The Little Stranger
Encyclopedia
The Little Stranger is a 2009 gothic novel written by Sarah Waters
. It is a ghost story
set in a dilapidated mansion in Warwickshire, England in the 1940s. Diverting from her earlier themes of lesbian and gay fiction, Waters' fifth novel features a male narrator, a country doctor who makes friends with a family with faded fortunes left simply with a very old estate that is crumbling around them. The stress of reconciling the state of their finances with the familial responsibility of keeping the estate coincides with perplexing events that drives one to be committed to a mental institution, and kills two more.
Reviewers note that the themes in The Little Stranger are alternately reflections of evil and the social upheaval of the class system in postwar Britain. Waters stated that she did not set out to write a ghost story, but began her writing with an exploration of the rise of socialism in the United Kingdom and how the fading gentry dealt with losing their legacies. A mix of influences is evident to reviewers: Henry James
, Shirley Jackson
, Wilkie Collins
, and Edgar Allan Poe
. The novel was mostly well-received by critics as Waters' strengths are exhibited in setting of mood and pacing of the story. It is Waters' third novel to be short-listed for the Man Booker Prize
.
, a story set in Victorian London. She began writing in her early 30s while completing a dissertation in English literature about gay and lesbian fiction from the 1870s onward. Not enjoying the expository, she attempted fiction and finding that she liked it, followed Tipping the Velvet with Affinity
, another Victorian-set novel with gothic themes, and Fingersmith
, also Victorian yet more a Dickensian
crime drama. All three have significant lesbian themes and characters; Waters often labels them as "Victorian lesbo romps". To avoid being pigeonholed as a niche writer, however (asking "Why, oh why, did I ever allow the phrase 'lesbo Victorian romp' to cross my lips?"), she followed these with The Night Watch
, which also has gay and lesbian characters, but is set in the 1940s.
For The Little Stranger, Waters diverted from overt lesbian themes, but incorporated other elements from previous books. A character in Affinity talks to spirits of the dead; the setting of Fingersmith is a large country estate inhabited by a small family and house staff; The Night Watch is set in post-WWII Britain with characters who are somewhat at a loss with what to do following the upheaval of war. Barry Didock in The Herald considers The Night Watch a companion piece to The Little Stranger. Waters states that the change from a conservative to socialist society was her true impetus for writing The Little Stranger: "I didn't set out to write a haunted house novel. I wanted to write about what happened to class in that post-war setting. It was a time of turmoil in exciting ways. Working class people had come out of the war with higher expectations. They had voted in the Labour government. They want change.... So it was a culture in a state of change. But obviously for some people it was a change for the worse." She set out, in actuality, to rewrite a version of The Franchise Affair
by Josephine Tey
, a courtroom thriller about a middle class family accused of kidnapping a young girl.
Waters is well-known for the immense amount of research she completes for her novels. Researching for The Night Watch gave her background that she used in The Little Stranger, leading her to call 1947 "a miserable year"; much of her time preparing for this novel was spent in Warwickshire estate homes and local newspaper archives. She told The Globe and Mail
In an attempt to cheer up the family and possibly match Caroline to a potential husband, they throw a party for a few family friends when disaster strikes. A couple brings their young child who is mauled by Caroline's ancient and previously gentle Labrador retriever. Roderick begins to behave moodily and drink heavily. Faraday believes the strain of managing the estate is at fault. Roderick, however, divulges that something appeared in his room the night the dog attacked the girl. It was first in his room trying to harm him, and that he must keep the unseen force focused on him so as not to direct its attention to his sister or mother. Spots begin appearing on his walls looking like burns, and he is committed to a mental hospital after Caroline awakes in the middle of the night to find his room on fire though he is passed out in a drunken stupor.
Faraday and Caroline waver between romance and confused platonic friendship. Other sounds in the house alarm Caroline and Mrs Ayres and their two maids. They find curious childish writing on the walls where these activities have taken place. The maids' bells sound without anyone calling them; the phone rings in the middle of the night with no one on the line. A 19th century tube communication device linking the abandoned nursery to the kitchen begins to sound, scaring the maids. When Mrs Ayres goes to investigate, she is locked in the nursery where Susan, her much-loved first daughter, died of diphtheria
at eight years old. Experiencing shadows and indiscernible fluttering and frantic to escape, Mrs Ayres pounds the windows open, cutting her arms. After Caroline and the maids free her and she recovers, she comes to believe and take comfort that Susan is around her at all times, that Susan is impatient to be with her though she sometimes harms her. Caroline and the maid find one morning Mrs Ayres has hanged herself.
