A Spectre Calls

The Book: Sarah Waters is best known for her lesbian historical romps Tipping the Velvet and Fingersmith.

She branched out with her wartime romance The Night Watch, and The Little Stranger once again enters new territory.

Waters’ latest novel is billed as a supernatural tale, which is also promoted as “a meditation on the nature of the British and class, and how things are rarely what they seem”.

Ever since I was underwhelmed by Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw, I have been a little wary of ghost stories.

But I liked the narrative voice so much in Waters’ latest novel that I was prepared to tag along for the ride, however many poltergeists were rattling around spooky Hundreds Hall in post-war Warwickshire.

Waters chooses a male narrator for a change and there appears to be no gay viewpoint in the story, something of a departure for the author.

Thankfully, Dr Faraday is a narrator you can feel completely comfortable with.

To start with he’s a GP, and although perfectly competent, is not slick and successful like his counterparts in the practice.

He is also unmarried, following a series of failed romances, which puts him in the perfect position to be lured in by the Ayres family at the crumbling country house.

The shy bachelor is hooked in by matriarchal Mrs Ayres, her son Rod, who is struggling with his war wounds, and her rather manly daughter Caroline.

In the background, there’s the spectre of the daughter who died at a young age from a terrible illness, and Waters’ creates an underlying feeling of tension that suggests each family member has ghosts they need to exorcise.

These personal difficulties – and the Ayres’ fall from social grace as their country pile declines – proved more interesting to me than the question of whether Hundreds Hall was haunted.

Through the likeable narrator, Waters succeeded in keeping me on edge.

I guessed something bad was going to happen in gloomy Hundreds Hall, but I didn’t realise quite how bad the situation was going to get.

One of the main characters in the book, of course, is Hundreds Hall and Waters’ exquisite descriptions of its labyrinth corridors and vast reception rooms is carried off brilliantly. I could picture the scene clearly on every page, but I have to confess I might have benefited from a Cluedo-style map in the end papers.

Waters and her partner travelled round quite a few country homes before she created Hundreds Hall, and although she has clearly carried out some research to recreate an authentic post-war country house, she never allows the research to cast a shadow over her imagination.

The novelist said she found The Little Stranger easier to write than its predecessor The Night Watch, and I certainly found it an easier read.

She has written a tale of suspense which is built to last, and made me want to re-read LP Hartley’s The Go-Between, Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier, and Ian McEwan’s Atonement.

The AUTHOR: Sarah Waters was born in Wales in 1966. She has a PhD in English Literature and has been an associate lecturer with the Open University.

She lives in south London, and grew up in Neyland, a small town of 4,000 people on the Pembrokeshire coast.

Waters was obsessed with gothic horror stories, watched numerous Hammer House of Horror episodes, and has drawn on the influences of Henry James and Wilkie Collins to create The Little Stranger.

She has won a Betty Trask Award, the Somerset Maugham Award and was twice shortlisted for the Mail on Sunday/John Llewellyn Rhys Prize.

In 2003, she was named Author of the Year three times: by the British Book Awards, The Booksellers’ Association and Waterstone’s Booksellers.

She was also chosen as one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists in 2003.

Fingersmith won the CWA Ellis Peters Dagger Award for Historical Crime Fiction and the South Bank Show Award for Literature and both Fingersmith and The Night Watch were shortlisted for the Man Booker and Orange prizes.

Waters said she felt under pressure writing The Night Watch after receiving the Booker Prize nomination for Fingersmith in 2002, but she experienced no such difficulty with her latest novel.

Tipping the Velvet, Affinity and Fingersmith have all been adapted for television.

The Night Watch is currently in development with the BBC.