Creepy. Unsettling. Strange (not surprisingly). I’m left a bit confused as to how to explain The Little Stranger. This is a superbly written book suffering from a slight defect in urgency – though whether this is in fact a deficit is debatable – this tale takes its time and has a slow pace in the beginning, which gradually becomes more obviously well-suited to the story, but in the first third of the book there is a danger of falling into a torpor.
The Little Stranger is set in an upper class but rapidly decaying home – Hundreds Hall – following WW2, and the story is told by Dr Faraday – a local “lad made good” who remembers visiting Hundreds as a child and whose mother worked there as a nursery maid. Gradually it becomes clear that all is not well at Hundreds Hall, inhabited only by Mrs Ayres and her son Roderick and daughter Caroline, and a young teenage maid, with strange happenings seeming to indicate a malevolent force at work.
There are larger issues here, playing out within a domestic setting – the loss of wealth and status and the general aimlessness of the upper classes after WW2. Roderick, injured in the service of the country, has little to do but obsess over the state of his “estate” – and littler money to do it with. Caroline is a spinster, almost nostalgic for the war that gave her life a purpose and meaning beyond marriage.
Waters’ amazing technique with writing is on total show here – her ability to inhabit the voices of her characters is skilful and as equally creepy as the events they contend with. There is no jarring note here, no moment of anachronism. Their voices are fully formed and genuine and one feels total submersion in the time and story of the novel. Haunting and haunted, the voices of ghosts and a time past. Perfect for the tale being told.
The unsettled atmosphere increases as the story moves on, gradually drawing you in and eventually becoming gripping, with moments of genuine spookiness. Waters holds back from explanation and outright description though, intensifying the creepiness by lack of detail about what exactly we are dealing with here. The reader is never allowed a complete grip on events, an ambiguity that is slightly maddening but also means we never stray into well-worn territory of “horror”.
Who is The Little Stranger, is it really a ghost or is it the character of Dr Faraday himself? In the end it’s almost as if the only person who doesn’t want to give up the “gentrified” Hundreds Hall is the one person who also resents its presence – Faraday. There is a love story here, ostensibly between Faraday and Caroline – but in the end I was left wondering if Faraday’s true love is not in fact Hundreds itself, rather than any of its inhabitants.
Which, I think, is exactly where Waters wanted me, as a reader, to be.
3 little furry black BookieMonster Kitteh paws up. I didn’t find this as completely satisfying as other Waters’ books (notably Fingersmith and Affinity), but its patient skill cannot be overlooked.
Hi Ngaire, I’m midway through ‘The Little Stranger’ and finding it compelling and wonderfully well written but hard to place, somehow, partly because of the lack of any lesbian characters which are such a fundamental element of everything else I’ve read by Sarah Waters.
I’m very much enjoying the acute social observation, and I think this may be the real concern of the book – the toxic effects of the class system and class resentments.
Hi Carol, thanks for your comment!
I would agree with both your assessments – I found this quite different from Waters’ other work (of which I’m a big fan) and also the class comments – there’s a lot of interesting implicit class tension in the character of the narrator.
I’m happy to have discovered this blog, Ngaire (and I agree with you about Ian McEwan .. I thought ‘Atonement’ was soporific and I didn’t much like ‘Chesil Beach’ or the queasy ‘The Comfort of Strangers’ either).
BTW, what is the top end of the paws-up scale you use – 4 or 5?
Thanks Carol! Glad I’m not alone in my McEwan problems.
Top end of paws up is 4, though to be honest I haven’t been using it in my last couple of reviews as I’m not sure it’s got a lot of value. I was starting to feel it was perhaps a little too glib of me and I wasn’t being totally consistent. Something I have to keep thinking about!
Hmmm, I am liking ‘The Little Stranger’ less as I go on. Somehow the two angles – the social observation and the ghost story – don’t integrate very well for me. *PLOT SPOILER* One reviewer regretted that the plot involved killing off the Ayres family and questioned whether it was really necessary and I can see what they mean .. I think Sarah Waters could have written a really good novel about the themes of class tensions etc without the ghosty element. I wonder what the supernatural part of it really added. But part of that is me – I’m just not very keen on ghost stories as such, and I’ve got an active dislike of supernatural stuff. So I can concede that it probably works fine for other people, and you can forgive Sarah Waters an awful lot as her writing is so fabulous.
You know, the more I’ve thought about it the more unreliable I found Dr Faraday as a narrator – almost to the point where I wonder if he is the malevolant force all along and if we can totally trust his story. Is there a ghost or is it all a big set up?
As a total non sequitur, Ngaire, have you read anything by Rick Gekoski? This bookie monster blog reminds me of him a bit. he wrote a wonderful memoir about dealing in rare books called ‘Tolkien’s Gown’.
Yes I have – I have a copy of Tolkien’s Gown! Thank you – quite a compliment!
About Dr Faraday – I haven’t finished the book yet so I’ll reserve judgment. But I’m finding the evolution of his narrative voice interesting as the book goes on – at the start you are kind of cheering for him and trusting him (although he is frankly rather boring) but further in, when the ghost action starts up in earnest, I;’ve found myself getting increasingly irritated with him and his insensitive rationality, As in a pantomime, you feel like shouting “For god’s sake, man, LOOK BEHIND YOU”!
There may be something in your theory – I will be watching out for clues.
