Customer Reviews

The Little Stranger

5 star:		(67)
4 star:		(57)
3 star:		(40)
2 star:		(25)
1 star:		(21)

 

 

"The Little Stranger" marks a departure for novelist Sarah Waters, who has also written works like "Affinity" and "Tipping the Velvet" which had lesbian themes in them. "The Little Stranger" does not have such themes, instead it is a well-constructed, beautifully-written Gothic tale that focuses on a crumbling great house in the English countryside. It is post WW II in Britain, and the war has wrought a lot of changes in society - many aristocratic and rich families have seen a decline in their fortunes, and one such family is the Ayers' family - Mrs Ayres is a dignified middle-aged woman who despite her rather impoverished circumstances still holds on to an old way of life, her 27-year-old daughter Caroline is an unattractive spinster who is content to traipse about the countryside in plain clothes with her well-loved dog Gyp, and her 24-year-old brother Roderick is a battle-scarred war vet who reluctantly finds himself taking over Hundreds Hall, the family estate.

Quite by accident, our narrator, Dr Faraday finds himself getting acquainted with the family when he is called in to treat the family's maid, 14-year-old Betty, who is prone to fanciful thoughts and dreams up phantom ailments. Dr Faraday finds himself drawn to the Ayres' not only because his mother was once a nursery maid at Hundreds, but also because he has not outgrown his childhood fascination with the crumbling manor. When Roderick begins to exhibit strange behavior, and starts rambling about poltergeist-like activity in the house, Dr Faraday's initial cynicism is put to the test by the unfolding of more peculiar and malevolent events at the house.

This is not a traditional horror story, but more of a psychological thriller that takes its time unfolding [about a hundred pages into the book in fact], and the suspense builds up slowly yet surely, rewarding patient readers with a complex novel that is populated with well-delineated characters. It would be doing this book disservice if it were to be labelled as purely a tale of the supernatural, for it is much more than that - the book also explores class distinctions as the Ayres' represent an upper class family fallen on hard times, yet still cling on to the old way of life, keeping a maid for appearance's sake, and refusing to let go of the house, even as it drains the last ounces of their financial resources and physical strength.

"The Little Stranger" is also about the dynamics of human relationships - of the complex ties between parent and children [Roderick laments that he has been a constant source of disappointment to his mother], the bonds between siblings, and of human yearnings [for social acceptance, affection etc].

This is not a wisp of a novel but a hefty read, yet I found myself compelled to finish it within two days. I'd rate this as my favorite of Sarah Waters' work because I happen to love highly atmospheric novels and "The Little Stranger" exceeds my expectations on that account. I'd also recommend works like "The Sisters" by Poppy Adams, "The Thirteenth Tale" by Diane Setterfield, and "The Forgotten Garden" by Kate Morton.

I have very, very mixed feelings about this book, "The Little Stranger." On the one hand I deeply appreciate the excellent writing and planning which went into it and I read through it as fast as I could. On the other hand there never seemed to be an ultimate climatic moment in the book and when I finished it I had the feeling that something was missing. After much thought I am still unable to identify this something.

This will be billed as a historica suspense/ghost story and while that is an accurate description of the book it is really a novel of people and places stuck in-betweens. It is shortly after WW2 and in England the minor aristocracy are going through changes. This is particularly true for the Ayres family who live in the once stately Hundreds hall. But now most of the money is gone, the land is being sold off piece by piece and the hall itself is turning into a crumbling ruin. Living there are Mrs. Ayres and her two grown up children, who aren't adapting very well to the new, more democratic world. With one maid left who still wears the uniform the Ayres are firmly stuck in place between the pre-war world and the post war one.

Into their lives comes our narrator, Dr, Faraday, a bachelor in between youth and middle age and between his roots as a poor boy whose mother was a nursemaid at Hundreds and the country doctor he is now. Quite by accident he is called to see to a medical situation at the hall and slowly begins to become friends with the family. Mrs. Ayres, a woman physically barely on the brink of being elderly but mentally lost in the past, Roderick, her son and lord of the manor who was badly injured in the war and Caroline, the unfeminine, plain speaking daughter.

Faraday seems to be caught between resentment at the Ayres hanging on to a dead life style which makes him beneath them and jealously at their (crumbling, but once grand) social position. Either way he can't tear himself away from the Hall. And then strange things begin to happen.

