The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters Review

The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters


This is one of the books I got on a 3 for 2 offer, using a kindly Christmas GiftCard. Sarah Waters is one of my favourite contemporary writers. She plunges one very vividly into dark, gothic Victorian landscapes with intricate plots and, in Affinity and Fingersmith at least, an undertow of despair. I didn’t get on so well with The Night Watch, the book completed just previously to this one and set in the Second World War, but that may be because I was sulking about being so briskly weaned off the claustrophobic Victorian Gothic I so enjoyed. Perhaps I will reread it soon.

The Little Stranger is set in the Post-war period, but is very gothic indeed.

The surviving members of the Ayres family: Mrs Ayres, her son Roderick and her daughter Caroline live in Warwickshire in the once elegant Hundreds Hall, an eighteenth century mansion, now in a state of decay. They are visited by a Dr Faraday, who is called in to attend upon the servant.

Central to this book is the depiction of the changes in the social fabric of Britain in the Post-War period. The Ayres family and Dr Faraday can be seen as representative of the old order and the new. The Ayres are, in some sense, dinosaurs, struggling to maintain their crumbling mansion, but living on a level of genteel poverty and hardship that the working class families, who are moving into the council flats with all mod cons that are being built nearby, would no longer expect to tolerate. Dr Faraday, by contrast, is the son of a servant, who has achieved the middle class status of doctor through his ability, hard work and great sacrifices on the part of his parents. The old order still holds sway however: it is something of a shock to learn that the Ayres keep a fourteen year old girl as their live-in drudge. It would be a year or so yet before the school leaving age was raised to 16.

Following Dr. Faraday’s initial professional visit, he gradually becomes an indispensable friend of the family and a witness to the troubles which descend upon their heads.

As misfortunes are visited upon the family, the increasingly omnipresent Dr Faraday struggles to reassure them that there can only be rational explanations for the happenings that plague the Ayres, in the face of their growing insistence that the house is tenanted by some uncanny evil. Their struggle to hold on to the decaying mansion with its closed off, derelict apartments becomes more desperate even as this reader, at least, could not help inwardly urging the characters to just pack up and leave. The family’s efforts to keep up appearances and maintain their status arouses both sympathy and exasperation. Caroline the sister is an intelligent, capable woman, who enjoyed life in the WRENS, during the War. She is seemingly doomed to spinsterhood, being a plain awkward woman in her middle twenties. She wanders around the countryside with her dog, picking berries and helping with the milking. It doesn’t seem to occur to her that she could simply get a job and bring in an income. Roderick, a once bright and promising young man, was seriously physically and mentally scarred by a “smash” in the RAF. His life is bedevilled by great mounds of paperwork on his desk that represent the financial troubles of Hundreds Hall.

Discussion of social analysis in the novel must not detract from the fact that this is a genuinely scary, creepy book. The atmosphere of the decaying old mansion and its inhabitants, marooned in time is brilliantly evoked by Caroline’s reference to the fact that the stopped stable clock was once playfully manipulated by them as children so that it matches the permanently stopped clock of Miss Havisham. Even at an early stage in the narrative Caroline recognises that the joke has worn distinctly unfunny.

The atmosphere is quite similar to that of Affinity, where uncanny events are afoot and there is an atmosphere of malevolence, but unlike in Affinity, we are not provided with a rational explanation at the end, or not one that conforms to contemporary ideas about what is rational. Reminiscent of Poe’s Fall of the House of Usher and also, to me, of stories like Maupassant’s The Horla in which the reader has a rather clearer apprehension than the narrator that all is far from being well. Very much recommended.

A Good Deed

Trying to get to a temp job on the outskirts of town, I used an online journey planner and made efficient notes on how to get there. I successfully caught the required bus and spotted the correct stopping point. It didn't look right though, so I queried with the driver whether this was the location I was looking for. No, I was miles from there. I got off the bus and stood in the High St in a little place, which as a Londoner I would be tempted to arrogantly describe as "in the middle of nowhere". For a few minutes my mind was blank, I didn't know what to do, I was quite disorientated. I had no more change in my purse to pay for another bus ride and I hadn't even saved the number of the agency in my phone. Eventually I decided what to do; I went to a cash point and took out £10, cursing because this was one of those terrible outlets that take money from you for using them. It annoys me to think that that is maybe the only cash machine in the High St, so the locals have little choice other than to be regularly fleeced.

Anyway, I looked up and down for a cab office, but not seeing one, I went into a little newsagent to ask if there were a cab office nearby. There was a woman in the doorway talking to the man behind the counter. When I asked about the cab office, he shook his head but passed me a Cab Card. Then I asked how far I was from the place and was relieved  to be told it was only a couple of miles - it could have been ten miles for all I knew. I phoned the number on the card, but it went to answer phone, I suspect it was just one driver and that was his mobile. When I asked if he had another number, the woman spontaneously offered to drive me to the place. In the car the radio played Mahler's Symphony No 9.  In the end I was less than five minutes late.

When I told people what had happened they accepted it as normal but to me, being from a big city, it seems amazing that someone would give a lift to a stranger. I am so grateful to that woman.

