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The Little Stranger |  | Author: Sarah Waters
Publisher: Riverhead Hardcover
Category: Book
List Price: $26.95
Buy Used: $10.57
as of 11/23/2009 01:36 CST details
You Save: $16.38 (61%)
New (52) Used (31) Collectible (7) from $10.57
Seller: blueridgebookdeals
Rating:  83 reviews
Sales Rank: 3834
Media: Hardcover
Edition: First Edition
Pages: 480
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.6
Dimensions (in): 9 x 6.4 x 1.8
ISBN: 1594488800
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.914
EAN: 9781594488801
ASIN: 1594488800
Publication Date: April 30, 2009
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
A chilling and vividly rendered ghost story set in postwar Britain, by the bestselling 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 twenty 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.
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 83
 Slow to start, but great ending. November 15, 2009
C. kang (san antonio, tx)
This story starts off slow. Almost to the point where I found myself wondering when I'd get to the "good stuff". I understand that the author was trying to build the characters and show the true relationship between them all. However, I think that she could have omitted a few of the beginning chapters without any deteriation of the story line.
Now, having said that.. it was about half way through the book when I finally became invested and interested in what was going to happen next. I choose this book for the suspence and I was finally getting it. I must say that ultimatly the book redeemed itself with the last half. Waters has a great ability to keep you on the edge of your seat without using obvious scare tactics. The ending was also a shocker and really left me thinking. It never clearly tells you who, what, or why but the fact that the author leaves it up to your own imagination makes it all the more compelling.
In the end I would recommend this book for anyone who wants a compelling, interesting and non-traditional "ghost" story.
 Little Stranger does not deliver November 13, 2009
Riccardo De Pasquale
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Every Halloween season I choose a few darker tales to get myself in the mood. I choose "The Little Stranger" because of the many good reviews I read both on Amazon and in other media. I found myself a good three quarters of the way through with absolutely no investment on my part. It was not that the book was poorly written; rather, it just did not deliver on the ghost story I had anticipated. It ended up to be a dreary read that was not even the slightest bit suspenseful. The majority of the reviews for this work have been good. I must have missed something.
 really didn't deliver on the ghost story November 10, 2009
Cape Pug (california)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
while I enjoyed this book to some degree I found myself getting a little bored at times with the attempts at suspense. For me, the ghost story part didn't really deliver. I enjoyed the characters and the descriptions of the house. But ultimately it was only an ok read
 Thrilling and Entertaining November 3, 2009
Gwendolyn Dawson (Houston, Texas United States)
The Little Stranger, a new novel by well-known British author Sarah Waters, examines the great social upheaval in England during the years immediately following World War II through the perspective of a once-grand family as that perspective is narrated by the family's local doctor, Dr. Faraday. Mrs. Ayers and her two adult, unmarried children, Caroline and Roderick, are the last remnants of the Ayres family living in crumbling Hundreds Hall on an unkempt estate in rural England. Dr. Faraday, who comes from humble origins, befriends the family after a house call to treat an ailing servant. It's a friendship that never would have formed in the pre-war era of strict social hierarchies, and Dr. Faraday takes great pride in his association with the high-class Ayers.
Beginning with an inexplicable dog attack, a number of strange occurrences in the Hall suggest a supernatural presence. Though the occurrences become ever more violent, it remains unclear whether the ghostly presence is real or merely a figment of the family's over-stressed imagination. Things become increasingly desperate, and the Ayers family, one by one, succumbs to the force--whether supernatural, socioeconomic, or imagined--that seems determined to break them. Through it all, Dr. Faraday is the steady voice of rationality, at first a welcome respite but becoming more and more ominous over time.
The gradual mental and financial collapse of the Ayers family parallels the disintegration of the British class system, and this interplay results in a rich story with many layers of meaning. The supernatural elements avoid cliché by their ambiguity. Is Dr. Faraday correct that there's a rational explanation for everything? Or is Roderick right that an unseen malevolent force is threatening the family? Waters masterfully maintains this delicate ambiguity to the chilling and dramatic end. The Little Stranger is a quick-paced psychological thriller nested within an insightful social commentary. The combination is thrilling and intelligent.
Hundreds Hall. Haunted or not? Ghost, poltergeist, or murderer? October 31, 2009
1morechapter.com (Omaha, NE)
This was my first Sarah Waters book, and I must say I do enjoy her writing style.
Hundreds Hall, once a grand estate, has fallen into decline with the decline of its family's fortune. The narrator, Dr. Faraday, first knew of the house as a small child when his mother was a maid there. After a 30 year absence, he is called back to the house because of a maid's illness and is taken aback by the condition of the house and the family.
Over time he becomes sort of a family friend to Mrs. Ayres and her adult children Roderick and Caroline, though perhaps the friendship is more on his side than theirs due to class differences. All the while, strange happenings are afoot. Strange burn marks, footsteps in empty rooms and the like are witnessed by each occupant. The story is cleverly told, and the ending is left for the reader to decide. I'm one who actually likes this type of ending because I end up thinking about all the possibilities for days! The mood of the book was sufficiently creepy without being gory and was an excellent choice for Fall reading.
The Little Stranger was shortlisted for the 2009 Man Booker Prize.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 83
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