waters ain't afraid of no ghost. Her new novel, a deliciously creepy tale called "The Little Stranger," is haunted by the spirits of Henry James and Edgar Allan Poe. Waters is just one turn of the screw away from "The Fall of the House of Usher." Here, once again, a malevolent force moves through a crumbling mansion in which live the final two siblings of a faded great family. And yes, Waters'... Washington Post Book Review (read the entire Washington Post review) unbalanced young man is named Roderick, too. This is one of those eerily familiar stories in which a character lit only by candlelight insists, "There's nothing bad here, nothing spooky," and you just know they should all get the hell out of that house. But even though Waters is sewing together the necrotic parts of long-dead literary forms on a dark and stormy night, she keeps the lightning flashing in every gloomy chapter, and you can't help but gasp, "It's alive!" What saves "The Little Stranger" from sinking into a fetid swamp of cliche is the author's restraint, her ability, like James', to excite our imagination through subtle suggestion alone. The supernatural creaks and groans that reverberate through this tale are accompanied by malignant strains of class envy and sexual repression that infect every perfectly reasonable explanation we hear. The result is a ghost story as intelligent as it is stylish. I'm not giving anything away by reminding you to keep your eyes on the narrator. Dr. Faraday is a priggish middle-aged bachelor who describes these peculiar events with a pose of scientific rationalism and "a sense of desperate regret — almost with guilt." He has a vivid memory of visiting the grand Hundreds Hall as a child in 1919, and so when he's called back to the rural Warwickshire estate almost 30 years later to treat one of the servants, he's shocked by its decrepitude. "The house was collapsing," he notes with dismay, "like a pyramid of cards." The once large staff has been reduced to just one teenage girl, who's faking a stomachache in hopes of being fired from this creepy place. Waters conjures up everything in "The Little Stranger" elegantly, but what's most fascinating is her portrayal of Faraday. The son of poor laborers, he develops a complicated response to Hundreds Hall and the Ayreses, the withering family of aristocrats riding it into the grave. He's flattered to be called into their home and consulted as an expert, but he also feels the embarrassment of his humble origins, the "absurd sense of gaucheness, and falseness." Even standing in their parlor, enjoying their liquor, flirting with the daughter, he suddenly realizes, "I looked more than ever like a balding grocer." The response to "The Little Stranger" will be a little different in this country than in England, where Waters lives. Because Americans persist in pretending we have no class system, we've never developed the Brits' vocabulary of duty, expectation, resentment and adoration that's so central to the themes of this macabre novel. (In one particularly dire moment, Dr. Faraday says, "It's as if — well, as if something's slowly sucking the life out of the whole family," and a friend replies, "It's called a Labour Government.") Also, English readers may remember seeing impressive estates like Hundreds Hall broken up, turned into museums or even bulldozed into suburbia. For Faraday such a transformation would be an unthinkable tragedy, and the Ayreses act as though they can forestall the inevitable. "They seem to pride themselves on living like the Brontes out there," a man in town observes. They carry on "gaily at gentry life," even while furtively reusing postage stamps. The son, Roderick, has returned from the war with some nasty burns and a bad limp, but feels the "awful pressure" of rebuilding the estate without nearly enough money. Hundreds Hall is an almost hermetically sealed world of lost gentility ... if only the rot could be arrested. Dozens of rooms are permanently closed off, "dead as paralysed limbs." Over the stable door is a broken clock set to 8:40 — a wry reference to Dickens' Miss Havisham. "I had slipped into some other, odder, rather rarer realm," Faraday notes with a mixture of rapture and alarm. Adoring the house and eager to ingratiate himself with its tattered owners, Faraday sublimates his envy into deep concern for their welfare, a psychological state that calls to mind Patricia Highsmith's clever psychopath, Tom Ripley. Soon, horrible mishaps start taking place, emergencies that make the Ayreses grateful that the talented Dr. Faraday is so close at hand. But don't get the impression that psychology alone can explain what's happening in this doomed house. Confronted with these weird events, Freud himself would have to admit that sometimes a demon-possessed cigar is just a demon-possessed cigar. Hundreds Hall is full of inexplicable sounds, fluttering shadows, burn marks on the walls, a beloved pet suddenly turned vicious and — most grotesque of all — "ordinary things ... come to crafty, malevolent life." What are we dealing with here? Hysteria? Evil spirits? A jealous doctor? Waters teases us with clues that send us running off in every direction: psychological, paranormal and socioeconomic. But the story's sustained ambiguity is what keeps our attention, and her perfectly calibrated tone casts an unnerving spell over these pages. As Dr. Faraday correctly notes, "In any other setting, such a story would have struck me as farcical." A century ago, Henry James said he'd been inspired to write "The Turn of the Screw" by the disappointment among his literary friends that "the good, the really effective and heart-shaking ghost-stories ... appeared all to have been told, and neither new crop nor new type in any quarter awaited us." He needn't have feared that. We've enjoyed 100 years of fantastic horror writing in myriad crops and types. But here Waters has made the old bones dance again. You can follow Charles on Twitter at www.twitter.com/roncharles. Reviewed by Ron Charles, Washington Post Book World (Copyright 2006 Washington Post Book World Service/Washington Post Writers Group)
(hide most of this review)
Review:
"An eerie ghost story mixed with piercing class commentary, Waters latest is downright haunting." Booklist
Review:
"Waters has extended her range agreeably, working in traditions established by Edgar Allan Poe, Sheridan le Fanu and Wilkie Collins, expertly teasing us with suggestive allusions to the classics of supernatural fiction." Kirkus Reviews
Review:
"This spooky, satisfying read ... effectively detail[s] postwar village life, with its rationing, social strictures, and gossip, all on the edge of Britain's massive change to a social state." Library Journal
Review:
"What elevates this novel from the crowded genre is Waters’s ability to evoke the subtleties of the past as she skillfully weaves tension and dread into each paragraph." Bookmarks Magazine
Sarah Waters is the author of Tipping the Velvet, a New York Times Notable Book, Affinity, which won her the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year award, and Fingersmith, which was shortlisted for both the Orange Prize and the Man Booker Prize in 2002. Waters was named one of Granta's best British writers under forty in 2003.
Darin, January 2, 2012 (view all comments by Darin)
A beautifully crafted tale of an old English mansion physically decaying while Britain's class system also begins to fray following World War II. The Little Stranger presents itself as a gothic romance with all of the trappings thereof, yet the author, the more than capable Sarah Waters, has a few tricks up her sleeve.
Dr. Faraday is summoned to Hundreds Hall to tend to the ill housekeeper and is reminded of his previous visit, when he was all of ten years old. Through repeated interactions with the hall's residents, the Ayres family, Faraday manages to insinuate himself into their lives. Mrs. Ayres, the matriarch, and her children, 27 year old Caroline and 23 year old Roderick, live in the dilapidating estate house with their teenaged housemaid Betty. Faraday's mother had been a housekeeper in the hall years before. Mrs. Ayres' first daughter Susan died in the hall's nursery in childhood. From these elements, Waters brews an insightful, penetrating account of class tension, envy, jealousy, lovers' quarrels and, just possibly, a ghost or some other malevolent presence. The family are slowly driven mad by the hall, both mentally through the possible hauntings and physically by the shear enormity of the situation - trying to maintain an ungodly large estate on dwindling income.
The novel brilliantly evokes its time and place, give us characters to care about and places them in harm's way. The suspense is slowly, almost excruciatingly built up. The doctor remains skeptical, the family members slowly succumb to the madness the house induces. And in the end, the ghost is masterfully revealed causing the reader to reassess everything revealed previously. Creepy, lyrical and lonesome, The Little Stranger makes the perfect October's evening read.
Bertha, December 1, 2009 (view all comments by Bertha)
After my initial disappontment I found that in retrospect I was impressed by the evocation of post war austerity and the decline of the country house and its family. Dr. Faraday's dreary rationalism contrasts with the insight of the parlour maid - the only one who really appreciates that there is a malevolent presence at Hundreds Hall. He is heard, she is ignored. Sarah Waters' novel shows how evil is served by human vulnerability, folly and short-sightedness, and how it incarnates our worst fears. I think I now understand what happened at the end.
Was this comment helpful? | Yes | No (2 of 5 readers found this comment helpful)
Elliott, June 12, 2009 (view all comments by Elliott)
Sarah Waters delivers a thrilling and well-crafted story of how longing can manifest itself into other worldly phenomena. Set at the end of World War II, she deftly weaves a subtle Gothic tale about class anxities in a crumbling mansion called Hundreds Hall. The characters are haunted by postwar changes as well as ghosts. This is not a book for those wanting cheap gore but for those who want a taughtly written story that delivers chills intelligently. Henry James would be proud.
Was this comment helpful? | Yes | No (8 of 11 readers found this comment helpful)
"Publishers Weekly Review"
by Publishers Weekly,
"Waters (The Night Watch) reflects on the collapse of the British class system after WWII in a stunning haunted house tale whose ghosts are as horrifying as any in Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House. Doctor Faraday, a lonely bachelor, first visited Hundreds Hall, where his mother once worked as a parlor maid, at age 10 in 1919. When Faraday returns 30 years later to treat a servant, he becomes obsessed with Hundreds's elegant owner, Mrs. Ayres; her 24-year-old son, Roderick, an RAF airman wounded during the war who now oversees the family farm; and her slightly older daughter, Caroline, considered a 'natural spinster' by the locals, for whom the doctor develops a particular fondness. Supernatural trouble kicks in after Caroline's mild-mannered black Lab, Gyp, attacks a visiting child. A damaging fire, a suicide and worse follow. Faraday, one of literature's more unreliable narrators, carries the reader swiftly along to the devastating conclusion." Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)
"Review"
by Booklist,
"An eerie ghost story mixed with piercing class commentary, Waters latest is downright haunting."
"Review"
by Kirkus Reviews,
"Waters has extended her range agreeably, working in traditions established by Edgar Allan Poe, Sheridan le Fanu and Wilkie Collins, expertly teasing us with suggestive allusions to the classics of supernatural fiction."
"Review"
by Library Journal,
"This spooky, satisfying read ... effectively detail[s] postwar village life, with its rationing, social strictures, and gossip, all on the edge of Britain's massive change to a social state."
"Review"
by Bookmarks Magazine,
"What elevates this novel from the crowded genre is Waters’s ability to evoke the subtleties of the past as she skillfully weaves tension and dread into each paragraph."
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