Little Stranger by Sarah Waters
This weeks review is of a book chosen for me by a fellow member of staff and someone well known to many of our fiction loving customers.
During a post war summer in Warwickshire, Dr Faraday is called to a patient at Hundreds Hall, a once grand Georgian house that is now gently crumbling. Its owners the Ayres family - mother, son and daughter struggle to make ends meet and keep pace with a rapidly changing society. The patient that first brings Dr Faraday to Hundreds is the Ayres one and only servant Betty, a teenager who claims that Hundreds is inhabited by something other than the family. Mother, son and daughter have their own thoughts on their apparent house guests. There is no evidence of any evil force at work until the docile family dog savages a neighbour's child. After this strange things start to happen with increasing in frequency.
In the meantime Dr Faraday has become increasingly entangled in the family's lives and becomes attracted to the daughter Caroline, a plain young woman. Her brother Roderick has medical issues as a legacy of being burned during the war so a relationship of doctor and patient is formed as Doctor Faraday continues to treat Roderick's leg The doctor is an educated man who is sure that there is a rational explanation for the strange happenings in the house.
The story is told from Faraday's perspective. The question that I was left with at the end were how was it that the doctor was always around for each major crisis and supernatural or rational? The author lets the reader decide. A good read that starts slowly but ultimately makes you want to keep reading.
