Read This Book: The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters

[In an attempt to get book discussion going on this blog I am installing a new feature that will appear every now and then (or whenever I finish a book). Consider this my makeshift book club, and I hope all of you will join in the fun.]

In what I hope to be a feature that makes a somewhat normal appearance on the blog I would like to recommend to all of you Sarah Waters' newest novel The Little Stranger. Perhaps no other author writing today is doing the whole 'history and mystery' thing better than her. Sadly these tropes have become a bit antiquated and gone by the wayside, but there's something refreshingly classical about her approach to writing. She reminds me of another modern master, Ian McEwan, who also specializes in very literary, yet easily consumable mysteries that swirl around historical events (his Amsterdam won the Booker Prize and Atonement made him a household name).

Waters' newest novel (part of a loose trilogy that also include Tipping the Velvet and Fingersmith) is a ghost story on the surface; however, beneath it all are themes as elusive as the phantasms that exist within the pages. The novel is really about how people can create their own nightmares...their own 'ghost stories' if you will. The novel is breezy read that reminds the reader of a more formal, classical novelist like the Bronte's. Her The Night Watch was one of the best novels of 2007, manipulating time and narrative structure to tell a poignant tale revolving around the 1941 blitz and the bombings that took place in 1944. She isn't as playful in her newest novel, and that's okay. I do find it interesting that she has been shortlisted for the Booker prize for the second time in a row. I really like The Little Stranger (I could barely put it down), but if she wins the Booker this year it will be because they passed her up for The Night Watch. Her newest novel is a great read, though, and even though it's not 'Booker good' it's still one of the best things I've read this year.

Coming up next another novel short-listed for the Booker prize: J.M. Coetzee's Summertime (looks like I have to order it from Amazon.com UK, though, because it won't be released here in the States until Christmas eve...booo).