The day of Mrs Ayres' funeral, Faraday and Caroline set plans to marry in six weeks' time. Caroline, however, is listless and uninterested in the wedding, eventually calling it off and making plans to sell Hundreds Hall. Faraday is unable to believe it and tries several times to talk Caroline out of it to no avail. On the night of their would-be wedding, Faraday has a call that keeps him out and comes home to learn that Caroline hurled herself off of the second floor onto a marble landing, killing herself. The maid reports at the inquest that she awoke to hear Caroline go upstairs to inspect a sound she heard in the darkened hall. She simply said "You!" then fell to her death. Three years later, Faraday continues to visit the abandoned mansion, unable to find what Caroline saw.
states that Waters' narrative voice is her strongest asset and that she has an "uncanny ability to synthesize her research and is never expository in the telling details she draws upon—tiny little things about what people wore or ate or had in their houses". Emma Donoghue in the Globe and Mail remarks on the diversion from the narrative style in The Little Stranger. Waters is known in her previous four novels for providing plot twists, but this one, notes Donoghue, provides a straightforward accounting that tackles issues of insanity, poltergeist
s, and family secrets "with a minimum of tricks". The review in The Washington Post
concurs, using a quote by Henry James to say everything to be done in the way of ghost stories and haunted house
s has been done. Ron Charles states that the novel is not cliché due to Waters' restraint: "the story's sustained ambiguity is what keeps our attention, and her perfectly calibrated tone casts an unnerving spell". A similar review appeared in The Australian
calling attention to Waters' "moderation and flawless cadence" that forms "a story pulsing with malevolent energy" and an "atmosphere is wickedly, addictively tense".
In The Sunday Telegraph, John Preston writes that "the richness of Waters's writing ensures that the air of thickening dread is very thick indeed. Everything, from Mrs Ayres's 'absurdly over-engineered shoes', to the hairs on Caroline's legs—each one 'laden with dust, like an eye-blacked lash'—is described with a wonderfully sharp eye." Waters herself acknowledges the light-handedness of the supernatural elements of the story, stating "I wanted the ghost story to be fairly subtle. The ghost stories that I've enjoyed are uncanny, unsettling and eerie more than they are about in-your-face pyrotechnics. I wanted it to be very based in the social context of the time, but for it to have this extra element of strangeness."
Several references in The Little Stranger indicate the influences Waters used in its composition. Rebecca Starford in The Australian praises Waters' ability to use elements from other authors: "Waters is one of the great contemporary storytellers. She has never made bones about borrowing", noting that her inspirations for this story were Daphne du Maurier
, Henry James
, Agatha Christie
, and Charles Dickens
. As children, Roderick and Caroline changed the hands of a broken clock to twenty minutes to nine, thinking it amusing to reflect the stopped clocks of Miss Havisham
's house from Great Expectations
. Like Mrs Danvers in Rebecca
, Faraday has no first name; the man overcome by the house in The Fall of the House of Usher is also named Roderick. Peter Cannon in Publishers Weekly
writes that the novel is evocative of Henry James' The Turn of the Screw
and Shirley Jackson
's The Haunting of Hill House
.
Emma Donoghue
considers the deepest theme of the story to be "the unpindownability of evil", as suspicion shifts to individuals who may be self-destructing from the forces around them, possible malevolent motivations from the family or house staff, an unseen force inhabiting the house, or Faraday himself. Faraday's concern for the family is often intertwined for concern for the house so that he often discourages those who are obviously troubled by staying there from leaving it. He explains away the suspicions of Mrs Ayres, who believes that Susan is in the house trying to hasten their reunion; Caroline, who believes that Roderick is so upset in the mental institution that a part of him is trying to contact the family to warn them of something; and Betty, the maid who is convinced the malevolent spirit of a former domestic resides on the second floor of the home. Faraday's rationalisations become increasingly improbable as he blames all the strangeness on fatigue, stress, even the house's plumbing. Ron Charles in The Washington Post considers Faraday's deep concern for the family that is often mixed with envy to be influenced by Patricia Highsmith
's psychopathic manipulator Tom Ripley.
, and is so entranced with the building he plies a piece of it off and puts it in his pocket. He often revisits his memory of his first significant impression of the mansion comparing it with its current state. Soldiers were billeted in its rooms during the recent war. Two centuries of wear and weather have taken their toll, and the taxes on the British gentry are too high for the family to bear. They attempt to reconcile their family legacy with the reality of having no money to keep it up. Charlotte Heathcote in The Sunday Express and Rebecca Starford in The Australian both note that the novel is preoccupied with class.
