Sarah Waters’ The Little Stranger, a post-war gothic tale about what can only be called a really creepy house, has made the shortlist for the 2009 Man Booker Prize.
Dr. Faraday is called out to Hundreds Hall, a country house in Warwickshire, only to find that the polished estate he remembers from his youth has become a crumbling ruin. Its inhabitants, the Ayres are struggling to maintain the house despite having lost most remnants of their former lifestyle. He becomes obsessed with the family: the elegant but disturbed Mrs. Ayres, her less elegant and more disturbed son Roderick, and his sister Caroline, with whom Faraday begins a quiet affair. After a violent incident at a party, the family becomes quiet and withdrawn, and while Faraday believes that their escalating problems are due to nerves and exhaustion, it soon becomes clear that something more malicious is at work.
The entire book, I was yelling at the characters to get out of their house – but of course they didn’t. That wouldn’t make for a very good story. The chair just creaked? Fine, stay. The chair just ignited and the light is flickering demonically and conjuring up images of dead children? It’s probably time to call a real estate agent, because just locking your door isn’t going to do shit against something bent on a very specific death and destruction – yours.
Despite making me jump at every sound my own somewhat-creepy house made, I thoroughly enjoyed it. Very similar to Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher,” (though, for some reason, it also reminded me of “The Country Doctor”) The Little Stranger is nevertheless much closer to a psychological thriller than it is to horror. It is best not to think of it as supernaturally inclined at all, until suddenly it is, because it also explores the changing English class system and bizarre family dynamics and other interesting but non-poltergeist-related themes. Reading just to get to the scary part would miss the point.
And you don’t want to miss the point. You want to sit back down on that chair, even though it’s on fire.