Sarah Waters on The Little Stranger
‘I am a sucker for a good ghost story.’
Congratulations on being longlisted for this year's Man Booker Prize for Fiction. Was the news this year as exciting as your first nomination for the prize in 2002?
Thank you. Actually, in some ways it was more exciting. I was so amazed when Fingersmith was nominated in 2002, I couldn't really enjoy the experience: I was so amazing when Fingersmith was nominated in 2002, I couldn't really enjoy the experience: I had never anticipated that kind of reception for my writing, and the thought that people were giving my novels such serious scrutiny was unnerving. I suppose I'm a bit more confident as a writer now: I'm interested in how my work is received, how it sits alongside other writers' work and so on, so to have The Little Stranger longlisted is really wonderful. The longlist is a very strong one this year, too, full of novelists I admire - so that's an extra thrill.
You're known for your strong female characters. Were you keen to vary with a male protagonist for The Little Stranger?
Well, it wasn't really a calculated decision. I didn't decide to have a male narrator, then look for a story that would suit him. The motifs of the story began to appeal to me - the decaying house, the struggling family, the forces rising up against them - and I knew I would need a narrator who was slightly outside of things, looking on in dismay. A doctor was perfect, because that made him mobile: once Dr Faraday starts treating Roderick, the son of the house, he has a reason to visit the Hall, but he's not close enough to the family to be able to step in and halt the house's deterioration. There were of course lots of women doctors in the 1940s, but a male doctor seemed more likely, especially in a country practice; and I liked the idea of my narrator being a lonely bachelor, to give his growing attachment to the Ayreses more edge. For me, too, Dr Faraday fits into the ghost-story tradition, which is full of scholarly bachelor narrators - as, for example, in the stories of M.R. James. And that pleased me.
The Little Stranger addresses the class system in British Society in post-war Britain. How did you look into the prejudices that would have existed at that time?
It's actually pretty hard to miss them, once you start reading books and diaries from the period. Post-war detective fiction is particularly conservative. Josephine Tey's fascinating but rather toxic The Franchise Affair was a big influence on me; another great resource were the novels of Angela Thirkell, which at times are unbearably snobbish. Other post-war writers attempted to grapple with class in a more generous and liberal kind of way, and that was also revealing. Marghanita Laski, Elizabeth Jenkins, Mollie Panter-Downes, for example: they tried to capture this very particular moment in British rural history when an older way of life was dying off and working-class people had all sorts of new opportunities; their middle-class characters, however, are pained and struggling, and the feeling you take from their novels is one of loss and sadness, not of excitement at the prospect of social and cultural change. But the earnestness with which they address the issue of class shows what a hot topic it was for them, and that was my starting-point, really: that deep anxiety about class; that fear and uncertainty about what was going to happen to the nation next.
You've explored the supernatural in The Little Stranger and make reference to several books that helped you research this area. Did you come across some convincing ghost stories?
Even though I don't really believe in ghosts, I am a sucker for a good ghost story. For The Little Stranger I tried to find books about the supernatural from the 1940s or earlier, and my favourite is a 1903 work by Frederic Myers, called Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death. It's about how bits of the mind can break free and roam around by themselves, perhaps appearing to other people in the process - effectively, as ghosts of the living. It's full of fascinating case histories, and even though its claims are rather wild, well, it's amazing how convincing stories about ghosts and astral travelling can seem when they are told to you by a sober Edwardian - rather than by a tv presenter, say, on Most Haunted. What interests me most about ghost stories, actually, is not whether they're true or not, but the simple fact that they exist. I'm interested in why the supernatural draws us: what it offers us, in the way of catharsis or consolation, or in the articulation of the unspeakable.
Was there a specific building that had inspired you for Hundreds Hall as it really feels like it should exist somewhere?
There wasn't one particular building, but while I was writing the novel I tried to visit as many historic houses as I could - especially eighteenth-century ones, since Hundreds is early Georgian - and I think the Hall ended up being a collage of bits of all of them. There's a 'little parlour' at Uppark in Sussex - I liked the term, so gave it to the Ayreses for a room in their house. And staying at West Dean College, near Chichester, a couple of years ago, I wandered into the lovely walled gardens there - and ended up realising how strangely claustrophobic a walled garden can be, if you're in the wrong sort of mood for it... Ultimately, in fact, like all haunted houses, Hundreds Hall is a psychological structure as well as an actual one - a place perhaps of threat, of lurking secrets. That's what I like about houses, in fact: that they are always more than bricks and mortar; that they're somehow imbued with the lives of the people who inhabit them.
Your novels have been successfully adapted for television - are there already plans to adapt The Little Stranger for film or television?
There are, yes. There's been interest from both film and tv, and in fact I'm just in the process of deciding which production company to go with. It's an exciting prospect. I've had good experiences with adaptations in the past, and it would be lovely to see The Little Stranger given that kind of second life. But it's still very early days - so it'll be a while before it hits the screen.
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(Interview by Sophie Rochester)