Conversely., Caroline is becoming a more and more sympathetic character as the book goes on.
To be continued!
Oh, well, I will say no more until you are finished! I would be very interested to hear what you think then, especially regards Caroline…
Well hello again Ngaire, I have now finished ‘The Little Stranger’. And I will have to say that I am disappointed and unsatisfied. What was this book about in the end? Some people may be happy enough with the ambiguity and lack of clear resolution, but .. not me. I was similarly irritated by Catherine Chidgey’s novel ‘Golden Deeds’ which was about a very dark deed involving the disappearance of a young woman, but you never actually found out what happened.
Warning – Plot Spoilers ahead…
For me the problem was that the narrator wasn’t unreliable enough. Towards the end of the book there were plenty of hints dropped that Faraday (and why do we never learn his first name?) was responsible for Caroline’s demise – his panic when it became clear that she was leaving Hundreds Hall, the way he stalked her when she jilted him, that he had the keys to the hall and couldn’t account for his whereabouts the night of her death, his evasive tone – but it is far from clear that he was involved in the earlier skullduggery. If clues were planted they were far too subtle for me. And if he wasn’t involved, are we then supposed to believe the ghosty explanation? The author seems to be asking us to believe that it is both a ghost story and a crime story at the same time, which is too big an ask for me.
Just to clarify what I meant by Faraday not being an unreliable enough narrator – for most of the book his commentary is kind of literal and dull and his version of events seems to tally with others – so there is really no hint of unreliability. It’s only towards the end that suspicion starts to creep in, following his entanglement with Caroline. But looking back over the earlier part of the book, there are just no clues at all that he might have been involved. And so the writer seems to be asking us to decide whether the whole thing is a ghost story, whether part of it is a ghost story, or whether the whole thing is a big set-up, as you put it. And that to me seems like a cop-out. I do think that stories should have their own internal consistency.
Hi Carol! Thanks for coming back with more comments!
I totally understand what you mean about a lack of consistency – I think this is what I referred to as “ambiguity that is slightly maddening” – for me I quite like a lack of detail when it comes to horror stories, and find it sort of thrilling and infuriating at the same time. In the hands of a lesser author it can certainly be mostly infuriating.
I’m interested that you had the same thoughts about Faraday at the end that I did – i.e. was he Caroline’s killer? His deterioration seemed to mirror Hundreds Hall. It’s hard to obviously write too much about conclusions like that in a review without giving away any spoilers, but I’ve found it interesting that I haven’t seen many other commentators asking that question – but it seemed a really obvious one to me at the end of the book.
Thanks again!
Well, I think your original review was a good one and you’ve nailed this book’s good and bad aspects. I did enjoy parts of it, particularly the social commentary, and it was truly compelling, but ultimately maddening and unsatisfying, for me at least.
As it is, the reader is given nothing to support this interpretation, no hint whatever of how he could possibly have been responsible for all the ghostly goings-on. It’s like a jigsaw with half the pieces missing.
If ‘the little stranger’ was Faraday all along, which is certainly hinted at strongly in the final chapters, then I’d have liked more evidence that he could have been involved in the earlier disasters. (Maybe his electrical machine made the burn marks on the walls!
I do enjoy complexity and ambiguity in fiction, and I very much enjoy complex characters who are neither wholly good nor wholly bad. I also enjoy deliberately mysterious endings – I loved the ending of Barbara Kingsolver’s ‘The Lacuna’ – but ‘The Little Stranger’ just didn’t work for me.
Ah, The Lacuna – that’s one on my list to buy!
Very interesting, The Lacuna. Quite a departure from her earlier works – I don’t think she’s experimented with a first person male narrator before. It’s very subtle, very persuasive, hugely enjoyable. You have a treat in store
Hi Ngaire, Just thought I’d tell you that I went to a fabulous talk today by Sarah Waters, at Readers and Writers week in the festival here (Wellington). She was lovely, extremely articulate, warm, personal. She talked about all her books, not just The Little Stranger. Apparently the title is partly inspired by the term for childbirth in use in the 1940s- they used to talk about ‘When the little stranger arrives’. She was very unapologetic about the supernatural element! So I guess it boils down to a matter of taste really. She said she became more fond of Caroline as the book went on, and that Dr Faraday became more ‘ambiguous’ I think was her term.
Oh I’m so jealous, that sounds fantastic! Are you going to more sessions? I was unable to make it due to bad timing, but if you’re at all interested in writing a guest post round-up of any sessions you go to, check out the Contact Us page and do email me! I’d love to have some thoughts to post on the Festival – and hope you keep enjoying it!
(warning: spoiler talk)
I just finished The Little Stranger and am completely enamored with it! I cannot stop thinking about it– and I share the frustration of not knowing who really caused all the problems at Hundreds (I am leaning towards Faraday being the culprit). When Betty tells the story of Caroline going up to the nursery floor and saying “You!”, I was entirely convinced it was little ghosty Susan. But then, the very last paragraph of the book when Faraday looks into the cracked mirror and sees his reflection, that changed my mind as well. I must ask, is this not what a good book does? Leaves it up to the reader to make up their minds?. Do we need all the answers to make us feel better? Although frustrated, I am not sure i’d want it any other way!
I do agree! Good books do not necessarily have to make everything clear – and the best books are those that so successfully leave us in a bit of darkness but still happy – which I think The Little Stranger does.