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The Little Stranger

Author: Sarah Waters
Publisher: Virago Press Ltd
Category: Book

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Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

165 reviews
Sales Rank: 33

Media: Paperback
Pages: 512
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 7.6 x 5 x 1.6

ISBN: 1844086062
EAN: 9781844086061
ASIN: 1844086062

Publication Date: January 5, 2010
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	Audio CD - The Little Stranger
	Hardcover - Little Stranger
	Audio CD - The Little Stranger
	Hardcover - The Little Stranger (Historical Fiction)
	Paperback - The Little Stranger
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	Hardcover - The Little Stranger
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	Audio Download - The Little Stranger (Unabridged)
	Unknown Binding - THE LITTLE STRANGER.

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Customer Reviews:

Showing reviews 1-5 of 165

1 2 3 4 5 6 ...33 Next »

Strange Indeed March 18, 2010
J. Leigh (UK)
This is Waters weakest book to date.
As a Waters fan , I rushed out to buy it with eager anticipation. the book took me 18 months to read. I was committed to reading it to the end as I was in hope that there would be a good twist or a wonderful ending. Instead, the book limped from chapter to chapter with a painful slowness. The characters lacked edge, substance and interest. I felt that each chapter became repetative and struggeled to find anything to latch onto. Where has all of the wonderful descriptive magic gone from Waters - please let this not be a sign of the slippery slope for her books. Hugely dissapointing.

2 out of 5 stars

I kept waiting for the twist and it never came March 18, 2010
mummytime (UK)
This was my book clubs choice book, so I struggled on to the end. I spent the first half of the book waiting for a twist, which never came.
As a thrilling, frightening book it isn't a patch on Rebecca or Edgar Allan Poe.
As a commentary on social mores after the second World War, well this has been done better a in a lot of books, especially Evelyn Waugh. Sarah Waters is too young to have first hand knowledge of the era, and a lot of the description seems derivative. Sorry but I doubt she really knows the gentry or the working class.

I did get to the end, and just felt relief. I would have given up half-way if it had not been a book group book.
I didn't care for any of the characters, and don't feel they were particularly well drawn. I also thought from almost the beginning they should just sell the house and get it redeveloped (and I belong to the National Trust). Maybe if you care about the house you might feel shocked.

For the first half I kept trying to work out what the twist in the story might be, but there is no twist.

4 out of 5 stars

Good but just a little slow for me March 17, 2010
NJ Hawkes (Liverpool,UK)
In brief: the relationship between a GP visiting an upper-class but financially almost destitute family struggling to retain their home after the war. As the doctor befriends the family, in particular the daughter, mysterious and sometimes shocking events occur increasingly frequently, ultimately with tragic consequences.
Not having read her previous novels, nor seen the TV adaptations, I had no preconceptions. I'd heard it compared as a ghost story to Turn of the Screw, and I can see why, but for me the length of The Little Stranger slightly undermines its effectiveness: the menace that so strongly pervades TotS is all the more shocking because of the relative brevity of the book. The post-war period in TLS is very well described, and the characters pretty well fleshed out; the attitudes of characters from different classes towards each other I think are believable, sometimes wincingly so.
This is a good book, and I will read more of her work, but I can't give it 5 stars.

2 out of 5 stars

Don't waste your time .. March 17, 2010
Bettylou
1 out of 1 found this review helpful

Have given up on page 100 .. Like other people who have reviewed this book, I love the previous works of Sarah Waters but I struggled even to maintain any interest to get to page 100. The characters were totally unrealistic and the story really pedestrian. Started a book about science and it was more interesting so that's a pretty damning indictment of this !

3 out of 5 stars

Very slow reading! March 15, 2010
J. MCCULLOCH (England)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful

This was my first Sarah Waters book and I found it...like many other readers..to be slow and not scary at all. I kept waiting for it to pick up for something to happen but it just kept dragging on and the end was such a let down. I won't say too much more because I feel bad not liking it since the characters were actually interesting. This could have been a really good book if more effort was put into the plot. Hope that makes sense!

Showing reviews 1-5 of 165

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News and Reviews

#227 ~ The Little Stranger
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Submitted: on 11th Jan 2010
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Submitted: on 20th Jan 2010
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Submitted: on 26th Feb 2010
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The Little Stranger, By Sarah Waters
Like all the best ghost-stories, Sarah Waters's fifth novel is steeped in a particular time and place. Perhaps still haunted by her own previous book The Night Watch (2006), here the author returns to Forties Britain and a chillingly tale of "filthy" goings-on in a once lovely Georgian house.
Submitted: on 15th Jan 2010
Tags: · The · Author · House · Novel · Sarah Waters · Stories · Stranger · The Night Watch

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Submitted: on 11th Mar 2010
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