(no subject)

[skygiants]

I saw the film version of The Little Stranger before I read the actual Sarah Waters novel, and then read the book out of curiosity to see the differences. It turns out there really aren't many huge differences plotwise -- it's all in portrayal and cinematography, of which more under spoiler-cut.

The Little Stranger is very much set up like a Gothic in reverse, Boy Meets House, from the very first line: I first saw Hundreds Hall when I was ten years old. (Compare: Last night I dreamed I went to Manderley again.) So from the start we know that the House is going to be Sinister, and the people who live in it (dreamy mother, plain and sensible daughter, stressed-out war vet son) are going to be Dramatic and have Secrets, and our ordinary, lower-class doctor hero is going to be hopelessly enmeshed with all of them.


But of course in fact the book really is a reverse Gothic, as is veeeeeeery slowly intimated over the course of the novel; sure, the house is in a slow decline, and the Ayres' attempts to hold onto their aristocratic way of life is definitely futile, but the real menace is most likely what our politely possessive, buttoned-down hero brings into it.

This is where I wonder how the book reads to people who haven't seen the film, and how long it generally takes to start mistrusting good Dr. Faraday. In the film, Domnhall Gleason is highkey unnerving right from the start, a desperately awkward presence in every scene he appears in. His first entry to the house is already shot sort of like The Shining, with Tiny Faraday and Hundreds both radiating creep factor, and his resentment of the Ayres is played up 300% -- the film layers levels of significant cinematic bitterness onto everything that happens on the day of their Significant First Meeting, which in the book is pretty much a non-event. I don't know that I like one version or the other better, but I suspect it does for sure make a different experience.

A thing I like better about the book -- Roderick Ayres is actually doing pretty OK before the house destroys him? The film plays up how tormented he is by his injury and PTSD, in the book he's stressed by business but otherwise doing fine.

One thing I like better about the film -- Roderick Ayres rolls up at the end after everyone else has kicked the bucket to be like 'welp, looks like a sanitorium was the right place to be! Well, I'm off to put this entire sad episode behind me, bye!' Nice to see you, Roderick, glad you got yourself back together and are doing okay, sorry about the loss of ... the entire rest of your family ..... and your dog ......

Comments

[rymenhild]

I read this book during the two-week period I was flooded out of my apartment and finishing my dissertation. I read a surprising number of novels then, actually. But specifically, I read this book on the night there was no space in my primary hotel so I ended up in a decayed mansion of a hotel with fancy peeling wallpaper and scratched Victorian mirrors and unnecessary vintage chandeliers.

What I am saying is that I did not sleep well that night.

[skygiants]

YES UNDERSTANDABLE @___@

[kore]

WOW the inside weather was totally matching the outside! (fancy literary term for that exists, I forgot what it is)

[minutia_r]

The pathetic fallacy, I think.

[kore]

Not really -- that's more like "sullen clouds" or "smiling sunbeams." I believe I was thinking of something else....

[kore]

but the real menace is most likely what our politely possessive, buttoned-down hero brings into it.

I loved that. It's sort of like Turn of the Screw in reverse -- he's like the innocent governess who sees evil everywhere, but he's the one who's really bringing all the trauma and pain. I think he's one of the best modern unreliable narrators I've read. (Most of the others are in Tana French books, heh.)

[skygiants]

Yeah, it's very Turn of the Screw! And, like, it's possible that he's equally as oblivious and convinced that he's well-meant as the governess is ... but unlike her, his actions eventually speak for themselves even without the supernatural aspect. (I keep meaning to read Tana French! I've gotten the first one out of the library at least twice and circumstances always intervene.)

[kore]

Oh dear no, the first Tana French novel, In the Woods, is uncharacteristically pretty bad. I didn't think it was THAT bad, but then again I read The Likeness (her second book) and started on the third before reading the first one. Her great gift is for assuming subjective character voices to a scary degree, and it doesn't quite come off in the first so you're just Reading About a White Male Jerk, and the plot is very unresolved. I've run into like five or six friends -- good readers -- who read the first one, HATED it, and never wanted to read another book by her again. I'd really rec starting with The Likeness. It's not as great as her later novels, but you do sort of need to read them in chronological order for the full emotional impact. As always YMMV and other people may say different things, &c &c. But I truly wouldn't start with it. French really improves as she goes along; one of her best characters, Detective Antoinette Conway, doesn't show up until the fifth novel in the Dublin Murder Squad series. (As a bonus, if you like Secret History-type books, The Likeness was obviously very influenced by it, but the other novels aren't. IMHO her third novel takes off with a BANG and it's skyrocketing all the way after that.)

