The Little Stranger

By: Sarah Waters

Narrated by: Simon Vance

Length: 15 hrs and 49 mins

Publisher's summary

A chilling and vividly rendered ghost story set in postwar Britain, by the best-selling and award-winning author of The Night Watch and Fingersmith.

Sarah Waters's trilogy of Victorian novels Tipping the Velvet, Affinity, and Fingersmith earned her legions of fans around the world, a number of awards, and a reputation as one of today's most gifted historical novelists. With her most recent book, The Night Watch, Waters turned to the 1940s and delivered a tender and intricate novel of relationships that brought her the greatest success she has achieved so far.

With The Little Stranger, Waters revisits the fertile setting of Britain in the 1940s - and gives us a sinister tale of a haunted house, brimming with the rich atmosphere and psychological complexity that have become hallmarks of Waters's work.

The Little Stranger follows the strange adventures of Dr. Faraday, the son of a maid who has built a life of quiet respectability as a country doctor. One dusty postwar summer in his home of rural Warwickshire, he is called to a patient at Hundreds Hall. Home to the Ayres family for more than two centuries, the Georgian house, once grand and handsome, is now in decline - its masonry crumbling, its gardens choked with weeds, the clock in its stable yard permanently fixed at 20 to nine. But are the Ayreses haunted by something more ominous than a dying way of life? Little does Dr. Faraday know how closely, and how terrifyingly, their story is about to become entwined with his.

Abundantly atmospheric and elegantly told, The Little Stranger is Sarah Waters's most thrilling and ambitious novel yet.

©2009 Sarah Waters (P)2009 Penguin

Critic reviews

"Waters has boldly reassigned all these gothic motifs [of the traditional ghost story] from their usual Freudian duties to another detail entirely: The Little Stranger is about class, and the unavoidable yet lamentable price paid when venerable social hierarchies begin to erode. … Waters has managed to write a near-perfect gothic novel while at the same time confidently deploying the form into fresher territory." (Salon.com)
"[A] marvelous and truly spooky historical novel. … As a strange spot on an old and mouldering ceiling takes on a sinister appearance and bodies begin to accumulate, Waters’s precise and chilling prose lets Dr. Faraday have his way with the story." ( Boston Globe)
"Waters (The Night Watch) reflects on the collapse of the British class system after WWII in a stunning haunted house tale whose ghosts are as horrifying as any in Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House....Faraday, one of literature's more unreliable narrators, carries the reader swiftly along to the devastating conclusion." ( Publishers Weekly)

Boring

Oh my! Frightfully boring. I'm a fan of her other books, but this one falls short.

Well worth time and patience

I loved this deeply atmospheric novel. It would be an excellent novel for a book club to discuss. It begins slowly, and doesn’t contain any jump scares, and yet I found the horror continued to grow right through to the end.

Fans of Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw should listen to this one. Also fans of Susan Black, and Simone St. James.

Simon Vance is a superb narrator who never distracts from the story. Every character is sketched through their distinctive voices.

Set in England, during the rise of the Labour government in the aftermath of WW2, it’s a story about change, and about the holds the past might have on us. The “haunting” is not only set against the backdrop of social change, but is a part of those changes.

This was an era of drastic shifts in almost every part of society, and the end of the tradition of feudalism that had remained in England up until that time. Many of the “noble families” of England - from county squires, to dukedoms - lost their acreages and great houses to massive taxation.

The economy of villages no longer revolved around working in these great homes, or tenant farming their lands. The government took on the role of caring for the poor, and supporting the working class - many of whom left the countryside for manufacturing jobs in the cities.

This is the story of a family and a great house, teetering on the brink of economic and physical ruin, unable to adapt to the changes sweeping over it. It’s about the ties that bind the family to the house, and the ultimate costs of those attachments. It’s a story about the house itself, what might walk there, and why.

It’s also the story of an observer. Our narrator is a bachelor doctor from the village, who has watched this house and the people in it since he was a child. As he becomes drawn further into the story of this house and family, it’s put to the reader to decide how reliable a narrator he is.

Taut and spooky

Really well done. Sarah Waters can spin a tale, and Simon Vance can tell one. Loved it

Spectacular Haunted House story in the Gothic Tradition

I fell in love with Hundreds Hall the first moment it appeared on the page. Sarah Waters has written a masterpiece of psychological suspense and class friction in post war England, wrapped up in a gorgeously told haunted house story. The Narration is flawless, and the book is every bit as much fun to listen to as it is to read. Take your favorite elements of Shirley Jackson, Henry James, and Daphne Du Maurier, let them steep together in a cup of gothic horror motifs, and you have this spectacular slow burn of a story that haunts you long after you see or hear the final words.
For people who prefer modern, mainstream horror, this will likely fall flat. It is a creepy story but not a scary one. It begins slowly, gathering speed and intensity gradually, like a Victorian locomotive, and you have to be patient and let it get its wheels under it. It is a story that germinates and grows, expanding through the pages with nuance and layers and beautiful detail, the true horror lying in the determination of what’s real and what’s other and the realization that there’s no solace to be found in either answer.
5 stars and then some.

keeps you hooked the whole time but...

although it wasn't what I thought it was going to be it was still a great story. a good mix of drama and thriller. if you like stories that don't have a happy ending. then this is the book for you.

Great story and setup... lackluster ending.

pace and characters were well-rounded. ending was uninpired. for all the leadup , there was no real payoff.

A Thinking Person’s Ghost Story

Beautifully written and masterfully performed by Simon Vance, this historical horror story will stay with you long after the last word fades. The main character, Dr Faraday, begins as a kind and genial narrator, but after the first disaster occurs, he's revealed to be unreliable in his recollection of the strange events at Hundreds Hall. Full of perfect period details, sharp characterizations, and rising dread, I can't recommend this audiobook strongly enough.

I found this one slow moving and uninteresting.

Simon Vance is wonderful as ever but the story plods with no real direction, unfortunately.

good suspence

the ending was a little unsatisfying imo. great buildup and an otherwise good horror/mystery. I also was satisfied with the voice actor. he did a good job imo

Good writing style.

Story needed a little more intriguing catches in the story, hooks that draw the ghostly aspects out more. Good enough story, found myself loosing interest on and off.