The Little Stranger - Sarah Waters

A brooding, moody, and ambiguous read, The Little Stranger captures the uncertainty surrounding class, gender and society as Britain recovered from the ravages of World War Two.

With painstaking detail and characters drawn full of flaws and contradictions, Waters describes the doomed lives of the Ayres family and their home, Hundreds Hall. Rapidly losing their money, social status and land, the novel sees the family slowly chipped away as they are befriended by their local GP, Dr Faraday.

Widow Mrs Ayres is a shadow of her former self, dreamy, fragile and out of touch, trying to remember times long past with dinner parties and dresses; her son Roderick, scarred by a wartime accident while in the RAF, struggles to keep the family afloat as the new master of the house; 'spinster' Caroline is intelligent, forthright and masculine, dressed in mismatched and oversized clothes with unshaven legs.

As the narrative progresses, Hundreds Hall and its inhabitants seem to be slowly terrorised by an unwanted presence, a little stranger. While one by one the family begin to believe in the presence, stoic and patriarchal Dr Faraday explains the incidents away using his logic and apparent fascination with psychology. With every page, the family rely more and more upon his advice and with every page, they lose control of themselves, their loved ones and their home.

Like all of Waters's writing, The Little Stranger is a perfect snapshot of history, exposing society's foibles, flaws and contradictions. Dr Faraday is a self-obsessed control freak, determined to control the Ayreses and Hundreds Hall despite his belief that he has the best of intentions. As his control slips away, he becomes manic, trying every method to win it back, believing others to be deranged or tired when they refuse to obey him.

With his facial scars as a permanent reminder of his time in the RAF, Roderick encapsulates everything that is left behind by the war and how it destroyed the lives of all the men involved in fighting it. Mrs Ayres is an anachronism, physically clinging on to every remnant of the past from photographs to records to dresses. Caroline is an anachronism of her own, an independent and intelligent woman who, until Roderick's departure, has no voice or power in her family's affairs. Defined as a spinster and a squire's daughter, she, like the rest of her family, lives on the fringe of her village and society, not quite sure of where she fits in.

A complex and intriguing read, the novel, sadly, does not live up to Waters's masterful Fingersmith and The Night Watch. Those expecting her expert plot twists and turns will be disappointed; this is an altogether deeper read. Still it is atmospheric, unsettling and uncomfortable, never fully giving definite answers and conclusions. Disturbing and disquieting, The Little Stranger marks a shift in Waters's writing towards less plot trickery and a more understated, though still unsettling, read.

My next read: Scottsboro by Ellen Feldman.