The Little Stranger

This one was hard to star. I think it is quite a masterful book, which stays true to it's narrative form and for that it deserves at least 4 stars. But I dreaded reading it. I think that was a combo of the increasing anxiety that pervades the book combined with how slowly it builds that anxiety. It did manage to completely scare the crap out of me at one point though.

Doctor Faraday is a physician called out to a patient in an old run-down Georgian house in the summer of 1947. The patient is a young servant girl with a wild imagination. The family is from another world, a world of glamour and money and condescension, a world which disappeared with WWII but the family are desperately trying to hold on to. The strain begins to show when a fire mysteriously starts in in one of the bedrooms, strange noises are heard through the walls and ceiling and the family discover marking scratched in the paintwork.
 
As a haunted house mystery I found this didn't work too well, there wasn't enough tension and spookiness. What did work was reading it as a psychological study of a disappearing class in a world they no longer recognised. After WWII the welfare state had a huge impact on Britain, touched on here by the building of council estates and the introduction of the NHS. At the same time nobody wanted a ‘lord of the manor' anymore and the gentry were being forced to sell off their land bit by bit just to keep their heads over water. The detail used in the story lets the reader feel the strain the family are under and I was totally engrossed although sometimes the story felt a little slow. I like the ambiguous ending and the question of how much Doctor Faraday himself was involved in the destruction of the Ayres family.

This was exactly my kind of atmospheric gothic horror. Well, perhaps I shouldn't call it horror. It really is more of a historical fiction with some elements of horror - I don't think anyone would get genuinely spooked by it, except Stephen King apparently but at this point I'm convinced he blurbs everything with a variation of “This was so scary I peed my pants 3 times”.

Fantastic October read! I really appreciate the way that the author wove the spooky factor into a great story. Sometimes horror novels really amp up the scare-factor without creating a really good story-line. This book has all the feels, including the scared-out-of-your-wits! I promise you that I will never look through a keyhole, that's for certain!

I really rather enjoyed this one! This was my first time reading anything from this author and I was honestly blown away, the writing is so atmospheric and beautiful. The story doesn't move along at a fast pace, but rather a slow methodical buildup, with detailed descriptions and wonderfully spooky happenings! Even though the story moves along slowly, I could not put this book down and finished it in two days. If you like old fashion Gothic reads, then this would definitely be one to add to you “to read” list!

My partner read it to prep for the movie, and then she had me read it to prep for the movie. I got the Ginger tie-in paperback, of course.

And this is lovely gothic horror, but with far better characters. Dr Faraday is fairly standard and actually quite a kind doctor. But, given the time period, he's pretty damnably sexist, just like everyone else. One day, he's called up to Hundreds Hall to see to the Ayres family's only servant, a young maid who seems to be ailing.

And he ends up sticking around. And–though he's dense, and it takes him a while to get it–sort of falling for the daughter of the house, Caroline–intelligent, strong, “plain,” as they say, and to whom he would not normally be attracted. (Whatever, she's awesome.) He begins almost a friendship of sorts with the family, and then all hell breaks loose.

Strange things begin to happen; beginning with the weakest members of the house, each event is specifically tailored to each person, it seems. Faraday, the skeptic, tries to reason everything away, but he's not always successful.

Nor, despite the fact that nothing started until he came to the house, is he always there for the strange occurrences.

Faraday is close to the family, he's obsessed with the house, woos Caroline, and then everything falls apart.

Once could assume that Betty is the center of poltergeist activities. One could assume that the house is evil. One could assume that Faraday is the center of the strange events, whether by design or by accident. The finale seems to convince some readers of his guilt, of his psychotic capabilities. But there are hints, like in any good horror/gothic novel, that indicate supernatural elements are indeed afoot here. The book deals with sexism and classicism very blatantly, and everything is told from Faraday's unreliable perspective, certainly. But I don't necessarily think he's complicit in everything that happens in the house, and I certainly don't think he's had a psychotic episode. The house itself is so important, and his obsession so great, that it seems the house itself plays a vital role in each thing that happens from the moment he first steps through the doors as an adult.

This is a slow burn. It reminded me in style of Forster a bit, sort of a Merchant/Ivory thing. Which is good, because I was always a sucker for their period dramas. It's beautifully written, well told, ambiguous, and subtly chilling. I'm not quite certain how they've made it into a movie, but I am excited to see it.