The Little Stranger - A Haunting Historical Story That Will Stay With You Long After You've Read It
The Little Stranger is a beautifully written slow burn filled with creeping horror, a decrepit mansion, and deeply built unreliable characters. It’s a thic boi too at 463 pages but encourages you to curl up on a rainy day and disappear into this Gothic world and let it wrap its’ ghostly arms around you.
Premise:
Following World War 2, Dr. Faraday is running his own small practice in rural Warwickshire. There’s a family that lives in a massive old home who have had their fair share of trauma. One day Dr. Faraday is called to the home to treat their young Maid. He quickly becomes entwined in this family and given access to a house he was fascinated with when he was younger.
The eldest of the children, and the man of the house; Roddie Ayres, is struggling to keep the family afloat in this postwar England. He’s selling parcels of land, trying to keep the small farm running, while the house slowly falls into disrepair. When strange events begin to happen around Roddie, Dr. Faraday believes mental illness has taken him. But his sister, Caroline, begins to believe something supernatural is afoot.
“We see what a punishing business it is, simply being alive.”
Mood board for the story, original images found on weheartit
What I loved (full spoilers)
This is a story that requires patience. There’s nothing fast paced here. Sarah Waters spends her time lovingly building a very accurate feeling of postwar rural England and introducing us to the nuances of each character. It’s something you can sink your teeth into and stay awhile. The house, Hundreds Hall, is the main character in my opinion, and is described in the most beautiful and sad ways. You can easily picture this gorgeous old mansion slowly falling apart at the seams. Rooms have been shut off, ceilings are sagging, photographs ruined. It’s such a desolate sad place that this family is clinging to. This was so common in the ‘40s, previously wealthy British families would live in massive homes with 20 + staff, but were now forced to adjust to a strange new economy after the war ended. It all feels so genuinely real and it’s easy to imagine yourself walking through these sad, desolate hallways of Hundreds Hall.
The human characters are a fascinating study. Dr. Faraday is easy to love as an older gentleman, fresh from war, living in his threadbare apartment and very much a bachelor. But he’s charming, and caring, and easy to love. His transformation throughout the story was incredible. At the end he almost breaks into insanity, giving into the house’s will, and terrorizing his ex-fiancée (and possible causing the murder of her). And it catches you so off guard even though you’ve been reading the warning signs for 100 pages. It’s incredibly well handled.
Caroline, a “handsome” woman as they said in those days, is practically unmarriable as she’s older than 21 and doesn’t wear makeup. But she’s such a great character. She changes throughout the story as well, withdrawing into herself and falling into the world of the supernatural. Her final plunge down the stairs that kills her is so tragic, and hard to see coming, it genuinely took my breath away and made me almost cry. And there’s this great theory in the book about “the little stranger” a supernatural type virus that spreads throughout the home. One of Dr. Faraday’s colleagues believes Caroline might be patient 0, if you will, and it’s her unrest, anger, anxiety, and sadness that has created this poltergeist like supernatural virus that spreads throughout the home destroying everything in its site. Including herself.
“The subliminal mind has many dark, unhappy corners, after all. Imagine something loosening itself from one of those corners. Let's call it a---a germ. And let's say conditions prove right for that germ to develop---to grow, like a child in the womb. What would this little stranger grow into? A sort of shadow-self, perhaps: a Caliban, a Mr Hyde. A creature motivated by all the nasty impulses and hungers the conscious mind had hoped to keep hidden away: things like envy and malice and frustration...”
While we’re really left up to our own selves to decide the true fate of Caroline and her family – was it all mental illness, or an invading poltergeist – you don’t feel ripped off. I finished this story and sat pondering it for a long time, trying to decide where I stood on it all. Because you see, Caroline may be the cause of all of this, but these events also didn’t start until Dr. Faraday arrived at the hall. So, is it possible, that after all this, he was the catalyst to these tragic and ghostly events? I think that’s where I’m going to have my beliefs lay.
The last thing I want to mention is the creepiness of this book. I find it incredibly hard to be frightened by a horror story. I love reading them, it’s my favorite genre, but it’s rare I put a book down and feel spooked. Or while I’m reading have the hairs on my arm stand up in fright. But The Little Stranger did it for me. I was trying to see what differs between this and the thousands I’ve read, and I think it comes down to the writing and the slow burn. There’s this particular scene that genuinely chilled me to the bone.
Mrs. Ayres heads upstairs to the nursery that’s been locked down since the end of the war. This is a traumatic place for her as her first child died in this room. While she’s in there investigating a possible strange noise she finds the door locked behind her. As she gazes through the keyhole into the hallway she hears little feet running back and forth, she sees the movement of someone young. As she realizes this is not her Maid, but perhaps the ghost of her dead child she begins to move away from the door in fright. Suddenly the door shifts, as if someone is putting their weight against it. Mrs. Ayres snaps and runs to the window, beating her fists against it until the glass shatters, cutting her hands and wrists, crying for help. It’s terrifyingly written and had me looking over my shoulder as I read, in fear a young ghostly girl would run past me. I think what makes the scares so effective in this book is the slow burn of it all. It’s a story that moves at its own pace so when something spooky happens, it completely catches you off guard and you’re so enveloped in the story you feel as if its happening to you.
“She knew now that the figure must be standing on the other side of the door; she even saw the door move a little in its frame, as if just nudged or pressed or tested. “
While this book may not be for everyone, especially those that like a fast paced 300 page story, I highly recommend it to those that love Gothic horror, accurate historical portrayals and stories you can lose yourself in for a few days.
The Little Stranger is a beautifully haunting ghost story that will stay with me for a long while. It was also made into a movie in 2018, and this was originally going to be a book vs movie piece. But, unfortunately, it’s not streaming here in Canada so I plan on purchasing the DVD when I have some spare cash to finish my review.
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