The rest goes the way of a typical ghost story-strange happenings, both annoying and violent, a sense of dread, of the House being alive, as well as a more intellectual scoffing at al matters supernatural. Through it all Faraday is our window into the world at Hundreds Hall.

Like I said earlier the writing in this book is very good. I pretty much raced through it. But for some reason the ending left me very dissatisfied-maybe because this isn't a grand, story kind of novel but more about an strange episode in an otherwise ordinary man's life.

I've only read two other Sarah Waters' novels but "The Little Stranger" is very similar in atmosphere to Affinity-both are gloomy books that always seem to be in decaying gray environment.

Four stars. If you like this you'll probably want to read The Thirteenth Tale: A Novel Or vice versa.

**SPOILERS**This is a haunting & frightening story about how one's childhood desires & expectations never truly diminish, in fact if left unchecked, they can grow to such a horrifying proportion that they take on a life & soul of their own.

I read this book twice, the first time around with the viewpoint that this was indeed, an old fashioned ghost story, with the House as the main character.

After the surprise (at least to me) reveal as to the identity of the person responsible for the disturbance at the Hall, I read the book again. Certain events took on a malevolent new meaning. The narrator's childhood memory of using a knife to gouge out a small souvenir from the home & his mother's horrified reaction provided a frightening foreshadowing to the escalating violence that would ensue. Let's just say "Thou shall not covet" is a commandment you really ought to follow.

As for the other main characters, they each played a part in the ultimate destruction of their lives. I felt the most sympathy for Gyp, he alone was innocent in the part he played in the story. I also felt for Caroline, when she realizes the Dr. never intends to take her away from the Hall, she make a valiant (but tragically undermined) effort to save herself.

The rich & darkly vivid writing slowly draws you into the world of Hundreds Hall; you can sense the decayed splendor that the family is surrounded & trapped by.

If you enjoy this book, I would also recommend The Thirteenth Tale & Jane-Emily. Jane-Emily: And Witches' ChildrenThe Thirteenth Tale: A Novel

It is curious how one can do things by the book and still miss the target. "The Little Stranger" is such a case. It is promoted as a ghost story and it has all the elements for it: a character living in the past, another one going mad, and of course, the rational one. There is the isolated old mansion falling in disrepair, with furniture coming alive and writing appearing on the walls. However, by the time I got to the end of the book, the first thing that came to my mind was "So what?" And it's a pity because Sarah Waters is a talented writer. This is the first time I've read one of her books and her gift for description took me away. Waters spends pages and pages describing Hundreds Hall with precise detail to recall its former grandeur and to capture its current dilapidation. In this mansion with leaky ceilings and musty carpets lives the Ayres family: Mrs. Ayres, a widow who longs for the old days of her family glory; her son, Roderick, a veteran who is still suffering both physically and mentally from his war injuries, and his sister, Caroline, a young woman who desires a life of her own. Into this small circle, comes Dr. Faraday, who becomes the family doctor but his role as their confidant stirs up mixed feelings in him.

Waters moves the story at a leisurely pace, tarrying with descriptions of the grounds, nooks and crannies of Hundred Halls. She spends 3/4 of the book to build up a convincing but somewhat predictable ghost story and then in the last quarter, she introduces an alternate theory to explain all the strange going-ons in the Hall. At first I took this Mr. Hyde-like explanation as a feeble attempt to justify the ghost's procrastination. It took 25 years for it to show up to haunt the family. But as I kept reading and realized where the story was going, I began to lose interest. Waters probably introduced this theory to provide for an unexpected final twist but it did not quite work out. It came too late into the story and without the author's having built a case for it, it struck me as forced and unconvincing. Worst of all, it undermined what the story had accomplished in the first 3/4 of the book and by the time I reached the ending, I have stopped caring for the characters and the whole plot has fallen flat too.

It is unfortunate that "The Little Stranger" doesn't live up to its expectations because the writing is very good. Sometimes I think this book could have been better without its supernatural elements. But then, that's just a wishful thought. Sarah Waters is a gifted writer, and I hope her next book will be a much better rounded one. As for this ghost story, my final grades are: four stars for the writing; two stars for the plot.

This book has all the right ingredients: an interesting time period, in which the clash of cultures between the gentry and working class is terribly poignant, and the detailed, skilled writing style of Ms. Waters, who describes the scenes so clearly I could see the dust on the hair of Caroline Ayers' leg. It is a suspense novel, all right - but disappointingly unresolved in the end. Upon finishing the book, I felt like I had been cheated out of the hours I spent reading it.

