The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters - A Spooky Story

Sarah Waters was born in Wales in 1966. She has a PhD in English Literature and has taught at the Open University. She has been shortlisted for the Man Booker and Orange prizes and three of her four novels have been adapted for television.

The Little Stranger, by Sarah is a pondering and evocative narrative set in Warwickshire, England in the late 1940s. Privation still continues even after World War II. Dr. Faraday is a country physician, inclined to all manner of disorders among the local, mostly working-class or poor residents. There had always been estates in Warwickshire. Hundreds Hall is a house that stands on the edge of financial ruin. Dr. Faraday visited once as a boy, when his mother worked as a nanny at the grand home of the Colonel and Mrs. Ayres.

Thirty years later, the Colonel is long dead. His son Roderick, who was severely injured during the war, is trying to manage the remaining farm and house. His sister Caroline had come back to take care of Roderick and their mother. Together they are holding on, with just enough to live on and afford one daytime housekeeper and one live-in maid.

One day, Dr. Faraday is called to the Hundreds Hall to cure the maid, Betty, a 14 yr old girl. He finds Betty only pretending to be ill. she is unhappy since she feels there is "something bad" in the house. Dr. Faraday offers to treat Roderick's injuries and begins to make regular trips to the Hundreds, and becomes a friend of the Ayres'. When a new family moves into a nearby estate, Mrs. Ayres decides to have a party to welcome them. The house is moving with great anticipation, but the night ends in tragedy.

From this stage, mysterious things happen at the hall, affecting one by one, becoming spookier as time goes on. Betty is convinced the house is haunted, perhaps by the spirit of the first Ayres child, a daughter who died in childhood of diphtheria; Roderick feels there is something in the house that he must be kept away and Caroline feels the house itself to be spookier. Dr. Faraday, irritated with all the superstition, tries to demonstrate there are rational explanations for everything. He thinks that it is a kind of emotion or rumor started by Betty and spread among the Ayres.

Inspite of Hopeless efforts, he shares the whole events to a fellow physician, who claims some kind of psychic force constituted in those living there. Is the house haunted? If so, Why and by What? These queries are raised to the reader when they are nearer to the conclusion of the story.

[ The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters ]