The Little Stranger

Sarah Waters' The Little Stranger can be most simply described as a ghost story, but that doesn't do it complete justice. For one thing, I'm not sure there's really a ghost here. The more complicated description deals with the end of a way of life that was typical in post-war Britain.

In many ways the book is a variation on Poe's The Fall of the House of Usher. A brother and sister live in a decaying mansion, and an outsider intercedes. But Waters avoids much of Poe's Gothic lyricism. The narrator of The Little Stranger is a doctor (we only know him as Dr. Faraday), who is no-nonsense and tells the tale without the baroqueness of Poe's narrator. But Waters' tale is just as creepy as Poe's, if only at certain points in the book.

Faraday has long been enraptured by a house called Hundreds Hall. His mother, a serving girl, once worked there, and he visited as a small child, even knicking a piece of woodwork. Years later he returns to administer to Roderick Ayres, the war-wounded scion of the family (Roderick is also the name of the Usher brother). The estate has fallen into disrepair, as the family's income has dropped precipitously. Faraday befriends the family, which also includes Roderick's sister Caroline and their mother.

Strange things begin to happen, starting with the family dog attacking a child. Mysterious smudges appear on the wall, and Roderick seems to be losing his mind. Faraday and Caroline form an attachment, but it is not clear whether Faraday is more in love with Caroline or her house. Waters' greatest trick in this book is to make Faraday's narration unreliable.

Faraday himself never sees anything strange--he always hears it second-hand, but his descriptions are hair-raisingly terrifying. Two sequences are very well done: when Roderick recounts watching as his shaving mirror moves toward him, and then when Mrs. Ayres is locked in the nursery and some being is dancing around on the other side of the door (a dead child is involved, but never directly implicated as the spirit).

Those who are interested in pure genre may be disappointed that Waters never gives us specifics on what is happening, but that works fine with me. I think her greater point is to express the change in the British gentry in the period following World War II, when estates were carved and sold for housing lots. Though this metaphor hangs in the book, the scares are there for those who want a book to read during a stormy night.