The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters (2009)Dr. Faraday is the son of lower class parents who have worked hard and sacrificed to give him the chance to become a doctor. His mother was once a maid at the grand mansion of Hundreds Hall. When he was a child she took him for a visit to the house, where he was struck with admiration for its richness and beauty, a symbol of the upper class and all that was unobtainable to him. Now working quite hard himself, he still lives on a tight budget and is very conscious of the gap between himself and those born to money.
When Dr. Faraday revisits Hundreds Hall to attend to a sick maid, he is shocked and dismayed at the house’s current state of decay. After the death of the head of the household, the fortunes of the survivors of the family declined to the point where only a portion of the home could be kept in a state fit for human habitation, the rest crumbling and disused. Dr. Faraday finds more occasions to call on the residents of the house - Mrs. Ayres, the still elegant widow, her daughter Caroline, a “brainy” woman who is considered likely to remain a spinster, and son Roderick, scarred by his experience in World War II and prone to moodiness and possible mental instability. He volunteers to treat Roderick’s war injury and becomes privy to Roderick’s carefully guarded concerns that there is a malevolent presence in the house. Faraday persists in holding a rational view of events, but as increasingly curious things occur at the house he finds his beliefs challenged.
This is a portrait of a family in decline for those who like character-driven historical fiction as well as classic ghost stories. Because Waters’ descriptions of the haunting are both subtle and ambiguous, this book stay in your head long after you read it.
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