The Rape of Lucrece Performance by Gerard Logan Review

A couple of nights ago, I went to the theatre to see a performance of Shakespeare's poem The Rape of Lucrece delivered by Gerard Logan.

The poem is based on the story told by the Roman historian Livy about the rape of a virtuous Roman matron Lucretia, by  Tarquin son of King Tarquin Superbus ("the Proud"). Lucretia tells her husband Collatinus what has happened before witnesses and then kills herself. This inspires Marcus Junius Brutus to swear an oath that they will be avenged against this grievous assault upon Collatinus' wife. Ultimately this leads to Tarquin being driven into exile and the inauguration of the Roman Republic.
The actor was wearing a sort of dun coloured salwar kamez which was remeniscient of a Roman tunica (the trousers were a wise addition for performance in the winter months). Over his shoulder he draped a length of white cloth to produce the effect of a Roman toga. The cloth was to fulfil many roles in the course of the narrative. The actor came and stood alone in the centre of the unadorned stage, with only drumroll from offstage as accessory. He spoke the parts clearly, most of the time powerfully conveying the emotions of the protagonists, Tarquin as he debates with himself talking himself round his doubts about the propriety of outraging his hostess.
When he spoke the part of Lucretia the effect was a little jarring in a way that was possibly deliberate. Shakespeare starts by laying cloying emphasis on her helplessness and purity calling her "dove", "lamb" and such like. Too whole hearted an expression of this depiction of the heroine can leave the reader/speaker in the uncomfortable position of joining with the rapist in objectifying Lucretia, the building up of her chastity and vulnerablility rendering her violation the more piquant. It was perhaps his discomfort with or wish to question these lines that seemed to give his expression of Lucretia's pleas and distress a kind of mocking falsetto. Later, when the raped woman finally pulls herself together, giving expression to anger and thoughts of vengeance and of how her honour might be restored, his delivery of her voice improved, although admittedly it also became more definitely masculine, scarcely distinguishable from the raging Tarquin so it could just be a limitation of range that produced the effect.
Lucretia's self condemnation arouses a complex of responses and interpretations. On one level she seems to be acquiesing to the Roman cultural assessment of  the rape of a respectable woman as significant as an egregious insult to her respectable  husband. There is little sense that she personally has been violated or only in so far as she is a wife rather than simply a human being. She insists that though innocent she must die or else her example may allow other adulterous women to get away with it. On the other hand, Lucretia's taking of her own life is arguably the only way she can regain control over her own body and situation, her act of violence in which she anniliates herself can be seen as both negating and confirming the annihiliating act of Tarquin. As the poem drew to a close, the white cloth had become Lucretia's corpse, first mourned over by husband and father who argued over who had the greater claim upon it and later paraded about the streets of Rome as a political tool.

Paranormal Activity Film Review

Watched Paranormal Activity last night. I came to it with high expectations, based on a review I had read in the Guardian, recommending it highly for its subtlety. It is a film very much in the Blair Witch tradition - the unfolding action viewed through a camera set up by the protagonists.

Without spoiling too much, I think I can say that the basic premise was that a young couple, bothered by possible paranormal activity at night in their home have set up a camera in the hope of capturing concrete evidence. At first they are light hearted, perhaps only a little self-consciously displaying their affection for each other in front of the camera and before others. The intrusion of the camera is an amusing novelty in their lives. Inevitably things turn darker and escalate. I was left speculating how far the dark force that haunted them came from within or without, how far was it nourished or engendered by the tensions simmering beneath the surface of their happy relationship?

I must say I found  some of the action a little slow and repetitive, even inconsequential; perhaps the refusal to deliver resolution offers more in the way of verisimilitude than tidy plot development but half way through, I found myself becoming impatient. Yes there is something in the house and it moves things around, no, wandering around in your underwear shouting at it won't help.

The exorcism reference (cut from some versions of the film) was absurd with its hints about unfortunates chewing off their own arms.

On the other hand I was clearly sufficiently influenced by the film to be just a little disturbed when my laptop started inexplicably making noises on its own in the middle of the night...

Grotesque by Natsuo Kirino Review

At the moment I am enjoying rereading "Grotesque" by Natsuo Kirino. It is a compelling and disturbing book focusing on the twisted lives of a group of young women who attended "Q" an elite school/university (apparently the two can be combined in Japan) in which there is a polarisation between the super rich girls who have been there since elementary school and the hard working less privileged girls who are admitted later through their hard work. Like her previous novel "Out" it is a dark tale but with characters that appeal even less to the reader's sympathy. In the earlier novelthere was at least initially a grizzly cameraderie between the group of women factory workers as they rallied round their friend. In this novel the principle protaganist is almost entirely unsympathetic as she coldly watches and even gratuitously hastens the disintegration of those around her. She is a lonely and twisted character, deeply affected by the constant comparisons made between her and her beautiful sister Yuriko. Prostitution and murder blights the lives of the other main female characters. A friend of mine who had enjoyed "Out" was repelled by this novel seeing it as self-hating and anti-feminist. To me the novel seemed instead an angry indictment of the competitive, image obssessed society that shaped and distorted these women. The initially over-achieving character who ends by taking a bizzarre pride in the fact that she juggles being a business woman and a prostitute seems to mirror the twin expectations of  and pressures upon women in contempory society to be both beautiful and sexually appealing while at the same time be successful career women. Glossy magazines such as Cosmopolitan exhort women to not only work hard but look good, go to the gym, buy the right products, cook the right meals and have sex with an equally successful if less well groomed male in a variety of positions. The prostitute/businesswoman character who boasts of her career to sexual clients and sneers at her female colleagues for not venturing into the world of prostitution is indeed a grotesque image of someone trying to meet all the expectations thrown at the modern woman.

