The Little Stranger (Review)

Ahead there be spoilers.

I have eagerly read each and every one of Sarah Waters' novels (my fave continues to be Fingersmith) so a source of genuine frustration became the length of time it took to get ahold of her latest, The Little Stranger.

For the first time, no lesbian characters (although Carolyn...well...). For the second time, a non-Victorian setting. Also for the second time, a story having to do with ghosts. Or a ghost. Or something like a ghost. Maybe.

I think a lot of Americans don't appreciate what a horror the second world war was to Britain, how much was destroyed, how huge a percentage of the populace were more-or-less in the fight and suffered accordingly, or how long privations continued even after VE Day. I barely realize it. This book brings that period to life (or death as the case may be), the years after the war when there weren't enough places for people to live and the rationing of food, sugar, coffee, clothes and fuel continued for years.

Hundreds Hall is a Georgian mansion in Warwickshire, the home of the Ayers family (nice pun when you think about it, as in "giving oneself"). It is haunted. By what? Well, by the past certainly. Its inhabitants don't seem so much to live there as to haunt the place. Very old-fashioned are the Ayers family. From a different time, and coping not all that terribly well with a new world. And maybe the Hall is haunted by something else. What? We don't really know. Nor do we ever definitely learn.

Two other books came to mind as I finished The Little Stranger. Since finishing it I've glanced a few reviews and seen references to the exact same two. One is obvious -- The Turn of the Screw, arguably the best haunted house story ever (although methinks Shirley Jackson could give Henry James at least some competion there). One can easily see why. The lonely single person entering into the odd world of an old family estate, an employee who observes/learns about some of the tragedy in this manor, and cannot help but impact things by their own personal issues as they become involved. In the end, amidst more tragedy and even death, we are left without really knowing whether the ghost or ghosts were real. Now, which story am I describing? Both. One is about a governess. The other is about a physician. Each deals with a family unit of three, including a parental figure as well as two siblings--a brother and sister. In Waters, these are adults, confronted not with the mysteries of childhood and imagination but the gnawing despair of feeling trapped. Trapped by the house, mostly, by trying to maintain its upkeep and live up to traditions crumbling around them.

Honestly, though, this book also brought to mind Daphne DuMarier's Rebecca, about an unnamed narrator (we never do learn Dr. Faraday's first name) who enters via marriage a beloved but strange manor, one also haunted but in this case by genuine memories and dark secrets. Max de Winter reminds me in a lot of ways of Roderick Ayers, but the latter is physically scarred as well as much younger and without the fortune (i.e. comfort and security) to help maintain his emotional defenses.

When in reading novels, we see a single man meet a single woman early on, the possibility of romance drifts to the surface. So it is with The Little Stranger and if it takes a long (albeit realistic) time to develop, it also feels natural as well as achingly foolish for both people involved. Dr. Faraday, our narrator, is a doctor from a working class background whose mother once worked at Hundreds Hall. Literally, the book begins with an act of casual vandalism he committed as a child -- the stealing of carved acorn from the wall. Years later, as the whole country tries to start over again after six ghastly years at war, Dr. Faraday visits the Hall once more. He comes in an official capacity, as the Ayers report one of their (few) servants is feeling ill. Now the doctor meets all three remaining members of family:

Scarred, highly strung veteran Roderick.

His somewhat ungainly but likeable sister, Carolyn, with her beloved dog Gyp.

Their kindly but firm (as well as fragile) mother, still secretly mourning the death of her first daughter decades past from diptheria.

And the story recounts what happens over the next year. By any measure, it is a tragedy, and on many levels. One thing we're introduced to very early is the idea that there's something "wicked" in the Hall, or so the teen-aged maid Betty insists. Nobody pays her much mind, of course. Save the readers. But should we? Keep in mind one of the first things Dr. Faraday figures out is that Betty isn't really sick at all, but simply acting out (as a child does) a personal conflict between the spookiness of this place, her desire to be away from home, her fear of a new place, etc. In other words, she is suggestible and not that honest (although she seems to genuinely like the Ayers, especially the mother as time goes on).

