Book Reviews
Sarah Waters is a lovely writer. She has written four bestselling novels: Tipping the Velvet, Affinity, Fingersmith and The Night Watch. Tipping the Velvet and Fingersmithwere by far my favourites, and those rankings stand.
The Little Stranger is a dark, and maddeningly compelling, read. Set in post-World-War-I rural Warwickshire, the dumpy, semi-successful bachelor Dr. Faraday has the hots for plain-Jane, fallen-from-riches Caroline Ayres. It’s an Austen-esque affair with a Mary Shelley monster story as a plot driver.
The Austen Element: Dr. Faraday becomes interested in Caroline Ayres, or perhaps the status she represents (even though she’s poorer than a church mouse). Caroline is interested in Dr. Faraday as an exit route from her dire circumstances and family burdens. I won’t spoil the romance tale by telling you what happens here.
The Shelley Element: Hundreds Hall has been home to the Ayres family for centuries. It’s a grand mansion that’s crumbling without dignity. An eyesore, a money sinkhole and an emotional burden (how can you give up the family home even as it drags you down), the home has personality and character in ways that become hauntingly evident throughout the novel.
As sinister things occur to each family member, it is Dr. Faraday, our trusty narrator, who is left to rationalize the happenings. But is he so endearing? Is he an infallible narrator?
Again, I won’t spoil it by telling you my thoughts here. Instead I’ll say that although the narrative was eerie and formed a great literary suspense story, I found Dr. Faraday exasperating. Not enough to stop reading, but enough to feel like he was an unwanted guest at an afternoon tea party from which I couldn’t extract myself.
If you like Sarah Waters, definitely give this one a read. If you haven’t heard of her before, start with Tipping the Velvet or Fingersmith, then make your way to this novel.
Posted by Monique at 09:17 PM. Filed under: Book Publisher • McClelland & Stewart •Book Reviews •
Guardian book club: The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters. The careful ambiguity of this gothic mystery adds up to a collection of frustratingly loose ends. Should I let it put me off this much-loved writer?
For a well-received, Booker short-listed novel, The Little Stranger seems curiously unpopular with those who might be expected to like it most. Whenever I have told a Sarah Waters fan that I've been reading the book, they've all peered at me anxiously and asked if it was the first of her novels that I'd read. When I've said yes, they've looked more worried still and begged me not to take it as representative, not to be "put off". The consensus seems to be that it isn't half as much fun as the author's earlier forays into lesbian historical fiction, half as impressive as The Night Watch, or even approaching them in passion, energy and gusto. The problem, as my better half put it, is that The Little Stranger is just "too measured and controlled".
Superficially, this complaint seems odd for what is essentially a gothic haunted house mystery. Daphne du Maurier was the first comparable writer who sprang to mind as I read Waters' story of an old family on its last legs, rattling around in an old mansion (the Hundreds Hall) in which they go steadily more potty. In fact, there are many events that the rarely restrained Du Maurier might consider over the top. As well as dwindling fortunes, madness and tragedy, the Ayres family seem beset by all manner of things that go bump in the night. Furniture appears to move of its own volition and very much against the wishes of the householders. An apparent malicious presence taunts a dog into biting a little girl's face during a fantastically awkward social occasion. Spooky writing manifests beneath the paintwork. Servants start to worry that there's something "bad" hanging around the house. The house itself takes on a macabre life of its own (in one memorable passage, the narrator says the eldest Ayres daughter, Caroline, "went into the house as if stepping into a rip in the night"). People die in extravagantly suspicious circumstances. It's hardly Raymond Carver.
In spite of all that, this is a book in which the author is clearly nervous about releasing the throttle. The complaints of Waters' fans centred around the narrator, a dry, restrained country quack called Dr Faraday. A working class lad (his mother used to be a servant at Hundreds Hall) who is steadily making good thanks to the application of rational science, Faraday isn't at all keen to give way to passion, or anything else not dreamt of in his philosophy. He is the careful, stolid presence who often appears in ghost stories to try to pour cold water on the idea of supernatural presences – only to stoke the flames higher in readers' minds. He is dull.
In an intriguing review in The Observer, Tracy Chevalier gave a good idea of why Faraday might be so problematic - aside from and above being a bit of a bore:
"There is an inherent problem with ghost stories: they always boil down to a futile argument between sceptic and believer. Poor Dr Faraday has the thankless task of trying to convince the Ayres that every odd sight and sound and incident has a rational explanation. I eventually grew tired of vacillating between wondering if there was a real ghost and expecting the housemaid to be behind it all; I longed for a credible third way."
I'm with Chevalier on the wearying nature of this debate but, funnily enough, I thought Waters had found something of a third way. She leaves open the tantalising possibility that rational Dr Faraday might actually be a bit of a psycho, or even a malign psychic presence. There are hints that this singularly unreliable narrator might be the root and cause of much of the trouble. He seems prone to blackouts, is desperate to get his hands on the house, has a motive rooted in class envy, is alibi-free at important times, and there are a number of references to his potential involvement in the closing pages. It's also possible to believe that the titular Little Stranger is indeed a malign, ghostly presence in the house. Or that the various members of the Ayres household have, more straightforwardly, gone round the bend. Or that the book forms a grand metaphor for the post-war destruction of the gentry by the rising working class, embodied by Faraday and his ilk.
There's something to be said for such ambivalence, but sadly most of that relates to frustration. Unlike, say, The Turn Of The Screw, where the uncertainty is unsettling, here it just feels as if we are being led along to little purpose. It doesn't seem like a wealth of choice so much as a dearth of real possibility. Alone or in combination, the various suggestions that Waters provides fail to convince.
