The Little Stranger
shortlisted for the Booker Prize
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The Little Stranger
Narrated by:
Simon Vance
Buy Now for $28.99
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Narrated by:
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Simon Vance
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By:
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Sarah Waters
About this listen
Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize
'Sarah Waters's masterly novel is . . . gripping, confident, unnerving and supremely entertaining' Hilary Mantel
After her award-winning trilogy of Victorian novels, Sarah Waters turned to the 1940s and wrote THE NIGHT WATCH, a tender and tragic novel set against the backdrop of wartime Britain. Shortlisted for both the Orange and the Man Booker, it went straight to number one in the bestseller chart.
In a dusty post-war summer in rural Warwickshire, a doctor is called to a patient at Hundreds Hall. Home to the Ayres family for over two centuries, the Georgian house, once grand and handsome, is now in decline, its masonry crumbling, its gardens choked with weeds, the clock in its stable yard permanently fixed at twenty to nine. But are the Ayreses haunted by something more sinister than a dying way of life? Little does Dr Faraday know how closely, and how terrifyingly, their story is about to become entwined with his.
Prepare yourself. From this wonderful writer who continues to astonish us, now comes a chilling ghost story.©2009 Sarah Waters
Critic Reviews
Sarah Waters' masterly novel is gripping, confident, unnerving and supremely entertaining
The #1 book of the year... several sleepless nights are guaranteed
Gripping... As well as being a supernatural tale, it is a meditation on the nature of the British and class, and how things are rarely what they seem. Chilling
Waters has determined to scare the pants off her righly devoted audience. She succeeds unequivocally. You'll want to sleep with the light on (Erica Wagner)
The knowledge that something nasty is around the corner lends the narrative a compelling sense of unease. The richness of Waters' writing ensures that the air of thickening dread is very thick indeed . . . Waters is a brave writer. The Little Stranger is an engrossing, hugely enjoyable read with set pieces guaranteed to make anyone with a pulse gibber in fright (John Preston)
By now readers must be confident of her mastery of storytelling . . . While at one turn, the novel looks to be a ghost story, the next it is a psychological drama . . . But it is also a brilliantly observed story, verging on the comedy, about Britain on the cusp of modern age... The writing is subtle and poised (Joy lo Dico)
The Little Stranger is a proper muscle-flexing story - I was in awe and just did not want it to end (Julie Myerson)
Displaying her remarkable flair for period evocation, Waters recreates backwater Britain just after the Second World War with atmospheric immediacy . . . Acute and absorbing (Peter Kemp)
Waters is often described as a brilliant storyteller, and so she is. But she is also an artist compelled to experiment . . . Waters gives herself a sort of handicap with the dull doctor's narration. This indirectness, which in cruder hands might have led to yawning insurrection in the reader, becomes essential to the novel's unsettling power (Claudia Fitzherbert)
A creepy, sensual 1940s noir with all of Waters' trademark depth and intelligence. And the best, most ambivalent male narrator (written by a woman) since The Secret History (Liz Hoggard)
The horrors are brilliantly orchestrated, and rise effortlessly in scale and explicitness... Waters knows what she is about, and the novel's interests are only partly in the supernatural... The fascination of The Little Stranger lies in its unnerving evocation of place and time. It is a beautiful and expert divertissement (Philip Hensher)
Truly frightening . . . As I lay in bed after finishing reading it, running the various elements through my mind, a fox screamed outside my window and I nearly had a heart attack (Suzi Feay)
A spine-tingler . . . Waters skilfully ratchets up the suspense as events at Hundreds grow ever more highly charged - even downright chilling (Amber Pearson)
A great ghost story for those of us who don't normally read ghost stories.
Is it a ghost or a delusion?
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Beautifully written and read
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Not my cup of tea
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