What is really going on here? On one level, it seems straightforward enough. Waters herself said somewhere (I think) that 1947 was a terrible year, full of unhappiness for nearly everyone. In that year, the last members of this particular family deteriorate in the face of a world they don't really understand -- a world where breeding means less and less, where great wealthy has evaporated and new shapes of society create confusion. Roderick, unable to handle the stress, has a total breakdown and ends up confined, drugged to be kept docile. His mother, her imagination takes a dark turn into the past, believing her long-dead little girl wants her to join her and finally stage manages a fairly grisly suicide. Carolyn, seeking a change of some kind, any kind, falls prey to the same delusions for a split second and falls to her death.

But even without ghosts, there is more. One of the most uncomfortable series of events in the novel is the "courtship" of Carolyn and Dr. Faraday. Trained in the ways of strict rationality, he can find himself privately considering whether some Little Stranger haunts Hundreds Hall, but in word and deed he insists upon being the Voice of Reason (note the capitals). He listens to all the baffling weird details Carolyn notes, but in the end dismisses them -- even after the dizzying discovery of how much the two are attracted to one another. But like everything else here, even that is not what it seems. Is he really attracted to her, or at least how much is he attracted to the idea of her? He tries to push her in what seems like a good direction, but in the end pushes her away. Yet it is also true that she began it. She was the one who (perhaps rightly, let us be honest) wounds him so terribly by agreeing to a marriage then calling it off very abruptly (he himself missing far too many clues about her ambivalence). His pain is real. Certainly some at least of his feelings for Carolyn herself are genuine.

But might he be the catalyst, the one who "sets off" whatever strange power that may (or may not) be attacking the Ayers? More than one person points out this "ghost" or whatever it is, behaves childishly. It doesn't plan so much as play. It it exists, it can be and is distracted. But what is it? Might it be Mrs. Ayers long-dead child? She certainly thought so. No one else did. Is it a spirit given shape by the psyche of someone in and around the Hall? Or, by more than one? Carolyn points out It seems different to each person, latching onto personal chinks in their mental armor. Dr. Faraday has mixed feelings about the family, although he regards them as friends. He holds to his duty as a physician, seeing the whole world through the lens of such -- in fact, he even breaks his solemn word in the name of that duty (and Roderick never forgives him -- neither, perhaps, would I). Yet when the mask slips -- under stress and humiliation and panic -- Dr. Faraday reveals a dark side. It isn't pretty. But understandable, oh yes.

One walks away from the novel with the feeling that Dr. Faraday is somehow more a part of events at Hundreds Hall than he allows himself to suspect. It isn't that he's a bad man. He is in fact a good one, a kind man, if not terribly remarkable in most ways. There are passions there, but he keeps them muffled up. And at the end, he is certainly the one haunting Hundreds Hall--or being haunted by it. Or both. Three years after events, he still has his keys to the place. No one lives there. He comes by and sweeps things up a bit. Sits down and listens. Ponders. Wonders. Comes up with no answers, none at all. Every now and then he thinks he catches a movement out of the corner of his eye. He turns and looks.

What he sees when he does so -- well, how telling is that really? And if it tells anything, what is that something being told?

I don't know.

Review: "Fingersmith"

Every now and then, you fall in love. With a coffee house, or a kitten, or maybe a moment under a specific tree on one particular day.

Sometimes you fall in love with a novel. In this case, a novel about falling in love.

Is this review sufficiently saccharine yet? Wait--it gets better! Really!

Fingersmith is a novel by Sarah Waters. It is also Victorian slang for "pick pocket." In the context of the novel, it also functions as a double ententre. You see, like the writer's two previous novels, its plot concerns a lesbian love story. But not one of those plithy tales of nice girls who fall for each other then stand up to a social order that disapproves. Such can be the stuff of good story-telling, to be sure. Look at Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit for example or But I'm A Cheerleader. But Waters challenges us rather more than that. The term "politically correct" having become too degraded to mean much of anything anymore, instead let us call this novel one that confounds all expectations--and makes perfect sense. No small feat.