The lack of resolution is my main complaint about the book. The other complaint is that, for stretches at a time, the storyline seems to repeat itself: something strange happens in the house, Caroline seems to get an inkling that is might be supernatural, the teenaged maid whines in her quaint accent, and the Doctor reassures everyone that they are just "tired" and overwrought. This is interspersed with details about the crumbling estate, descriptions of the dust in unused rooms, and an awkward attempt at a romantic storyline.

I have given it two stars because the author is clearly gifted, but missed the mark on this one.

Half way through this book, about midnight last night, I found myself amazed by the author's skill in keeping me compulsively reading EVEN THOUGH NOTHING WAS HAPPENING. This is smart and polished writing. The Little Stranger is incredibly evocative, well researched, insightful - a great psychological study and sociological analysis in the skin of a ghost story.

Publishers these days aim to please book groups with questions for discussion at the end - the last book I read was Sarah's Key, a pleasant, unchallenging read that hardly needed a key for discussion. I'm not sure what there would be to discuss there; it's that straightforward. Not so for The Little Stranger. This book cries out for a readers' key, beginning with:

Is this a ghost story?

Is it a book about politics? Psychology?

Is the narrator reliable?

Who is `the little stranger'? Is that a good title for the book? Why `stranger'?

Did Caroline figure out the truth, in the book in her father's library?

How is the party a turning point?

Is the last line of the book key?

Is it possible that our subconscious can do evil - or good - in the world? Subconscious implies that we're not aware of it, that it's not `on purpose,' right?

Are we responsible for our unconsciousness?

What makes a book scary? There are two paranormal explanations for what is happening at the house. Which is scarier?

Were there sympathetic aspects to the disappearing class system with its strict class divisions? Were the Ayres sympathetic characters? What aspects of class division are still with us?

Why did Waters begin her book with Faraday's visit to Hundreds Hall as a boy? Was what he did as a boy a foreshadowing?

I am not one to take someone's obviously elaborate brainchild and dismiss it totally because instead of being touted as a study in class struggle it is placed in the genre of ghost story. "The Little Stranger" is indeed a ghost story but its worthiness as a novel of substance is derived for me by the noticeably and rather remarkable craftsmanship of writing that novelist Sarah Waters employs. However, while this overly long narrative delights in its depiction of post-WWII Britain, it fails to deliver that "ah-ha" moment at its conclusion that serves to raise the hairs at the back of the reader's neck as most good ghost stories do.

Take Henry James' "The Turn of the Screw." We really never know whether or not the governess in the story is reacting to her own mental instability or if her charges actually see the ghosts of Peter Quint and Miss Jessel. Nevertheless, the reader sensing that pre-lightning strike imbalance of atmosphere that the writer has created, continues to turn the pages waiting for that feeling of grounding that will settle things down again into the realm of the rational.

In "The Little Stranger," the narrator, the 40-something general practitioner Dr. Faraday plays as a victim of his own aspirations. The son of a one-time nursemaid at the Hundreds, the old homestead of his village's aristocracy, he cannot help but be fascinated by not only the well-bred inhabitants of the place but by the wondrous estate itself. Symbolic of his generation, Faraday embodies a newer England that has little patience for the one-time wealthy landowners struggling to keep the great white elephants of their assets intact while thinking themselves still entitled and cut from finer cloth than their working class compatriots. Indeed, inwardly and perhaps subconsciously Faraday relishes in the fact that Hundreds Hall has seen better days--the diminished Ayres family--the fifty-ish Mrs. Ayres, her war-injured son, Roderick, and sturdy albeit unattractive daughter, Caroline--barely maintain two servants to keep a house that at one time required multitudes to tend it. As a man of science, he acts as the perfect skeptic to the odd events that befall the family at Hundreds Hall. However needy and resentful he may be--and Waters fashions him sympathetically, allowing him to make his desires plain to the reader--his character, although badly bitten by the plot's dire events, never quite understands what actually transpires on the supernatural level that is never fully explained.

At the end of Susan Hill's `The Woman in Black,' the reader firmly grasps that the supernatural happenings surrounding the mysterious woman dressed in mourning clothes have all to do with revenge. Through the eyes of the skeptic-turned-believer, we feel all his horror, as he slowly understands the actions of a soul caught in grief so shattering that it simply cannot move forward away from the darkness and towards the light. Hill literally makes your skin crawl as you turn the pages and realize what is about to occur.

To her credit, Waters almost does it right. She's got the decaying mansion as a creepy backdrop; the cold winter weather adds insult to injury to a family that can barely afford to heat the few rooms that they are obliged to occupy. Faraday acts as the skeptic, wielding his pills and potions to bandage problems that as otherworldly are simply out of his control. Where Waters stumbles is in the creation of her ghost. We are made to ponder over its nature. Is it little Susan wanting her mother? Or is it a manifestation of the unfulfilled machinations of the minds of the beleaguered Ayreses who inhabit the Hall? Unlike more classic ghost tales, this ghostly presence has no real motive; its reason for staying on the earthly plane seems too nebulous and undefined. A child dying of diphtheria would perhaps experience some bewilderment as to what had transpired and search for her mother. Waters explains Mrs. Ayres' fantasy but fails to explain that of Rodney and Caroline. As an audience, we never get that tremendous rush of horror as experienced through Faraday's eyes. Instead we get accounts that never fully enhance what we already know or lead us head first to some horrific conclusion that makes us catch our breath.

Bottom Line? Sarah Waters' ghost story "The Little Stranger" marvelously depicts the late 1940s in rural Britain. With strong characterizations--Dr. Faraday, Caroline, Rupert, Mrs. Ayres and Betty all stand out as unique fictional creations that are more than two-dimensional cutouts--and vividly painted scenes of decaying manorial life juxtaposed with the workaday world of the village doctor, the novel touches on themes of upper class entitlement, the nobility in embarrassed circumstances, the proletariat's view of aristocracy and Britain's turn to nationalized industry and the creation of free healthcare after WW2. However clever in its representation of this era, "The Little Stranger," promoted as a ghost story, fails to deliver the necessary spook that causes the reader to pause and glance about his/her shoulder with fear into the darkening corners or start at sounds that amplify that "bump" in the night. Recommended for its interesting characterization of Caroline Ayres with the wish that the author had made Caroline's fears more understandable to the reader. For a real ghost story try Susan Hill's "The Woman in Black: A Ghost Story," Barbara Erksine's "House of Echoes," Judith Hawkes "Julian's House (Signet)" and classics like Henry James'"The Turn of The Screw by Henry James. Published by MobileReference (mobi)" and Dorothy MacCardle's "The Uninvited."
Diana Faillace Von Behren
"reneofc"

I hate to have to spell out the ending in such unceremonious, plain, probably pretentious terms, but reading so many reviews that claimed the author left everything entirely unexplained and unfinished is really frustrating. Perhaps you did not pick up on it the first read around, but The Little Stranger has a definite and chilling conclusion to it. Read it again, keeping the following three points in mind, and hopefully you'll find it. I hate to think anyone would remember this book in disappointment merely because they happened not to have grasped the full understanding of it.

Point 1: It is speculated on several occasions that the house may not be haunted by a "ghost," per se, but may instead be a projection or manifestation of someone's strong, perhaps unconscious, desires or emotions.

Point 2: Caroline, toward the end of their relationship, accuses Faraday of being in love with the house rather than herself. Faraday hesitates in response. Indeed, it is shown that Faraday has had a certain kind of covetous fascination with the house since childhood.

Point 3: In the last line of the novel, as Faraday wonders what (or who) was truly responsible for the decline of the Ayres family, whose reflection does he spy?

Sarah Waters' often brilliantly terrifying but ultimately dismaying Little Stranger begins as a deceptively straightforward story of an isolated clan of landed gentry in financial decline in a post-war England dominated by a Labour government intent on changing life as most Britons know it. So settled into its characters and their lives is Waters' claustrophobic tale that by page eighty a reader begins to question whether the supposed ghost story central to the plot will ever develop amid a slow but satisfying story of genteel decline, a la Iris Murdoch.

However, once the story transforms itself, long after a firm sense of place has been established, there is no looking back and pages speed by to present one of the most genuinely eerie ghost stories I have ever read. I am only too happy to admit Sarah Waters did the near impossible and creeped me out good and proper in broad daylight with her understated, frightening tale of a family which may or may not be under siege from a silently malevolent and unseen force possibly intent on bringing insanity and death to related individuals already reeling from far too many hardships. By page two-hundred, after reading through episodes of torment, madness, animal mauling, exploited maternal grieving and a multitude of Henry James-like psychological twistings, I was cheerfully prepared to place The Little Stranger in a league with Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House as a bona fide masterpiece of the genre.

