Skip to main content
By
The Little Stranger / Sarah Waters
Click here to check availability in AFPLS

One of the main characters in this neo-gothic novel is a crumbling old manor house in Warwickshire called Hundreds Hall, which has as much of a role in The Little Stranger as the mansion in Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” or Manderley in Du Maurier’s Rebecca.

Hundreds is the home of the Ayres Family, once-distinguished, but now suffering with the changes stirring in England after World War II, all the while trying to keep up appearances with ever dwindling resources. The path of a local general practioner, Dr. Faraday, connects with the landed family, and their fates become ever more entwined as the story progresses.

Strange goings-on begin to plague Hundreds. Grievous accidents occur, bells ring unexpectedly, strange writing appears on walls, and unexplained sounds are heard. The Ayres son is the first to fall and is institutionalized with his precarious mental state. Not long thereafter the mother is tormented by what she thinks is the spirit of her long-deceased daughter.

Dr. Faraday proposes marriage to the spinster daughter at Hundreds, but whatever happiness he envisioned is seemingly doomed by the curse attached to the house. Is it a poltergeist, a ghost, a mischievous servant, or someone or something else with evil intents on the house’s inhabitants? You’ll be guessing until the end, and I dare say, even after that.©Ken Vesey, 28 Jan 2010

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

So Much for That / Lionel Shriver

By
This novel comes from the 2005 Orange Prize winning author of We Need to Talk About Kevin , a disturbing book in which a parent with ambivalent feelings towards motherhood deals with the aftermath of a Columbine-style school killing perpetrated by her son. Lionel Shriver has said that she prefers to create characters that are hard to love, and So Much for That certainly contains some flinty characters, who although they may be hard to love, are nevertheless very believable. The topic this time is healthcare in America. Shep is all ready to launch into an exotic early retirement on the island of Pemba off the eastern coast of Africa, but when his wife reveals a diagnosis of mesothelioma, he must hold on to his job to maintain family health coverage to see her through her devastating illness. His work colleague and friend, Jackson, experiences a medical dilemma completely of his own doing, which proves to be his un doing. Jackson's daughter suffers from an unusual genetic disorde...
1 comment
Read more
By
This Book Is Overdue! : How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All / Marilyn Johnson Click here to check availability in AFPLS This book is an interesting collection of essays that offer glimpses into the brave new world of librarianship. It’s sort of the antithesis of Nicholson Baker’s grumpy dissing of librarians in his 2001 book Doublefold . If you thought that librarians are still the be-bunned shushing ladies in wool skirts with reading glasses dangling around their necks on slender gold chains, then this book certainly is overdue for you. The author shows how librarians are morphing and adapting to the new information landscape, meeting new challenges with fewer resources and a public that wants instant gratification in clicks-and-mortar libraries. Meet librarians who offer triage reference services in streets filled with protesters and others who assume alternate identities and inhabit virtual libraries in the cyber universe called Second Life. Learn about how the venerable N...
1 comment
Read more

The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating / Elisabeth Tova Bailey

By
The snail is a lowly creature, and probably one that most of us have never truly contemplated. The snail was probably a creature to which the author hadn't given much thought before a debilitating disease kept her confined to bed, practically immobile, for months and months. One day a friend put a woodland snail in a pot of violets on her nightstand. After being transported from the woods, the snail had emerged from its shell into the alien territory of my room, with no clue as to where it was or how it had arrived; the lack of vegetation and the desertlike surroundings must have seemed strange. The snail and I were both living in altered landscapes not of our choosing; I figured we shared a sense of loss and displacement. p 20 The companionship of this tiny creature is what sees her through the darkest days of her imprisonment by her horrible disease. The snail, thriving in its slow-mo existence and life of undemanding simplicity, provides interest and comfort to the author. ...
1 comment
Read more