The first stirrings of the plot you can read on any cover of either the novel itself or the DVD of the miniseries adapted from it. Sue Trinder, raised in a squalid but raucus part of London by Mrs. Sucksby, is hired by a charming rogue known as Gentleman to help fleece an heiress. Said heiress is Maud Lilly, a girl Sue's own age--kept under the thumb of a tyrannical uncle Christopher Lilly in his estate of Briar (love the name of that manor--feels perfectly authentic yet seethes with meaning). It is a cruel plan, a ruthless one, and it hinges upon Sue earning Maud's trust.

As perhaps one might suspect, things do not go according to plan. Sue grows close to Maud, and finds herself in a terrible conundrum. In time, they grow more than close. Herein lies the stuff of tragedy.

Waters, one should mention, has a degree in Victorian literature and it shows. She wields a startling plot (or plots) with a skill one might expect of an expert on Wilkie Collins, Charles Dickens and like. Or not. Because the creation of story points and satisfying revelations has never been a matter of studying Anne Radcliffe or Sheridan LeFanu. That requires ability, rather than mere knowledge. For that matter, the book is draped with telling details with layer after layer of meaning. Mr. Lilly, for example--he of the purple tongue from ceaseless wetting of his quill pen, and the brass finger on the library floor beyond which servants are forbidden. Or the extra income Mrs. Sucksby earns because one of her windows shows the nearby gallows (quite a boon execution time, with folks willing to pay for the "show").

Lest you have not yet read or seen this work, I offer no spoilers. Precise twists and turns in the plot remain unwritten for this review. What I will mention is that a co-worker, to whom I'd lent the novel, came in one day with less than ten pages left and uttered the words "I have no idea what is going to happen next!"

Maybe my co-worker is not a good judge of such things. You have no way of knowing. But assume for the sake of argument (as is indeed the case) that she is. Consider then what a testimonial she gave in that moment! Let my own testimony confirm it! One of the grave problems with reading or viewing many works of fiction--whatever the media--is that an audience member becomes jaded. One watches a film or reads a book and what happens within too often ends up predictable. This is my major complaint, for example, with the last book of the Twilight Saga--after chapter one, the bones of plot for all the other chapters were naked to my mind's eye. Not so this book!

Alas, my fear is that now readers might halfway expect UFOs to abduct one of the characters, then clone her to become the president of a distant planet of living lawn furniture.

No fear. Surprising, yes. Silly, no.

What I can say without hesitation is that Fingersmith captures the feel of another era, a time before modern forensics or women's rights, before the cataloging of all things had reached quite such a pervasive level, where "class" meant something much than it does to us today (at least, I hope so). Social services--what would those be? London--a place only imagined and barely that without television or films or even photographs. More tellingly--Identity. A more malleable thing in some ways without social security numbers or fingerprints, much less DNA profiles or digital records. Waters' words take us to another place, one not so very far from us in time--hence familiar yet alien. Quaint, and also disturbing. Yet comfortable in some odd way.

More than this, she weaves a constellation of characters in orbit around one another that compel interest and caring. Sue's practicality coupled with a growing shame at her own actions. Maud's ignorance, slowly but surely demolished in the wake of meeting Sue. The charm and cruel honesty of Gentleman. Mr. Lilly--tyrant and cripple (in soul far more than body). And the strange, difficult journey of Mrs. Sucksby as plots unravel and secrets start doing a dance. Yet at its heart--a love story. Two complex and complete human beings who--and why this should be so utterly believable and understandable is the art of the thing--find in each other some part of themselves they've been missing. Sue and Maud are the heart of this tale, with all its mystery and betrayals. They are the ones we care about most, and from whose eyes we learn all kinds of uncomfortable truths. Each becomes a treasure to the other, but under more bizarre and challenging circumstances one might fear to imagine.

In passing I should mention the BBC made a fine adaptation of the novel, starring Sally Hawkins and Elaine Cassidy in the leads. Behold the trailer: