The Little Stranger

Starred review from March 30, 2009
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
. Doctor Faraday, a lonely bachelor, first visited Hundreds Hall, where his mother once worked as a parlor maid, at age 10 in 1919. When Faraday returns 30 years later to treat a servant, he becomes obsessed with Hundreds's elegant owner, Mrs. Ayres; her 24-year-old son, Roderick, an RAF airman wounded during the war who now oversees the family farm; and her slightly older daughter, Caroline, considered a “natural spinster” by the locals, for whom the doctor develops a particular fondness. Supernatural trouble kicks in after Caroline's mild-mannered black Lab, Gyp, attacks a visiting child. A damaging fire, a suicide and worse follow. Faraday, one of literature's more unreliable narrators, carries the reader swiftly along to the devastating conclusion.

Sarah Waters's devotion to period detail, painstakingly drawn psychological characterizations, and a plot unwilling to be second-guessed distinguish this from other gothic novels. Simon Vance's performance keeps listeners attentive as the lengthy narrative puts all the pieces into play. Vance navigates the crumbling hallways of an English country estate, The Hundreds, taking listeners into the drawing rooms and parlors of the Ayers family. He becomes the first-person narrator, Dr. Faraday, the observer and interpreter of a series of hellish happenings. Vance creates an aura of menace as Faraday watches while, one by one, the family is destroyed by an eerie presence in the house. By the close of the book, listeners will wonder if the devastating events were supernatural or sinister. Choice listening. S.J.H. (c) AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine