The house is haunted
- Book: The Little Stranger
- Location: Warwickshire
- Author: Sarah Waters
By sheer coincidence, I read the latter part of this book in a house that had been left to decay by its elderly inhabitant: smelling the mustiness of rotting wood, mildew, and damp plaster, listening to the constant drip of leaking pipes, illuminated only by a single standing lamp since the ceiling fixtures weren’t working… I know that smell will come back to me vividly whenever I open this book.
Circumstances aside, it’s a haunting book on its own. I was gripped by it even from its apparently mundane beginning. And although I figured out the author’s intended solution to who was at the root of the mystery at least 50 pages before the end, that was not a disappointment, but rather a suspenseful experience, watching the character overtaken by obsession. But the whole book was sufficiently subtle and layered to fascinate for that reason too.
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