Dr. Faraday, exasperated with all the superstition, tries to demonstrate there are rational explanations for everything. He thinks, perhaps, it is a kind of hysteria, started by Betty and spread among the Ayres, although even he has seen things even he cannot explain. In despair, he confides the whole scenario in a fellow physician, who postulates some kind of psychic force constituted in those living there. Is the house haunted? If so, by what? These things are left to the reader to decide as the plot drives toward its conclusion.
The Little Stranger is a very English story (author Sarah Waters is a Londoner). It is dense, Dickensian in its description of most of Dr. Faraday's patients, spellbound by class differences and the Ayres fall in fortune. Waters spends a great deal of time detailing both the grandeur and the decline of Hundreds Hall. One could almost find one's way around it, feel the chill of the shut-up rooms, and hear the echoes of footsteps on the marble floor after so many words devoted to it.
If you're the sort of reader who does not enjoy such detail, this book might well drive you to distraction, as it takes its time getting to the plot points. I have to admit some impatience with it, no doubt because I knew it was a ghost story and couldn't wait for the fireworks to begin. I also got a bit frustrated with Dr. Faraday's denseness about the strange occurrences.
Even so, The Little Stranger is absorbing, it's portrait of post-war rural England fascinating, its characters compelling. Hundreds Hall will draw you in just like it did Dr. Faraday. If you've got some time to devote to it, The Little Stranger may just be your cup of tea.
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