nastya 's Reviews > The Little Stranger
The Little Stranger
by
by
nastya 's review
bookshelves: historical-fiction, genius-loci, x3-and-more, treasured-read-19, over-500
Sep 26, 2019
bookshelves: historical-fiction, genius-loci, x3-and-more, treasured-read-19, over-500
Read 3 times. Last read October 23, 2023 to November 12, 2023.
Imagine you're burdened with responsibilities that are slowly draining you and your whole family. Your grand inheritance is decay and disappointment. You and people like you are dinosaurs, who cannot get with the times and must accept extinction.
Now imagine your huge rotting manor is haunted by something evil. Or is it just a mental disease your family has, and the crises started by exhaustion and repression? And now they are going mad one by one. Would you try to escape however you can and would you be allowed to?
(view spoiler)
Waters describes the novel as “a sort of supernatural country house whodunit”, and of all her books, it “is the one right from the heart of me … It’s the book that my 10-year-old self was destined to write. I was really into the gothic as a kid, and loved watching horror films.”
My absolute favorite of Sarah Waters, slow, yes, but suspenseful. And deliciously spooky and so atmospheric.
Now imagine your huge rotting manor is haunted by something evil. Or is it just a mental disease your family has, and the crises started by exhaustion and repression? And now they are going mad one by one. Would you try to escape however you can and would you be allowed to?
(view spoiler)
Waters describes the novel as “a sort of supernatural country house whodunit”, and of all her books, it “is the one right from the heart of me … It’s the book that my 10-year-old self was destined to write. I was really into the gothic as a kid, and loved watching horror films.”
My absolute favorite of Sarah Waters, slow, yes, but suspenseful. And deliciously spooky and so atmospheric.
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Reading Progress
Started Reading
September 26, 2019
– Shelved
September 26, 2019
–
Finished Reading
October 15, 2021
–
Started Reading
October 19, 2021
–
55.47%
"She had been unafraid before, but now the taps, the discovery of the marks, her mother’s response, the current silence…. With an attempt at bravado, she said, ‘This house is playing parlour games with us, I think. We shan’t pay it any mind if it starts up again. ’ She lifted her voice, and spoke into the stairwell. ‘Do you hear me, house? It’s no good your teasing us! We simply shan’t play!’"
page
284
October 19, 2021
–
Finished Reading
October 23, 2023
–
Started Reading
October 27, 2023
–
9.57%
"Perhaps it was the peasant blood in me, rising. But Hundreds Hall had been made and maintained, I thought, by the very people they were laughing at now. After two hundred years, those people had begun to withdraw their labour, their belief in the house; and the house was collapsing, like a pyramid of cards. Meanwhile, here the family sat, still playing gaily at gentry life, with the chipped stucco on their walls..."
page
49
November 5, 2023
–
20.9%
"I'd had a pointless, almost spiteful urge to make life difficult for him.
But I wish to God I had acted differently; for now something terrible happened to his little girl, Gillian."
page
107
But I wish to God I had acted differently; for now something terrible happened to his little girl, Gillian."
November 8, 2023
–
40.43%
"With the alcohol inside me my anger blunted, and eventually I slept. But I slept badly; and while I lay tussling with dark, violent dreams, something dreadful happened out at Hundreds Hall."
page
207
November 11, 2023
–
62.3%
"'How this house likes to catch us out, doesn't it? As if it knows all our weaknesses and is testing them, one by one...'"
page
319
November 12, 2023
–
72.85%
"The book says, with some sorts of people, when they're unhappy or troubled, or they want something badly – Sometimes they don't even know it's happening. Something... breaks away from them."
page
373
November 12, 2023
–
Finished Reading
Comments Showing 1-17 of 17 (17 new)
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Nataliya
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20 oct. 2021 06:50
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oh, if you want gothic haunting house type of story for the gloomy fall evenings - this is the one!
you think he was a cold blooded criminal who planned it? I read it like an obsessive stalking on his part and just an accident.
you think he was a cold bloode..."
His obsessive stalking weirded me out.....and then supposedly he fell asleep in his car in their spot at about the same time she fell to her death...I think it was him but your guess is probably as good as mine since Sarah Waters has not said anything one way or another in her book interviews.
His obsessive stalking weirded me out.....
Yeah, he was really into that house.
It’s such a slow atmospheric gothic book, so I would recommend you to save for the fall. And read it with a hot beverage.
I read through We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson (similar gothicy vibes?) recently and loved it!
I read through We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson (similar gothicy vibes?) recently and loved it!"
Shirley Jackson is a bit more weirder, off-kilter gothic horror from the two works of her I've read. This is a very slow story, mind you, and quite a long journey, and there's a lot of British class commentary after the ww2, but the character work and the spookiness is just delicious for me. Definitely try it if you're into the gothic horror!
Wait, are you talking about The Little Stranger? Already referenced in something??
Generally, if someone I trust seems genuinely interested in a book/show, no matter what the genre is, I can usually be convinced to give it a try.
I haven't seen The Haunting of the Hill House but I've been recommended it enough times now that I might have to watch it...
[...]
Yup, I was able to rope in a friend to watch the first episode with me :)
Yes! One of the characters in The Starless Sea borrows The Little Stranger from the library :)
Yes! One of the characters in The Starless Sea borrows The Little Stranger from the library :)"
yay, that's how canon is made!