Buffalo & Erie County Public Library Staff Review
The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters is a gripping combination of
spooky ghost story, psychological drama, and social observation.
Waters spends the first hundred or so pages building up layers
of detail concerning social class and post-war decay in rural Warwickshire,
England. The real story begins
when the book’s narrator, Dr. Faraday, a country General Practitioner, is
called to Hundreds Hall, the gloomy, dilapidated home of the widow Ayres and
her two children, Roderick and Caroline.
There he treats a young serving girl, diagnosing her vague stomach
ailments as mere homesickness, and dismissing her sentiments of
something-not-quite-right at Hundreds Hall.
Events move forward beginning with a social gathering in the salon
room that ends in tragedy, as Gyp, Caroline’s mild-mannered dog, is driven to
attack a young child. Burn marks
rise in the ancient plaster, writing appears on formerly pristine walls,
Roderick’s room bursts into flames, and characters descend into madness and
suicide. Everyone, except Faraday,
believes that Hundreds Hall is haunted, and that the ghost is not a friendly
one.
In The Little Stranger, Sarah Waters has given us an intelligent
ghost story with echoes of Henry James and Edgar Allen Poe. The writing is
subtle, the novel builds steadily, and the reader is drawn into this ominous
and atmospheric tale by a master storyteller.