THE LITTLE STRANGER

Reviewer: Karen R.
Book: THE LITTLE STRANGER
Author: Sarah Waters
Genre: Fiction

I never read ghost stories but I loved this one! Anchored by well-drawn characters and great detail, this is a book taut with tension: familial, class, sexual, science vs. supernatural. The novel takes us to an England still recovering from WWII in rural Warwickshire, where the local physician, Dr. Faraday is summoned to remote Hundreds Hall to attend a sick servant. Thus begins Faraday’s immersion (and ours) into the lives of the aristocratic Ayres family: widowed Mrs. Ayres; son Rodney, the crippled RAF pilot; his older sister Caroline, seemingly destined for spinsterhood. Then there is Hundreds Hall itself – once an elegant manor house, now decaying from neglect and lack of funds. Faraday’s mother had once been a nursery maid in the Ayres’ household and Faraday is shocked and dismayed to see the decline of the once-splendid estate since a childhood visit there. Soon Faraday is more shocked and baffled by inexplicable events that target the house and its residents in escalating violence and terror. Are these horrors the result of an evil spirit – the ghost of Mrs. Ayres’s first daughter, Susan, who died before her siblings were born? Or are these horrors the result of human actions: Rodney’s shell-shock, Caroline’s desire to escape Hundreds Hall, Mrs. Ayres’s grief and loneliness? And what of Dr. Faraday’s growing obsession with Caroline and Hundreds Hall itself? Author Sarah Waters has devised a delicious and disturbing thriller. Enjoy but read it in daylight!