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The Little Stranger, by Sarah Waters
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Hundreds Hall is a stately manor house, long occupied by the Ayres family. It is a presence and in a way an absence as well in the countryside surrounding it. While it has occupied the lush farmland in the Midlands of England for centuries, it remains inaccessible to the common folk of the surrounding countryside, unless, of course, one is a servant working there. And so it is that Dr. Faraday enters Hundreds, to wait on an ill servant. Faraday, a middle-aged bachelor physician of an only mildly successful practice, has longed to be part of Hundreds, to possess it, since he first saw it at the age of ten, as a guest during a fête. Then he was so taken with the then-beautiful house that he pried a decorative plaster acorn from the wall and secreted it away with him. He has not entered the hall since, until this day, thirty years later, in 1947.

On this first visit, he meets the Ayres family – Mrs. Ayres, her son, Roderick, injured in World War II, and her elder daughter, Caroline. This first encounter also acquaints him with Betty, the shy servant girl, who first hints that something is not right with the house. But what? The house is perfect to Dr. Faraday, who clearly loves the place, even in its now-shabby, run-down state, with overgrown gardens and sagging ceilings.

As he becomes more acquainted with the family, though, he finds that something indeed is wrong. Strange, dangerous things begin to happen. Gyp, the old, gentle family dog, attacks a child, unprovoked. Mysterious brown smudges appear on Roderick’s study walls. His room catches afire, nearly killing him. A speaking tube connecting the closed-off nursery above whistles inexplicably in the connecting kitchen. A knocking sound in the walls leads the residents from room to room on a kind of chase. Footsteps patter in the hallway outside the nursery. Are there natural, logical explanations for all of these odd events? Or is there something else amiss, perhaps emanating from the long departed sister, Susan, who has died years before of diphtheria. Mrs. Ayres seems to think that Susan has come back and whispers words of longing to her, but Faraday, in his scientific logic, sees only madness in these odd reports of unexplained manifestations. While he asserts his clear-headed thoughts, though, the family suffers slow destruction.

Around all of these eerie events and devastating sorrows swirls increasing uncertainty. With the Ayreses clearly out of place in this new world of Labor government and fading family fortunes, their future remains uncertain. But so too does Dr. Faraday feel uncertainty in his profession, as it moves towards the approaching National Health system; in his social position as he longs for that which he cannot have – Hundreds Hall; and finally in his assessment of the Ayres family itself: Are they mad, haunted, even cursed? Is there a force of evil present at Hundreds? Or is it all only the further shift of an old family of good standing to a blurred and faded future of destruction?

Submitted by D. L. S.

Labels: Little Stranger, Sarah Waters