Faraday too is conflicted as he recounts how his family sacrificed everything, including his mother's health and life to give him his education. He laments that he has not achieved anything with it and he visits Hundreds Hall vacillating between being flattered and feeling undeserving of knowing a family like the Ayres. They, however, seem resolute to not being able to afford the upkeep of the house and once Roderick is gone, Caroline and Mrs Ayres are ambivalent about staying in the house. It is Faraday who is most indignant about the family forcing to sell their land and possessions. Faraday is an unreliable narrator
, and reviewers noted the slight discrepancies in what he says to the family as their doctor and his devotion to the house at their expense.
Near the end, as Faraday attempts to explain reasonably and scientifically why the family for which he has grown so fond is falling apart, he wonders what must be eating them alive; a friend blurts "Something is....It's called a Labour government." Barry Didock notes that Waters captures the stark mood of postwar Britain that Evelyn Waugh
did in Brideshead Revisited
, where the social changes the country was encountering did not make the future optimistic at all. The anxiety about the future is so all-consuming that Scarlett Thomas in The New York Times suggests it is the cause for speculation about each character's sanity. Waters concedes that although her novels are all period pieces, they are not meant to instill an overwhelming romantic sense of nostalgia: "I'd hate to think that my writing's escapist. For me, my interest in the past is closely linked to my interest in the present, in the historical process of how things lead to others."
calls The Little Stranger "deliciously creepy", stating that the tale is "one screw away from The Fall of the House of Usher
". Erica Wagner, a reviewer for The Times
confesses that "left alone one night in her boxy Seventies ex-council house—about as unspooky a place as you can imagine—had to stop reading for fright". Corinna Hente in The Herald Sun writes "This is a terrific, chilling read you can get lost in, from a first-class storyteller", although she accedes that the novel is slow to start and readers may be disappointed with the ambiguous ending. Charlotte Heathcote calls Waters "a darkly masterful storyteller with a rare gift for bringing a bygone era to vibrant life". The ambiguity of the jostling between evil and class was praised by Scarlett Thomas in The New York Times, as Thomas notes, "Sarah Waters is an excellent, evocative writer, and this is an incredibly gripping and readable novel" but questions about the likable Ayres family who are killed as if by being socially redundant leave Thomas uncomfortable.
Kirkus Reviews
was similarly pleased with Waters' detail, but considered the relaxing of tension in crucial places and Faraday's sometimes second-hand narration of events in Hundreds Hall flawed. They write, however, that Waters "work[s] 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. A subtle clue planted in one character's given name neatly foreshadows, then explains, the Ayres family's self-destructive insularity." John Preston in The Sunday Telegraph was disappointed with the ending, complaining of the loss of tension, but states, "it's still a hell of a ride getting there". Tom Beer in Newsday
greatly praised the novel, writing that "the pleasures of The Little Stranger aren't those of your garden-variety suspense novel. They lie, instead, with the author's uncanny ability to paint her characters and their world and to seduce the reader into following along with her. Hundreds Hall is a pretty gloomy place, but I was thrilled to spend time there, under the guidance of this supremely gifted storyteller."
Following Fingersmith and The Night Watch, The Little Stranger became Waters' third novel to be short-listed for the Man Booker Prize
, a prestigious award for novelists who are citizens of the British Commonwealth. Salon.com
chose the novel as one of the best books of 2009
. Waters' website reports that the novel has been optioned for a film adaptation.
Sarah Waters
Sarah Waters is a British novelist. She is best known for her novels set in Victorian society, such as Tipping the Velvet and Fingersmith.-Childhood:Sarah Waters was born in Neyland, Pembrokeshire, Wales in 1966....
. It is a ghost story
Ghost story
A ghost story may be any piece of fiction, or drama, or an account of an experience, that includes a ghost, or simply takes as a premise the possibility of ghosts or characters' belief in them. Colloquially, the term can refer to any kind of scary story. In a narrower sense, the ghost story has...
set in a dilapidated mansion in Warwickshire, England in the 1940s. Diverting from her earlier themes of lesbian and gay fiction, Waters' fifth novel features a male narrator, a country doctor who makes friends with a family with faded fortunes left simply with a very old estate that is crumbling around them. The stress of reconciling the state of their finances with the familial responsibility of keeping the estate coincides with perplexing events that drives one to be committed to a mental institution, and kills two more.
Reviewers note that the themes in The Little Stranger are alternately reflections of evil and the social upheaval of the class system in postwar Britain. Waters stated that she did not set out to write a ghost story, but began her writing with an exploration of the rise of socialism in the United Kingdom and how the fading gentry dealt with losing their legacies. A mix of influences is evident to reviewers: Henry James
Henry James
Henry James, OM was an American-born writer, regarded as one of the key figures of 19th-century literary realism. He was the son of Henry James, Sr., a clergyman, and the brother of philosopher and psychologist William James and diarist Alice James....
, Shirley Jackson
Shirley Jackson
Shirley Jackson was an American author. A popular writer in her time, her work has received increasing attention from literary critics in recent years...
, Wilkie Collins
Wilkie Collins
William Wilkie Collins was an English novelist, playwright, and author of short stories. He was very popular during the Victorian era and wrote 30 novels, more than 60 short stories, 14 plays, and over 100 non-fiction pieces...
, and Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe was an American author, poet, editor and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective...
. The novel was mostly well-received by critics as Waters' strengths are exhibited in setting of mood and pacing of the story. It is Waters' third novel to be short-listed for the Man Booker Prize
Man Booker Prize
The Man Booker Prize for Fiction is a literary prize awarded each year for the best original full-length novel, written in the English language, by a citizen of the Commonwealth of Nations, Ireland, or Zimbabwe. The winner of the Man Booker Prize is generally assured of international renown and...
.
Background
Waters' writing was well-received upon the publication of her first novel, Tipping the VelvetTipping the Velvet
Tipping the Velvet is an historical novel written by Sarah Waters published in 1998. Set in Victorian England during the 1890s, it tells a coming of age story about a young woman named Nan who falls in love with a male impersonator, follows her to London, and finds various ways to support herself...
, a story set in Victorian London. She began writing in her early 30s while completing a dissertation in English literature about gay and lesbian fiction from the 1870s onward. Not enjoying the expository, she attempted fiction and finding that she liked it, followed Tipping the Velvet with Affinity
Affinity (novel)
Affinity is a 1999 historical fiction novel by Sarah Waters. It is the author's second novel, following Tipping the Velvet, and followed by Fingersmith.-Plot summary:...
, another Victorian-set novel with gothic themes, and Fingersmith
Fingersmith (novel)
Fingersmith is a 2002 Victorian-inspired crime fiction novel by Sarah Waters.-Part one:Sue Trinder, an orphan raised in 'a Fagin-like den of thieves' by her adoptive mother, Mrs. Sucksby, is sent to help Richard 'Gentleman' Rivers seduce a wealthy heiress. Posing as a maid, Sue is to gain the trust...
, also Victorian yet more a Dickensian
Charles Dickens
Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period. Dickens enjoyed a wider popularity and fame than had any previous author during his lifetime, and he remains popular, having been responsible for some of English literature's most iconic...
crime drama. All three have significant lesbian themes and characters; Waters often labels them as "Victorian lesbo romps". To avoid being pigeonholed as a niche writer, however (asking "Why, oh why, did I ever allow the phrase 'lesbo Victorian romp' to cross my lips?"), she followed these with The Night Watch
The Night Watch (Waters novel)
The Night Watch is a 2006 historical fiction novel by Sarah Waters. It was shortlisted for the 2006 Man Booker Prize and longlisted for the 2006 Orange Prize. The novel, which is told backward through third person narrative, takes place in 1940s London during and after World War II...
, which also has gay and lesbian characters, but is set in the 1940s.
For The Little Stranger, Waters diverted from overt lesbian themes, but incorporated other elements from previous books. A character in Affinity talks to spirits of the dead; the setting of Fingersmith is a large country estate inhabited by a small family and house staff; The Night Watch is set in post-WWII Britain with characters who are somewhat at a loss with what to do following the upheaval of war. Barry Didock in The Herald considers The Night Watch a companion piece to The Little Stranger. Waters states that the change from a conservative to socialist society was her true impetus for writing The Little Stranger: "I didn't set out to write a haunted house novel. I wanted to write about what happened to class in that post-war setting. It was a time of turmoil in exciting ways. Working class people had come out of the war with higher expectations. They had voted in the Labour government. They want change.... So it was a culture in a state of change. But obviously for some people it was a change for the worse." She set out, in actuality, to rewrite a version of The Franchise Affair
The Franchise Affair
The Franchise Affair is a 1948 mystery novel by Josephine Tey, in which a small-town lawyer is called on to defend two women accused of kidnapping and mistreating a girl named Betty Kane....
by Josephine Tey
Josephine Tey
Josephine Tey was a pseudonym used by Elizabeth Mackintosh a Scottish author best known for her mystery novels. She also wrote as Gordon Daviot, under which name she wrote plays with an historical theme....
, a courtroom thriller about a middle class family accused of kidnapping a young girl.
Waters is well-known for the immense amount of research she completes for her novels. Researching for The Night Watch gave her background that she used in The Little Stranger, leading her to call 1947 "a miserable year"; much of her time preparing for this novel was spent in Warwickshire estate homes and local newspaper archives. She told The Globe and Mail
I read a lot of novels from the period. And diaries were a wonderful resource. I also watched films from that period and went to museums and archives to look at ephemera from the period. I like to try to capture the idiom and slang... A writer at that time wouldn't have used profanity in a respectable novel. But if you look at diaries or letters, people were swearing all the time, in very modern-sounding ways. One of the excitements about writing about the past from the present is that you can put in a lot of the details that the mainstream novelists of the time couldn't because of the conventions of the time.
Plot summary
Faraday, a country doctor with humble beginnings, is called to Hundreds Hall, an 18th century estate that has lived far beyond its former glory. He treats a young maid who dislikes the large, drafty emptiness of the house, but strikes a friendship with Caroline Ayres, the unmarried daughter of the family, her brother Roderick, who continues to heal physically and mentally from his experiences as a pilot in World War II, and their mother, the lady of the estate. He begins treating Roderick's lingering badly healed wounds and becomes a family friend, knowing them well enough to realise they are in dire financial straits and unable to keep the house in any comfortable condition without selling their lands or objects in the house.In an attempt to cheer up the family and possibly match Caroline to a potential husband, they throw a party for a few family friends when disaster strikes. A couple brings their young child who is mauled by Caroline's ancient and previously gentle Labrador retriever. Roderick begins to behave moodily and drink heavily. Faraday believes the strain of managing the estate is at fault. Roderick, however, divulges that something appeared in his room the night the dog attacked the girl. It was first in his room trying to harm him, and that he must keep the unseen force focused on him so as not to direct its attention to his sister or mother. Spots begin appearing on his walls looking like burns, and he is committed to a mental hospital after Caroline awakes in the middle of the night to find his room on fire though he is passed out in a drunken stupor.
Faraday and Caroline waver between romance and confused platonic friendship. Other sounds in the house alarm Caroline and Mrs Ayres and their two maids. They find curious childish writing on the walls where these activities have taken place. The maids' bells sound without anyone calling them; the phone rings in the middle of the night with no one on the line. A 19th century tube communication device linking the abandoned nursery to the kitchen begins to sound, scaring the maids. When Mrs Ayres goes to investigate, she is locked in the nursery where Susan, her much-loved first daughter, died of diphtheria
Diphtheria
Diphtheria is an upper respiratory tract illness caused by Corynebacterium diphtheriae, a facultative anaerobic, Gram-positive bacterium. It is characterized by sore throat, low fever, and an adherent membrane on the tonsils, pharynx, and/or nasal cavity...
at eight years old. Experiencing shadows and indiscernible fluttering and frantic to escape, Mrs Ayres pounds the windows open, cutting her arms. After Caroline and the maids free her and she recovers, she comes to believe and take comfort that Susan is around her at all times, that Susan is impatient to be with her though she sometimes harms her. Caroline and the maid find one morning Mrs Ayres has hanged herself.
The day of Mrs Ayres' funeral, Faraday and Caroline set plans to marry in six weeks' time. Caroline, however, is listless and uninterested in the wedding, eventually calling it off and making plans to sell Hundreds Hall. Faraday is unable to believe it and tries several times to talk Caroline out of it to no avail. On the night of their would-be wedding, Faraday has a call that keeps him out and comes home to learn that Caroline hurled herself off of the second floor onto a marble landing, killing herself. The maid reports at the inquest that she awoke to hear Caroline go upstairs to inspect a sound she heard in the darkened hall. She simply said "You!" then fell to her death. Three years later, Faraday continues to visit the abandoned mansion, unable to find what Caroline saw.
Style
Sara O'Leary in The GazetteThe Gazette (Montreal)
The Gazette, often called the Montreal Gazette to avoid ambiguity, is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, with three other daily English newspapers all having shut down at different times during the second half of the 20th century.-History:In 1778,...
states that Waters' narrative voice is her strongest asset and that she has an "uncanny ability to synthesize her research and is never expository in the telling details she draws upon—tiny little things about what people wore or ate or had in their houses". Emma Donoghue in the Globe and Mail remarks on the diversion from the narrative style in The Little Stranger. Waters is known in her previous four novels for providing plot twists, but this one, notes Donoghue, provides a straightforward accounting that tackles issues of insanity, poltergeist
Poltergeist
A poltergeist is a paranormal phenomenon which consists of events alluding to the manifestation of an imperceptible entity. Such manifestation typically includes inanimate objects moving or being thrown about, sentient noises and, on some occasions, physical attacks on those witnessing the...
s, and family secrets "with a minimum of tricks". The review in The Washington Post
The Washington Post
The Washington Post is Washington, D.C.'s largest newspaper and its oldest still-existing paper, founded in 1877. Located in the capital of the United States, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are printed for daily circulation...
