SARAH WATERS'S GOTHIC, HETEROSEXUAL NOVEL

Sarah Waters’s first all-heterosexual novel, “The Little Stranger”, is an homage to haunted-house mysteries such as “The Turn of the Screw”. Set in 1949, two years on from “The Night Watch”, it evokes a weary Britain awaiting the full launch of the welfare state. The narrator, Dr Faraday, has long been captivated by Hundreds Hall, where his mother worked as a nursery maid; calling there 30 years on, he finds the owners penniless and the house decaying. To his delight, the widowed Mrs Ayres, her frumpish daughter and war-damaged son begin to see him as a friend, but then a visit by a spoilt girl triggers a series of terrifying events. Is the doctor right to detect collective hysteria, or do the walls harbour something more than dry rot?

Gothic novels are much in vogue, but Waters embraces the genre convincingly, with a measured pace, a light touch and just enough period detail. And she gives the long-despised subject of class a proper airing.