The Little Stranger: shortlisted for the Booker Prize

Description

In a dusty post-war summer in rural Warwickshire, a doctor is called to a patient at lonely Hundreds Hall. Home to the Ayres family for over two centuries, the Georgian house, once grand and handsome, is now in decline, its masonry crumbling, its gardens choked with weeds, its owners - mother, son and daughter - struggling to keep pace. But are the Ayreses haunted by something more sinister 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.

Sarah Waters was born in Wales in 1966. She has been shortlisted for the Man Booker and Orange prizes and three of her four novels have been adapted for television.

Waters writes with a firm, confident hand, deftly building an atmosphere that begins in a still, hot summer and gradually darkens and tightens until we are as gripped by the escalating horror as the Ayres are. She is particularly good at depicting Hundreds, the dilapidated Georgian pile that dazzles . . . Waters persistent picking apart of class is fascinating - Tracy Chevalier, Observer It s a gripping story, with beguiling characters . . . As well as being a supernatural tale, it is a meditation on the nature of the British and class, and how things are rarely what they seem. Chilling - Kate Mosse, The Times, Summer Read By now readers must be confident of her mastery of storytelling . . . While at one turn, the novel looks to be a ghost story, the next it is a psychological drama . . . But it is also a brilliantly observed story, verging on the comedy, about Britain on the cusp of modern age . . . The writing is subtle and poised - Joy lo Dico, Independent on Sunday Displaying her remarkable flair for period evocation, Waters recreates backwater Britain just after the Second World War with atmospheric immediacy . . . Acute and absorbing - Peter Kemp, Sunday Times It would be unfair to reveal very much about The Little Stranger: enough to say that this reader, left along one night in her boxy Seventies ex-council house ? about as unspooky a place as you can image ? had to stop reading for fright. This is an effective, gripping book. Sarah Waters ability to evoke the 1940s shows the same mastery she displaying in The Night Watch, and her descriptive powers are nearly unparalleled . . . Waters has sat herself down in front of a roaring fire and determined to scare the pants off her rightly devoted audience. In that she succeeds unequivocally. You ll want to sleep with the light on - Erica Wagner, The Times