Monday, May 25, 2009
The Little Stranger - Review link
The Little Stranger was reviewed in The Washington Post by Ron Charles. Charles mentions Henry James' Turn of the Screw in his review. I'm still waiting for some reviewer to delve into an explanation of the title, which intrigued me when I first heard about the book. I knew the term "little stranger" to have been used in Victorian times to refer to an unborn child, and I was curious to see if the book's title was related to that usage. In an earlier post I reported the page on which the title is explained in the American edition. I am puzzled that I have not seen any discussion of the title of this wonderful book.
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Carolyn, I have just finished reading 'The Little Stranger'. What a superb Gothic story, I was sometimes afraid to turn the page but desperately wanted to know what was happening. Of course the mystery remains to the end and beyond. I can see the similarities with Josephine Tey's books. Have you read The Franchise Affair?
ReplyDeleteIn one of your posts you ask the significance of the name of the house. I think it is probably from the old division of counties into "hundreds". It suggests the times when a few important families owned most of the land in a county - something that was almost over by the time of the book's setting.
I got rather impatient with the lack of action about half way through the book but I am glad that I persisted because it got very intriguing almost immediately after that.