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Loading... The Little Stranger (original 2009; edition 2010)by Sarah Waters (Author)
Work InformationThe Little Stranger by Sarah Waters (2009)
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A story set in a country village and old country house just after the war and very spooky. Unlike Waters' other books, this one is told from a man's point of view all the way through and doesn't have the usual focus on lesbian characters although there is a hint that possibly one of the characters is a repressed lesbian. Instead the story focuses on the class system, the decay of the landed gentry and the resentment that someone from the working classes might have towards the owners of a large and dilapidated country house. Anyway, this book is a real departure for her and I enjoyed it almost as much as I enjoyed Affinity. This was my first Sarah Waters book, and I really enjoyed it! The horror/paranormal elements are very low-key, and it's more a Gothic sense of dread than anything solid. The characters are so well fleshed out, and honestly the narrator/main character seems to be the villain half the time. I love the setting of post war England and the class structure disintegrating, it really reinforces the impending doom.
While at one turn, the novel looks to be a ghost story, the next it is a psychological drama of the calibre of du Maurier's Rebecca. But it is also a brilliantly observed story, verging on comedy, about Britain on the cusp of the modern age. In the end, though, however fresh the prose, confident the plotting and astute the social analysis, The Little Stranger has a slightly secondhand feel to it. Waters is clearly at the top of her game, with few to match her ability to bring the past to life in a fully imagined world. I look forward to the book in which she leaves behind past templates, with their limitations, and breaks away to make her own literary history. I guess the Waters fans I spoke to were right to be anxious. There is plenty of lovely writing here, and the plot wasn't so dissatisfying that it put me off entirely. But it made me wary. Should I be? Or is it her worst work? Or, indeed, am I missing something? Over to you. The Little Stranger, like all the best works of postmodernist fiction, acknowledges both that making up stories is a mistaken and hopeless way to try to understand the world, and at the same time that it’s the best – perhaps the only – way we have. The story ends in madness, suicide and a creepy darkness reminiscent of Daphne du Maurier's "Rebecca" -- mixed with jolts of anxiety and social upheaval reminiscent of today's news. Has the adaptationHas as a commentary on the textAwardsDistinctionsNotable Lists
"The #1 book of 2009...Several sleepless nights are guaranteed."—Stephen King, Entertainment Weekly One postwar summer in his home of rural Warwickshire, Dr. Faraday, the son of a maid who has built a life of quiet respectability as a country physician, is called to a patient at lonely Hundreds Hall. Home to the Ayres family for over two centuries, the Georgian house, once impressive and handsome, is now in decline, its masonry crumbling, its gardens choked with weeds, the clock in its stable yard permanently fixed at twenty to nine. Its owners—mother, son, and daughter—are struggling to keep pace with a changing society, as well as with conflicts of their own. But are the Ayreses haunted by something more sinister than a dying way of life? Little does Dr. Faraday know how closely, and how terrifyingly, their story is about to become intimately entwined with his. No library descriptions found.
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)823.914Literature English & Old English literatures English fiction Modern Period 1901-1999 1945-1999LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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I have intentionally not seen the recent film adaptation, so as not to tarnish my own impressions and love of this book. ( )