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Every Friday, at 11:00 am, on the library’s YouTube Channel and Facebook Page, the library will stream a brand new recording of local thespian, Joseph Coté reading aloud selections from a wide variety of fascinating and entertaining books of fiction and non-fiction.
For September 15, Coté will read aloud from Sarah Waters’ novel The Little Stranger.
Summary: The Little Stranger is a 2009 gothic novel, a ghost story set in a dilapidated mansion in Warwickshire, England in the 1940s.
Veering away from her usual cast of characters, the book features a narrator, Faraday, — a country doctor who makes friends with an old gentry family of declining fortunes who own a very old estate that is crumbling around them.
The stress of reconciling the state of their finances with the familial responsibility of keeping the estate coincides with perplexing events which may or may not be of supernatural origin, culminating in tragedy.
Reviewers note that the themes in The Little Stranger are alternately reflections of evil and struggle related to upper class hierarchy misconfiguration in post war Britain.
Waters stated that she did not set out to write a ghost story, but began her writing with an exploration of the rise of socialism in the United Kingdom and how the fading gentry dealt with losing their legacies.
A mix of influences is evident to reviewers: Henry James, Wilkie Collins, and Edgar Allan Poe.
Waters’ strengths are exhibited in setting of mood and pacing of the story.
In autumn 2018, a film adaptation directed by Lenny Abrahamson and starring Domhnall Gleeson and Ruth Wilson was released.
Click the links to find the library’s YouTube Channel and Facebook Page.
Thoughts to share? Book ideas to suggest?
Contact Joseph at friday-explorations@usa.net