Helpful Score: 8
The Little Stranger was a disturbing book, really well written, as a book like this needs to be if it's to be believable. It was creepy, and possibly a ghost story, although that's certainly open to interpretation.
The book is loaded with psychological suspense. There's very little action on the physical plane (no faces popping out of the wall, car chases, etc.) Just a group of psychologically vulnerable people profoundly affected by something they can't see or truly classify. Is it a ghost? A possession of some kind? Or are they being pushed towards madness and a spiraling decline by malevolent but corporeal forces? Or could it be a form of hysteria or delusion taking hold in a group of people unable to cope with a changing world? The reader isn't sure what the characters really hear and see, and what they just imagine once the paranoia has taken hold.
I found the book hard to pigeonhole - whether to put it in the mystery/suspense category, or the paranormal one. I do know that after I finished it, I went around the house and closed all the windows I had open to the night air.
The book is loaded with psychological suspense. There's very little action on the physical plane (no faces popping out of the wall, car chases, etc.) Just a group of psychologically vulnerable people profoundly affected by something they can't see or truly classify. Is it a ghost? A possession of some kind? Or are they being pushed towards madness and a spiraling decline by malevolent but corporeal forces? Or could it be a form of hysteria or delusion taking hold in a group of people unable to cope with a changing world? The reader isn't sure what the characters really hear and see, and what they just imagine once the paranoia has taken hold.
I found the book hard to pigeonhole - whether to put it in the mystery/suspense category, or the paranormal one. I do know that after I finished it, I went around the house and closed all the windows I had open to the night air.