I personally wouldn't start with her latest, a standalone called The Witch Elm, either, as it is really long and draggy and once again Narrated By a White Male Jerk. I guess it could also be interesting read against his narration, but I felt like the other characters weren't well-drawn enough to do that, and it was just disappointing.

Again, just my advice not meant to be carved in stone tablets or anything! I just get sad watching people bounce like superballs off her first novel.

[allchildren]

Strongly disagree; The Likeness is the most connected of any of the books to the previous one so I would (and did) start with In The Woods. If you can grok The Little Stranger, you won't have any problems with ITW.

I have not read The Witch Elm yet but it's my understanding that it is not connected to the Dublin Murder Squad and therefore not really part of the series. Is that so?

[sovay]

But of course in fact the book really is a reverse Gothic, as is veeeeeeery slowly intimated over the course of the novel; sure, the house is in a slow decline, and the Ayres' attempts to hold onto their aristocratic way of life is definitely futile, but the real menace is most likely what our politely possessive, buttoned-down hero brings into it.

I am glad this works onscreen; I wanted but did not manage to see it during the twenty-four hours it was in theaters.

One thing I like better about the film -- Roderick Ayres rolls up at the end after everyone else has kicked the bucket to be like 'welp, looks like a sanitorium was the right place to be! Well, I'm off to put this entire sad episode behind me, bye!'

Nice, albeit maybe with some therapy.

[skygiants]

Possibly he got therapy at the sanitorium!

... I mean, it might not have been very good therapy, given the 1940s, but one hopes and wishes the best for him nonetheless.

[sapote]

To be honest I read this entry with some relief, because how to say - I'm a terrible critical reader and I read The Little Stranger six years ago when I was completely unfamiliar with gothic conventions, so, uh, my memory of that book has always been a little "labrador retriever listening to opera". Like: a lot of things sure happened just now! What?

I guess I am saying that seriously, if anyone loved that book so much that they want to explain it to me further, it would answer a real nagging mystery for me.

[skygiants]

I mean, I can explain to you ... my impressions .... as filtered through the experience of having the movie explain the book to me first ..... but I will do my best! What would you like to know?

[sapote]

Oh gosh. Okay, so I was at the time also bad at reading for unreliable narrators, so my impression was that Dr. Faraday showed up, was confused, was sad about the wallpaper in that one room, and then a BUNCH of people died one after the other in ways that made very little sense and he left as confused as he'd entered.

... Am I supposed to understand that he actually did something, perhaps related to the rapid-fire sequence of deaths? Or was there really a ghost? Or was that ambiguity intended to, in fact, stand forever and we the readers will never know what happened? Because when I read it, when Dr. Faraday was like "gosh, we'll never know what happened" I just... believed him.

[skygiants]

Okay, so I think is what is meant to be the takeaway -- and what the film implies very strongly -- is that when Faraday's doctor friend suggests that maybe Caroline has a poltergeist, the actual source of the poltergeist or supernatural disturbance is Faraday's deep-seated jealousy of the family and desire to claim the house (i.e. the lifestyle and class privilege that the house represents.)

Probably Faraday himself doesn't know or want to know that this is what's happening, but this sort of gradually reveals itself in the way that his concern is primarily for the house itself rather than the people in and around it, and his possessiveness of Caroline, and in the way that the people in the house begin to feel his imprint on the things that are happening to them -- like when Caroline keeps getting the mystery phone calls at night, and is convinced it's Faraday, while at the same time Faraday is describing himself sitting up in bed obsessing over the house and Caroline from afar.

[kore]

Yeah, that is totally what I thought as well. It's a very Hill House kind of setup, as well as your typical Gothic (which Hill House is of course another turn on).

[kore]

I think you're meant to believe that he believes that, and maybe also possibly believe that "we don't know what happened," but there are also very very strong hints in either direction, but there really is also that Turn of the Screw air where you start to suspect that the oh-so-innocent person reporting on all the evil supernatural doings can't possibly be that removed from them. Plus the idea that "supernatural" manifestations can also be caused by terribly strong buried human drives and emotions (like how teenagers are often blamed for poltergeists and vice versa).

I think it's also totally a story about a guy who sees himself as a rescuing hero, and what might happen if the people he's all fired up to rescue don't want or even need one, and how he views his own actions after that.

[allchildren]

In addition to what the others said, if you take this in context of the rest of Sarah Waters's writing, my belief is that this is a horror story about the patriarchy.

My review.

[skygiants]

For me this came across much more directly in the film; in the book I was never sure whether he'd firmly fixated on Caroline with intent to isolate her from the beginning, or if he's sort of roving from Ayres to Ayres for a while until settling on Caroline midway through as his best way to the house. (There aren't any attacks on Mrs. Ayres until after his doctor friend jokes that people aren't sure whether he's going after Caroline or her mother.)