The Little Stranger is a dark, and maddeningly compelling, read. Set in post-World-War-I rural Warwickshire, the dumpy, semi-successful bachelor Dr. Faraday has the hots for plain-Jane, fallen-from-riches Caroline Ayres. It’s an Austen-esque affair with a Mary Shelley monster story as a plot driver.
The Austen Element: Dr. Faraday becomes interested in Caroline Ayres, or perhaps the status she represents (even though she’s poorer than a church mouse). Caroline is interested in Dr. Faraday as an exit route from her dire circumstances and family burdens. I won’t spoil the romance tale by telling you what happens here.
The Shelley Element: Hundreds Hall has been home to the Ayres family for centuries. It’s a grand mansion that’s crumbling without dignity. An eyesore, a money sinkhole and an emotional burden (how can you give up the family home even as it drags you down), the home has personality and character in ways that become hauntingly evident throughout the novel.
As sinister things occur to each family member, it is Dr. Faraday, our trusty narrator, who is left to rationalize the happenings. But is he so endearing? Is he an infallible narrator?
Again, I won’t spoil it by telling you my thoughts here. Instead I’ll say that although the narrative was eerie and formed a great literary suspense story, I found Dr. Faraday exasperating. Not enough to stop reading, but enough to feel like he was an unwanted guest at an afternoon tea party from which I couldn’t extract myself.
If you like Sarah Waters, definitely give this one a read. If you haven’t heard of her before, start with Tipping the Velvet or Fingersmith, then make your way to this novel.
Posted by Monique at 09:17 PM. Filed under: Book Publisher • McClelland & Stewart •Book Reviews •
Guardian book club: The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters. The careful ambiguity of this gothic mystery adds up to a collection of frustratingly loose ends. Should I let it put me off this much-loved writer?
For a well-received, Booker short-listed novel, The Little Stranger seems curiously unpopular with those who might be expected to like it most. Whenever I have told a Sarah Waters fan that I've been reading the book, they've all peered at me anxiously and asked if it was the first of her novels that I'd read. When I've said yes, they've looked more worried still and begged me not to take it as representative, not to be "put off". The consensus seems to be that it isn't half as much fun as the author's earlier forays into lesbian historical fiction, half as impressive as The Night Watch, or even approaching them in passion, energy and gusto. The problem, as my better half put it, is that The Little Stranger is just "too measured and controlled".
Superficially, this complaint seems odd for what is essentially a gothic haunted house mystery. Daphne du Maurier was the first comparable writer who sprang to mind as I read Waters' story of an old family on its last legs, rattling around in an old mansion (the Hundreds Hall) in which they go steadily more potty. In fact, there are many events that the rarely restrained Du Maurier might consider over the top. As well as dwindling fortunes, madness and tragedy, the Ayres family seem beset by all manner of things that go bump in the night. Furniture appears to move of its own volition and very much against the wishes of the householders. An apparent malicious presence taunts a dog into biting a little girl's face during a fantastically awkward social occasion. Spooky writing manifests beneath the paintwork. Servants start to worry that there's something "bad" hanging around the house. The house itself takes on a macabre life of its own (in one memorable passage, the narrator says the eldest Ayres daughter, Caroline, "went into the house as if stepping into a rip in the night"). People die in extravagantly suspicious circumstances. It's hardly Raymond Carver.
In spite of all that, this is a book in which the author is clearly nervous about releasing the throttle. The complaints of Waters' fans centred around the narrator, a dry, restrained country quack called Dr Faraday. A working class lad (his mother used to be a servant at Hundreds Hall) who is steadily making good thanks to the application of rational science, Faraday isn't at all keen to give way to passion, or anything else not dreamt of in his philosophy. He is the careful, stolid presence who often appears in ghost stories to try to pour cold water on the idea of supernatural presences – only to stoke the flames higher in readers' minds. He is dull.
In an intriguing review in The Observer, Tracy Chevalier gave a good idea of why Faraday might be so problematic - aside from and above being a bit of a bore:
"There is an inherent problem with ghost stories: they always boil down to a futile argument between sceptic and believer. Poor Dr Faraday has the thankless task of trying to convince the Ayres that every odd sight and sound and incident has a rational explanation. I eventually grew tired of vacillating between wondering if there was a real ghost and expecting the housemaid to be behind it all; I longed for a credible third way."
I'm with Chevalier on the wearying nature of this debate but, funnily enough, I thought Waters had found something of a third way. She leaves open the tantalising possibility that rational Dr Faraday might actually be a bit of a psycho, or even a malign psychic presence. There are hints that this singularly unreliable narrator might be the root and cause of much of the trouble. He seems prone to blackouts, is desperate to get his hands on the house, has a motive rooted in class envy, is alibi-free at important times, and there are a number of references to his potential involvement in the closing pages. It's also possible to believe that the titular Little Stranger is indeed a malign, ghostly presence in the house. Or that the various members of the Ayres household have, more straightforwardly, gone round the bend. Or that the book forms a grand metaphor for the post-war destruction of the gentry by the rising working class, embodied by Faraday and his ilk.
There's something to be said for such ambivalence, but sadly most of that relates to frustration. Unlike, say, The Turn Of The Screw, where the uncertainty is unsettling, here it just feels as if we are being led along to little purpose. It doesn't seem like a wealth of choice so much as a dearth of real possibility. Alone or in combination, the various suggestions that Waters provides fail to convince.