2017/34: The Little Stranger -- Sarah Waters

Arriving at that crumbling red house, I’d have the sense, every time, that ordinary life had fractionally tilted, and that I had slipped into some other, odder, rather rarer realm. [loc. 1151]

Set in post-war rural Warwickshire, The Little Stranger is a Gothic novel that echoes with inequality: sexism, social class, family secrets and a creeping sense of horror. Everyone in this novel is scared of something, but most of them won't (or can't) put a name to their fear. For Dr Faraday -- I don't believe his forename is ever revealed -- it's the imminent National Health Service, which he fears will destroy his practice. For the once-wealthy Ayres family -- Mrs Ayres and her two grown children, who live at isolated Hundreds Hall with their few remaining servants -- it's the Labour government that's taxing rural landowners into penury. But those are fears that can be spoken of, and laughed about. There are others.

Dr Faraday is a working-class lad made good, though he has a chip on his shoulder and a constant sense of not quite belonging. His friendship with the Ayres family -- and especially with Caroline -- give him glimpses of a different world, and the reclusive family who inhabit the crumbling ruins of a bygone age. He's keen to suggest experimental treatments for Roderick Ayres, who is scarred, physically and mentally, by his wartime experiences. Rod is an amiable sort, joking about the servants getting better treatment than the family -- though he seems to be struggling with the management of the estate. Rod's sister Caroline seems cheerful and competent, devoted to her elderly Labrador Gyp: she and Faraday become good friends.

But Rod himself is becoming increasingly distressed -- he talks of keeping something at bay, and recounts an outlandish tale of an evil presence -- so Dr Faraday, diagnosing nervous illness, arranges for his removal to a nursing home. Once Rod is out of the picture, the Ayres women turn to Faraday for help and support -- and, on Caroline's part, perhaps more.

There is a delicious creeping sense of horror here: nothing quite glimpsed or explained. Faraday's first-person narrative reveals more than he knows: his insistence on rational explanations and psychoanalytic theory blinds him to much of what is happening. Waters' descriptions are precise, as though she's viewing each scene through a magnifying-glass and picking out the details one might not notice: the dirt on each hair on the bare leg of a young woman, a drop of blood on a silk blouse. Throughout the novel there's a sense of disrepair, decay, things that are stained or marked or charred.

I should read more Waters ...