Director’s Notebook October, 2009 It’s October; time for...

Wed, 10/07/2009 - 2:27pm -- KChin



Director’s Notebook

October, 2009

It’s October; time for ghosts and goblins and things that go bump in the night. It’s also a great time to read literary ghost stories.  Literary ghost stories are stories that are a cut above the crowd, as far as “scary” stories go.  Written by highly respected writers with great skill and effectiveness, literary ghost stories as a genre date back about two hundred years ago, becoming exceedingly popular in the mid-Victorian period and experiencing a revival in the earlier part of the twentieth century. Some writers who have contributed to the realm of the literary ghost story are Charles Dickens, Virginia Woolf, Edith Wharton and Henry James.

To get a good taste for what a literary ghost story is like, read The Oxford Book of English Ghost Stories.  The introduction to this anthology is especially good, as it attempts to explain what it is that draws readers to ghost stories.  Virginia Woolf believed that ghost stories were popular because “it is pleasant to be afraid when we are conscious we are in no kind of danger”. Edith Wharton put it more succinctly when she described “the fun of the shudder” to be found in ghost stories.

After the 1950’s, few literary ghost stories were being written.  Our modern era seems to prefer horrific stories of gore and graphic violence that are rarely a feature of the literary ghost story. That is why I was so pleased to read Sarah Water’s newest novel The Little Stranger.  In this book,  using all the accoutrements of the traditional ghost story–a decaying mansion in an isolated place; a proud and desperate family, and  psychological, believable terror–Waters has written a literary ghost story that can stand tall in comparison to any of the masterful stories of the past.

The Little Stranger, set in England in the late 1940’s, is the story of the Ayres, a proud, once powerful family of landed gentry whose fortunes have taken a precipitous fall after the death of Colonel Ayres and the disabling war injury of his son and heir Roderick. The family seat, Hundreds Hall, is crumbling around them, but the Ayres stubbornly hold on to their once grand estate, even as they are forced to sell much of the parkland around it to rapacious post-war developers.

Into their lives comes Dr. Faraday, a man whose mother had served as nursery governess to the Ayres and whose parents scrimped and saved to give him the opportunity to study medicine and become a doctor.  As a child he had sat in the warm kitchen of Hundreds Hall and even snuck out to peek at the imposing and beautiful rooms. Now Dr. Faraday is shocked to see not only what has become of the Hall but of its occupants, Roderick, his mother, and his sister Caroline.  Faraday begins to suspect that it is not just penury that is causing the stress and restlessness of the family, but something else they are unwilling to discuss with outsiders.

As the doctor becomes more intimate with the family, he becomes increasingly worried about the mental health of Roderick, particularly when Roderick breaks down one day and tells him what he is afraid of.  Appalled and unbelieving, Dr. Faraday has Roderick committed to a local mental asylum, fearing for his safety and that of his mother and sister.  But even with Roderick removed from the house, strange events seem to occur in Hundreds Hall, leading to mounting terror and the threat of madness for the remaining tenants of the Hall.  Are there ghosts in Hundreds Hall, and whom do they seek to harm?  Or are the ghost sightings merely the result of exhaustion and mental stress, as Dr. Faraday stubbornly continues to insist?

The Little Stranger definitely delivers the requisite number of creepy chills, all the way to the final pages. How Virginia Woolf and Edith Wharton would have loved it!  This might not be a book you want to read late at night with everyone else asleep. So read it, if you dare!



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