This is a deeply unsettling book that really seeps into your bones. Increasingly involved, Dr Faraday must ask himself who, or what, is the catalyst. Initially concerned that the family members are experiencing mental health symptoms, even a rationalist like Dr Faraday begins to find it harder and harder to explain the things that are happening in the house. However, it is more than the house that has changed at Hundreds. Although the house has withered since the war, Dr Faraday is just as mesmerised as he was as a boy, and he soon forms a friendship with Mrs Ayres and her adult children Caroline and Roderick. Now grown, he is called out to Hundreds to attend to a young maid.

Growing up poor, a pivotal memory for Dr Faraday is visiting Hundreds Hall, a grand Georgian house, as a small boy.

“The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters is a gothic novel about Dr Faraday, a general practitioner in his mid-30s who lives in Warwickshire in the West-Midlands, England. Two children are off to the side and in the distance is a sandstone coloured manor. The cover is a film-tie in with a picture of a young white woman with dark hair in a blue dress sitting in a chair, with an older white woman in a lavender dress and a young red-haired man in a tuxedo standing behind. The paperback book is in front of a sandstone wall with weeds around it. Image is of “The Little Stranger” by Sarah Waters. Hilariously, the film doesn’t appear to be available to stream anywhere online in Australia at the moment, so I still haven’t seen it, but I did finally get a chance to read the book. However, it wasn’t until a couple of years later I finally saw the book at the Lifeline Bookfair. I tend to prefer to read the book before watching the film, and kept an eye out for the book in second-hand bookstores. It looked really well shot with beautiful filmography and an eerie vibe.

I saw a trailer for the film adaptation of this book a few years ago, and saw that the novel was by Sarah Waters who I have never read, but who is quite well-known for her lesbian fiction. Gothic novel about a declining English manorĬontent warning: post-traumatic stress disorder, war, self-harm, paranormal themes

The little stranger novel