concurs, using a quote by Henry James to say everything to be done in the way of ghost stories and haunted house
Haunted house
A haunted house is a house or other building often perceived as being inhabited by disembodied spirits of the deceased who may have been former residents or were familiar with the property...
s has been done. Ron Charles states that the novel is not cliché due to Waters' restraint: "the story's sustained ambiguity is what keeps our attention, and her perfectly calibrated tone casts an unnerving spell". A similar review appeared in The Australian
The Australian
The Australian is a broadsheet newspaper published in Australia from Monday to Saturday each week since 14 July 1964. The editor in chief is Chris Mitchell, the editor is Clive Mathieson and the 'editor-at-large' is Paul Kelly....
calling attention to Waters' "moderation and flawless cadence" that forms "a story pulsing with malevolent energy" and an "atmosphere is wickedly, addictively tense".
In The Sunday Telegraph, John Preston writes that "the richness of Waters's writing ensures that the air of thickening dread is very thick indeed. Everything, from Mrs Ayres's 'absurdly over-engineered shoes', to the hairs on Caroline's legs—each one 'laden with dust, like an eye-blacked lash'—is described with a wonderfully sharp eye." Waters herself acknowledges the light-handedness of the supernatural elements of the story, stating "I wanted the ghost story to be fairly subtle. The ghost stories that I've enjoyed are uncanny, unsettling and eerie more than they are about in-your-face pyrotechnics. I wanted it to be very based in the social context of the time, but for it to have this extra element of strangeness."
Several references in The Little Stranger indicate the influences Waters used in its composition. Rebecca Starford in The Australian praises Waters' ability to use elements from other authors: "Waters is one of the great contemporary storytellers. She has never made bones about borrowing", noting that her inspirations for this story were Daphne du Maurier
Daphne du Maurier
Dame Daphne du Maurier, Lady Browning DBE was a British author and playwright.Many of her works have been adapted into films, including the novels Rebecca and Jamaica Inn and the short stories "The Birds" and "Don't Look Now". The first three were directed by Alfred Hitchcock.Her elder sister was...
, Henry James
Henry James
Henry James, OM was an American-born writer, regarded as one of the key figures of 19th-century literary realism. He was the son of Henry James, Sr., a clergyman, and the brother of philosopher and psychologist William James and diarist Alice James....
, Agatha Christie
Agatha Christie
Dame Agatha Christie DBE was a British crime writer of novels, short stories, and plays. She also wrote romances under the name Mary Westmacott, but she is best remembered for her 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections , and her successful West End plays.According to...
, and Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens
Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period. Dickens enjoyed a wider popularity and fame than had any previous author during his lifetime, and he remains popular, having been responsible for some of English literature's most iconic...
. As children, Roderick and Caroline changed the hands of a broken clock to twenty minutes to nine, thinking it amusing to reflect the stopped clocks of Miss Havisham
Miss Havisham
Miss Havisham is a significant character in the Charles Dickens novel Great Expectations . She is a wealthy spinster, who lives in her ruined mansion with her adopted daughter, Estella, whom she has sent to France, while she herself is described as looking like "the witch of the place."Although she...
's house from Great Expectations
Great Expectations
Great Expectations is a novel by Charles Dickens. It was first published in serial form in the publication All the Year Round from 1 December 1860 to August 1861. It has been adapted for stage and screen over 250 times....
. Like Mrs Danvers in Rebecca
Rebecca (novel)
Rebecca is a novel by Daphne du Maurier. When Rebecca was published in 1938, du Maurier became – to her great surprise – one of the most popular authors of the day. Rebecca is considered to be one of her best works...
, Faraday has no first name; the man overcome by the house in The Fall of the House of Usher is also named Roderick. Peter Cannon in Publishers Weekly
Publishers Weekly
Publishers Weekly, aka PW, is an American weekly trade news magazine targeted at publishers, librarians, booksellers and literary agents...
writes that the novel is evocative of Henry James' The Turn of the Screw
The Turn of the Screw
The Turn of the Screw is a novella written by Henry James. Originally published in 1898, it is ostensibly a ghost story.Due to its ambiguous content, it became a favourite text of academics who subscribe to New Criticism. The novella has had differing interpretations, often mutually exclusive...
and Shirley Jackson
Shirley Jackson
Shirley Jackson was an American author. A popular writer in her time, her work has received increasing attention from literary critics in recent years...
's The Haunting of Hill House
The Haunting of Hill House
For the Richard Matheson novel, see Hell House, made into a film titled The Legend of Hell House.The Haunting of Hill House is a 1959 novel by author Shirley Jackson. Finalist for the National Book Award and considered one of the best literary ghost stories published during the twentieth century,...
.
Evil
As a doctor, Faraday is a rational narrator who confronts each member of the Ayres family and the maids in turn as they divulge their suspicions that something in the house is alive. As he consults with other physicians, they are able to explain away the strange happenings easily with answers supplied by medicine and psychology. Waters does not give definitive answers about the occurrences, leaving it more a philosophical issue. Not wanting to frustrate the reader however, she admits "I tried to keep it strange, keep what was happening genuinely odd, without closing it down with a neat explanation at the end." The title of the book is a reference to Faraday's continuing questions; Roderick is fearful that the house is infectious. Eventually Faraday wonders if it is "consumed by some dark germ, some ravenous shadow-creature, some 'little stranger' spawned from the troubled unconscious of someone connected with the house itself".Emma Donoghue
Emma Donoghue
Emma Donoghue is an Irish-born playwright, literary historian and novelist now living in Canada. Her 2010 novel Room was a finalist for the Man Booker Prize and an international bestseller. Donoghue's 1995 novel Hood won the Stonewall Book Award and Slammerkin won the Ferro-Grumley Award for...
considers the deepest theme of the story to be "the unpindownability of evil", as suspicion shifts to individuals who may be self-destructing from the forces around them, possible malevolent motivations from the family or house staff, an unseen force inhabiting the house, or Faraday himself. Faraday's concern for the family is often intertwined for concern for the house so that he often discourages those who are obviously troubled by staying there from leaving it. He explains away the suspicions of Mrs Ayres, who believes that Susan is in the house trying to hasten their reunion; Caroline, who believes that Roderick is so upset in the mental institution that a part of him is trying to contact the family to warn them of something; and Betty, the maid who is convinced the malevolent spirit of a former domestic resides on the second floor of the home. Faraday's rationalisations become increasingly improbable as he blames all the strangeness on fatigue, stress, even the house's plumbing. Ron Charles in The Washington Post considers Faraday's deep concern for the family that is often mixed with envy to be influenced by Patricia Highsmith
Patricia Highsmith
Patricia Highsmith was an American novelist and short-story writer most widely known for her psychological thrillers, which led to more than two dozen film adaptations. Her first novel, Strangers on a Train, has been adapted for stage and screen numerous times, notably by Alfred Hitchcock in 1951...
's psychopathic manipulator Tom Ripley.
Class
Class and ambition is repeatedly referenced in the novel. Faraday's mother was at one time a nursery maid at Hundreds Hall, much like Waters' grandparents who were domestics in a country estate; the reader is first given a description of its opulence when the narrator is a child and he attends a garden fêteFête
Fête is a French word meaning festival, celebration or party, which has passed into English as a label that may be given to certain events.-Description:It is widely used in England and Australia in the context of a village fête,...
, and is so entranced with the building he plies a piece of it off and puts it in his pocket. He often revisits his memory of his first significant impression of the mansion comparing it with its current state. Soldiers were billeted in its rooms during the recent war. Two centuries of wear and weather have taken their toll, and the taxes on the British gentry are too high for the family to bear. They attempt to reconcile their family legacy with the reality of having no money to keep it up. Charlotte Heathcote in The Sunday Express and Rebecca Starford in The Australian both note that the novel is preoccupied with class.
Faraday too is conflicted as he recounts how his family sacrificed everything, including his mother's health and life to give him his education. He laments that he has not achieved anything with it and he visits Hundreds Hall vacillating between being flattered and feeling undeserving of knowing a family like the Ayres. They, however, seem resolute to not being able to afford the upkeep of the house and once Roderick is gone, Caroline and Mrs Ayres are ambivalent about staying in the house. It is Faraday who is most indignant about the family forcing to sell their land and possessions. Faraday is an unreliable narrator
Unreliable narrator
An unreliable narrator is a narrator, whether in literature, film, or theatre, whose credibility has been seriously compromised. The term was coined in 1961 by Wayne C. Booth in The Rhetoric of Fiction. This narrative mode is one that can be developed by an author for a number of reasons, usually...
, and reviewers noted the slight discrepancies in what he says to the family as their doctor and his devotion to the house at their expense.
Near the end, as Faraday attempts to explain reasonably and scientifically why the family for which he has grown so fond is falling apart, he wonders what must be eating them alive; a friend blurts "Something is....It's called a Labour government." Barry Didock notes that Waters captures the stark mood of postwar Britain that Evelyn Waugh
Evelyn Waugh
Arthur Evelyn St. John Waugh , known as Evelyn Waugh, was an English writer of novels, travel books and biographies. He was also a prolific journalist and reviewer...
did in Brideshead Revisited
Brideshead Revisited
Brideshead Revisited, The Sacred & Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder is a novel by English writer Evelyn Waugh, first published in 1945. Waugh wrote that the novel "deals with what is theologically termed 'the operation of Grace', that is to say, the unmerited and unilateral act of love by...
, where the social changes the country was encountering did not make the future optimistic at all. The anxiety about the future is so all-consuming that Scarlett Thomas in The New York Times suggests it is the cause for speculation about each character's sanity. Waters concedes that although her novels are all period pieces, they are not meant to instill an overwhelming romantic sense of nostalgia: "I'd hate to think that my writing's escapist. For me, my interest in the past is closely linked to my interest in the present, in the historical process of how things lead to others."
Reception
Upon its release on 28 May 2009, reception to the novel was mostly positive. Ron Charles in The Washington PostThe Washington Post
The Washington Post is Washington, D.C.'s largest newspaper and its oldest still-existing paper, founded in 1877. Located in the capital of the United States, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are printed for daily circulation...
calls The Little Stranger "deliciously creepy", stating that the tale is "one screw away from The Fall of the House of Usher
The Fall of the House of Usher
"The Fall of the House of Usher" is a short story by Edgar Allan Poe, first published in September 1839 in Burton's Gentleman's Magazine. It was slightly revised in 1840 for the collection Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque...
". Erica Wagner, a reviewer for The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
confesses that "left alone one night in her boxy Seventies ex-council house—about as unspooky a place as you can imagine—had to stop reading for fright". Corinna Hente in The Herald Sun writes "This is a terrific, chilling read you can get lost in, from a first-class storyteller", although she accedes that the novel is slow to start and readers may be disappointed with the ambiguous ending. Charlotte Heathcote calls Waters "a darkly masterful storyteller with a rare gift for bringing a bygone era to vibrant life". The ambiguity of the jostling between evil and class was praised by Scarlett Thomas in The New York Times, as Thomas notes, "Sarah Waters is an excellent, evocative writer, and this is an incredibly gripping and readable novel" but questions about the likable Ayres family who are killed as if by being socially redundant leave Thomas uncomfortable.
Kirkus Reviews
Kirkus Reviews
Kirkus Reviews is an American book review magazine founded in 1933 by Virginia Kirkus . Kirkus serves the book and literary trade sector, including libraries, publishers, literary and film agents, film and TV producers and booksellers. Kirkus Reviews is published on the first and 15th of each month...
was similarly pleased with Waters' detail, but considered the relaxing of tension in crucial places and Faraday's sometimes second-hand narration of events in Hundreds Hall flawed. They write, however, that Waters "work[s] 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. A subtle clue planted in one character's given name neatly foreshadows, then explains, the Ayres family's self-destructive insularity." John Preston in The Sunday Telegraph was disappointed with the ending, complaining of the loss of tension, but states, "it's still a hell of a ride getting there". Tom Beer in Newsday
Newsday
Newsday is a daily American newspaper that primarily serves Nassau and Suffolk counties and the New York City borough of Queens on Long Island, although it is sold throughout the New York metropolitan area...
greatly praised the novel, writing that "the pleasures of The Little Stranger aren't those of your garden-variety suspense novel. They lie, instead, with the author's uncanny ability to paint her characters and their world and to seduce the reader into following along with her. Hundreds Hall is a pretty gloomy place, but I was thrilled to spend time there, under the guidance of this supremely gifted storyteller."
Following Fingersmith and The Night Watch, The Little Stranger became Waters' third novel to be short-listed for the Man Booker Prize
Man Booker Prize
The Man Booker Prize for Fiction is a literary prize awarded each year for the best original full-length novel, written in the English language, by a citizen of the Commonwealth of Nations, Ireland, or Zimbabwe. The winner of the Man Booker Prize is generally assured of international renown and...
, a prestigious award for novelists who are citizens of the British Commonwealth. Salon.com
Salon.com
Salon.com, part of Salon Media Group , often just called Salon, is an online liberal magazine, with content updated each weekday. Salon was founded by David Talbot and launched on November 20, 1995. It was the internet's first online-only commercial publication. The magazine focuses on U.S...
chose the novel as one of the best books of 2009
Salon Book Awards
Salon Book Awards is an annual literary award given by the editors of Salon.com to fiction and nonfiction books published the previous year. The editors' criteria for winning books are:The award was established in 1996.-Winners of Salon Book Awards:...
. Waters' website reports that the novel has been optioned for a film adaptation.
Citations
- References to The Little Stranger correspond to Waters, Sarah (2009). The Little Stranger, Riverhead Trade (American edition). ISBN 9781594488801