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Art & Books Books

The Little Stranger

THE LITTLE STRANGER by Sarah Waters (McClelland & Stewart), 463 pages, $32 cloth. Rating: NNN


Let me get it over with. The Little Stranger has no lesbian content. That’s disappointing, I admit, but only because there are so few writers equipped to deliver true literary dyke dazzle, and – let’s be clear – it is not Sarah Waters’s fault that she’s among those precious few.

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So when she moves away from the desire-drenched bodice-rippers for which she’s famous (to be fair, her previous novel, Night Watch signalled the shift) and gives us a terrific tale of a haunted house, do take the journey with her. She still tells a story like no one else.

In the post-WWII English countryside, Dr. Faraday is sent to Hundreds Hall to attend to the estate’s sole servant, who suspects that something strange is going on. Soon, Faraday is obsessed with the family who own the house – Roderick, his mother and especially his sister, the smart, but rather plain Caroline – until all hell breaks loose.

Waters brings her famed research skills to the project, making every detail of the crumbling estate vivid: the furniture, the china, the wallpaper. And the story rips right along. Waters has a way of getting you wholly absorbed in every incident, big or small, and she’s got the creep factor down in ways that get right under your skin.

But the book is also about class, tracking the changing status of the gentry and Faraday’s own internal conflict: his mother was a parlour maid at Hundreds Hall when he was a child.

The story takes a while to get going, and Waters waits a bit too long to inject some romance into the tale. But this is still one of the UK’s best writers – whether she’s rockin’ the lesbo lit or not.

For an interview with Waters, go to nowtoronto.com/books.

Write Books at susanc@nowtoronto.com.

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