The Little Stranger - Sarah Waters

I was pleased last year when I heard that Sarah Waters had a new novel out and even more pleased to hear that it was a ghost story as I felt sure she would do it well. I think it's really difficult to pull off a satisfying ghost story and although I love the idea of them, those I have read I have often found let downs, especially the endings. Waters' first three novels which have all been televised, were set in the Victorian era and she was credited with having invented a new genre of 'Victorian lesbian romp', but her fourth novel 'The Nightwatch', was set during the second world war and this ... more

I find that I tend to read things by the same authors, so when I saw this book advertised as being ‘a chilling ghost story’ I thought I would give it a try. The story is told from the point of view of Dr Faraday and begins when he is about ten years old, visiting a large old house where his mother is a maid. There is lots of description about the house and what it was like and even a passage about sneaking down to the servants quarters to have some food. The story then jumps forward several years to just after the war, to show Dr Faraday when he is almost forty and as one of the local doctors ... more

I purchased The Little Stranger on the basis of its author, Sarah Walters. I was on my lunch break at work and being in a rush scanned the book shop shelves and her name jumped out at me. I have read all her previous books and thoroughly enjoyed them despite an occasional wince at their explicitness and so thought with time ticking this was a good book to choose. I was a little surprised on getting home that evening and reading the blurb on the back of the book what a departure in style The Little Stranger was to Walter's previous work. Perhaps it was not such a safe bet of a purchase after ... more

I was given this book to read in my proof-reading job. I was very pleased to find it was an author I liked and therefore looked forward to reading this. Unlike her other books there is absolutely no reference to lesbianism in this novel. The main plot of the novel is that a doctor befriends a family who are the failing remnants of the landed gentry. He is introduced by dealing with an ill servant girl, and having visited the house in his childhood. After befriending the family, which consists of an elderly mother and her two adult children, one daughter, and a son with an old war injury ... more

Very disappointed with the latest novel from Sarah Waters, whose wartime story 'The Night Watch' was unputdownable. It's supposed to be a ghost story, the tale of a haunted house, but it is very slow to start and there is never a real feel of spookiness or any vestige of explanation as to why life should suddenly start to change at Hundreds Hall. At the end the narrator, a doctor who becomes intimately involved with the hall and its residents, is still unconvinced that anything paranormal has taken place. I was intrigued, however, by the attitude of the medics whose main form of treatment ... more