Another aspect of the novel that I really enjoyed was the vivid portrait of the Chinese character Zheng's life in a remote Chinese village and his epic and horrendous train journey to the big port city to find work. The novelist brings the world of a snobbish private girl's school and the world of a desperately poor immigrant to life with an equally unflinching eye.

The Burning of Bridget Cleary

Been reading a fascinating if disturbing book "The Burning of Bridget Cleary" (Angela Bourke 1999). It explores a bizzarre and notorious case occurring in Tipperary in 1895 in which a woman was burned to death by her huband, accompanied by a group of her own relatives. They apparently believed that the Bridget, who had been in bed for some days sick with bronchitis, had been stolen by the fairies and what remained in the bed was a Changeling or substitute. By burning the Changeling, the hope was that the imposter would be driven out and the real Bridget would return.

While it is impossible to get to the bottom of what really went on that night - were the bystanders really as helpless as they claimed to prevent Patrick's burning of his wife - why was a fairly common folk belief acted upon to such scarcely precedented extremes? - the book explores the event from a number of interesting angles.

The incident and responses to the incident illustrated the gulf between two worlds existing side by side - Victorian Modernity with its Police Force, telegraph, compulsory schooling, doctors and "rationality" and the thought world of the Irish rural peasantry with its complex lore about fairies, fairy doctors and other supernatural elements. Bourke explores whether talk about such things always equated with a literal belief in them or whether talking about fairies was a coded way of dealing with problems of daily life. The rejection of disabled children for example was explained or excused by raising the possibility that the child was not the parents' real offspring but a Changeling. Saying that a woman was away with the fairies could be hinting in fact at her infidelity. Bridget Cleary was known to be "haughty"; a smartly dressed, attractive milliner with her own Singer Sewing Machine and a flourishing poultry business. Was the assault upon her in part initially intended merely to humble her?
Much of the British and Irish press, in particular those of Unionist sympathies leapt on this story as evidence of how unfit the Irish clearly were for Home Rule, comparing them with those in further flung regions of the British Empire. Victorian racist discourse was ready to see the Irish as possessed of an inherent inferiority that would preclude self government. By coincidence the Oscar Wilde trial was simultaneously taking place in London and was also used against the Irish - if an anglicised and educated Irishman such as Oscar Wilde was incapable of conforming to Victorian norms what hope was there for his less privileged countrymen?
Of course this was also a period in which Irish folklore was becoming a source of interest to scholars particularly of a nationalist bent. W B Yeats and Lady Gregory were questioning countryfolk and recording their stories about fairies and the like. Lady Gregory emphasised that ill treatment of suspected Changelings was actually disapproved of in traditional fairy-lore - any abuse meted out to the fairy impostor was liable to be visited in vengeance upon the abductee. In that way such lore could in fact act as a safety valve urging tolerance of and explaining the behaviour of family members who might be suffering from periods of mental ill health such as post-natal depression - the person was "not themself" but with patience and kindness they might be hoped to return to themselves. As we know standard Victorian treatment of the mentally ill could be a lot less "civilised".

Genji Monogatari

Currently reading The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu - a substantial novel from tenth century japan. It's a lovely volume with accompanying woodcuts. It is one of those books that I have been trying to read off and on for years now - I read a little of it, get distracted, come back to it, start again and so on. In part I blame the size of the thing - it's too big to casually walk around with to the bathroom or  as a work-book i.e a book to be read on the train to and from work and at lunchtimes (very anti social I know).

I suppose also the culture of Heian Japan is often baffleing. People get upset about very obscure things, such as hearing the coarse  voices of ordinary people from within the house but seem to accept being abducted and possibly raped (it isn't quite clarified) as fairly normal if potentially embarassing. I suppose the more I read, the more I will understand. Interestingly though I find Heian women's accounts of their real lives are by no means so alarming as in this fictional creation. I can't see Sei Shonagon tolerating strange men (even princes) carrying her off in the middle of the night. It seems a bizarre conceit as well that these women are depicted as so small and frail that they can just be picked up and carried around like dolls or infants. All sorts of questions could be raised here about women writers and readers and the propensity in certain circumstances to romanticise a less liberated state than the one actually prevailing. Look at the craze a few years ago for wretched Bridget Jones and love of all things Jane Austen.

Went charity shop foraging again yesterday and came away with purple and black cotton/silk dress knee length and also rather serious full length black linen dress with lots of buttons.