A different kind of ghost story

I've been wanting to read a well-written ghost story lately. So when I saw a hardback copy of Sarah Waters's latest novel, The Little Stranger, I knew I had to get it. The novel features all the elements that make a very scary read—a haunted house, a ghost of a child, an upperclass English family with secrets, and an outsider who provides a first-person narrative.

In Waters's fifth novel, we are transported to post-war England. The setting is a grand old house named Hundreds Hall, which has seen better days. The family living in Hundreds, the Ayres, belongs to the English upper class and is struggling to cope with the changes facing them. When Dr. Faraday decides to become the family physician, he becomes witness to the family's decline. Roderick, the only Ayres male heir, is eventually confined to a mental institution. Mrs Ayres, the family matriarch, is driven to suicide after supposedly experiencing hauntings by her eldest child who died of a wasting disease. Caroline, the strong-headed daughter, feels that it's up to her to keep the family together, financial difficulties and all.

The Little Stranger, however, is not your ordinary ghost story. It's supernatural element even lends an ambivalent concept to it—as if Waters wants readers to decide for themselves whether there were indeed hauntings in Hundreds. The writing is very detailed and atmospheric. But readers who are seeking to be scared out of their wits may feel disappointed with the narrative's pace. In fact, we don't get to read these scary bits within the first 100 pages or so.

And as she did that, she felt the starting up of a breeze—or, anyway, something like a breeze, a cold movement of air, which came suddenly against her, striking her cheek, disarranging her hair, making her shiver; and a second later she was shocked and jolted almost out of her skin by a violent slamming in the neighbouring room. [page 318]

The Little Stranger is shortlisted for this year's Booker Prize. People are saying that this might be the year she finally gets it, after having been shortlisted twice. It isn't your typical haunted house novel with a Gothic feel to it. The hauntings only provide a backdrop to what really is the center of the novel—a family's failure to hang on to its place in society.

Read this book if:

1. You enjoy all things Booker.
2. You've always wondered what it's like to live in a haunted house.
3. Like me, you don't believe in ghosts, but enjoy a satisfying ghost story.