The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters

I tore through this book on the weekend – it was impossible to stop thinking about it!  The setting is an eerie, crumbling English manor house (Hundreds) during the dismal postwar years. At one time the house and the ancestral family – the Ayres – were shimmering examples of England’s aristocracy.  Times have changed…the family has seen its share of tragedies and the house has begun to decompose, bit by bit.  A local doctor is fascinated with Hundreds and with the Ayres.  Doctor Faraday’s mother once worked as a nurserymaid for the Ayres family and he can recall a boyhood visit to Hundreds when the house was at its best.  

Occupying Hundreds are the  family, which has been reduced to the widowed Mrs. Ayres, Roderick (wounded in the Second World War) and his sister Caroline, and the handful of servants who remain in service at Hundreds.  Frightening events start to plague the family (try to sleep after the experience in the nursery!) and we are left to wonder what is happening to the house and the family.  I highly recommend this book.

It reminded me of another favourite read – the Children of Charlecote, in which four children grow up at Charlecote Park in the days before the Great War.  In my mind, ‘to the manor born’ brought great expectations and great burdens.  I never felt more sad than reading about the loneliness and literal hunger of the children growing up at Charlecote Park.