(By the way, the night after I began the novel I, who grew up reading Poe and King, was sleeping with my head covered up. Yes, at times it was that spooky.)

Alas, such cold fire is difficult to sustain, and by the book's conclusion I had lost my earlier infatuation with The Little Stranger and traded it for a sense of frustrated letdown. I wanted to scream. I wanted to demand answers. How could such a fine story go so detestably wrong? Why was this done to us? From such a rich canvas how could we ultimately be left with so little? What happened?

Yes, Waters presented realism here, a scary ghost story (or not) that any paranormal skeptic on earth must admit could all have happened exactly as told, but I finished this book in dismal spirits, angry that so much build-up should come down to such scant payoff. In my complaints I could go more specifically into the plot but in doing so I would give too much away. What I will say is rarely does a book fall so far so fast, from greatness to muddled mess.

I am still willing to give The Little Stranger four stars (I nearly rated it three), but `round about its middle pages there seemed no way this was NOT going to be a gloriously five-star read, which should speak volumes about its shift in tone and identity.

Added twenty minutes later:

IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW WHAT THE LAST PAGE OF THE LITTLE STRANGER PRESENTS, PLEASE QUIT READING HERE.

If you're still with me, then a question about something that's been bugging me as I sit here in my dark old house all alone on a winter night.

Given the nature of the dream Doctor Faraday had in his car the night that....that the final "event" took place at Hundreds Hall, was I alone in feeling there may have been more than there seemed in Waters' quick little reference to Faraday seeing only his "own face reflected in windows" as he wandered the empty mansion looking for the ghost? He looked for the entity and saw HIMSELF.

Was...this a suggestion (among many divergent suggestions) that he was in fact an unconscious catalyst for the events? Remember the other doctor's theory on how humans can be such a thing? The haunting, if real, did, after all, begin only after Faraday's contact with the family, and the first "victim" of the events was Gyp, Caroline's dog and Faraday's rival for Caroline's affections. In seeing first Gyp, then Caroline's brother Rod, the heir to Hundreds, then the mother about whom Caroline cared so much, all serially removed from the scene, wasn't Faraday left conveniently poised to become master of an estate that loomed large amid the feelings of social inferiority present in his childhood?

Is it the case, then, that Waters waited until just that last page of her tale to quietly slip in such a glaring clue to the solution to it all? I admit, I do not know what to think, but it's possible.

Isn't it?

First, I wish to point out that I'm reviewing the book format here, (the description implied that it was an audiobook.)

Next, I wish to deliver an important point for potential buyers of the book: the subtitle here is "A Novel" and that is terribly important in this instance. Why? Because it's not specifically a mystery (although there is a mystery) and it's not exactly a ghost story (even though it does involve a sort of ghost); no, this is a "fictional story," a novel in the purest sense of the term. Here we read about the activities and events concerning a prominent but declining family in their daily life, their joys (few), their difficulties (many), etceteras. The thrust of this work is much closer akin to that of F. Scott Fitzgerald than it is to Stephen King tales.

The Story: (Brilliantly told in first person and in retrospect), A post-WWII English aristocratic family exists in a crumbling manor house... a home which gives rise to more than simple maintenance nuisances. An altruistic local physician, very much a man of science and modernity, befriends the family and becomes emotionally involved in their troublesome affairs. The subsequent sequence of events transports the reader along a journey of human tragedy injected with occasional glints of optimism and punctuated with apparent intermittent and nefarious poltergeist doings.

I don't usually savor first person accounts but here it clicks magnificently - author Sarah Waters wields this tale with complete control and authority. And the writing itself is as intelligent as the tale is coherently scribed. Lovers of celebrated novels will quickly foster a strong appreciation for the high quality of this story. This book isn't for everyone but it's a great example of English literature at its best.

If I have a single criticism it is a very minor one -- the book title is not as definitive as it could have been and really does not launch the work for the literary sojourn which is found within the book's bindings. I fear that many folks who take immense pleasure in the broad joy associated with reading good novels might inadvertently pass this one by, thinking that it belongs to a more specific genre of reading.

Highly recommended.