So it's not that I necessarily disliked The Little Stranger. I actually thought it was well-written and enjoyable to read. However, the plot line left me wanting. I was thoroughly unimpressed. Normally I like books with a lot of detail. It's actually one of my biggest problems with Neil Gaiman. His stories don't have enough detail for me. The Little Stranger has the opposite problem. There is simply too much going on with nothing actually happening, if that makes any sense. Every tiny little thing is explained in so much detail that, at times, the book became too monotonous for me to read.
I am also not a fan of stories where the supernatural part is so insignificant or easily explained that even a hardcore ghost fan like me has trouble believing that there was anything supernatural going on to begin with. Of course, that's personal preference, but I really like it when the horror jumps out at me. That's why I enjoy the genre. Without an obvious ghost, or whatever, its just a creepy old house. Nothing special. I like to read to escape the real world and this book did not do that for me.
Other than that, I don't really have much to say about it.
4 comments:
I totally agree. I like to think of it as the Dickens Effect. :-P
Dickens. Ha. That's a connection I hadn't made before, but it makes perfect sense. We can't see the forest for the trees and all.
I was also disappointed in the lack of ghostlyness that this story had. Too easy to explain away.
Your comment "It's just a creepy old house" set me off just now... I couldn't help but think, isn't that always the case? In real life, we are rarely confronted with ghosts or even what we think might be a ghost, but I'll tell you, I've seen and been in my share of creepy houses. Even just a regular house at night or when the power goes out or something can turn into a nightmare. So I guess what I'm getting at here is that, even if nothing more supernatural was going on in this book, it still could have creeped the living daylights out of anyone in the house just because they got psyched out, and that's real fear.
I guess the real problem, though the lack of supernatural elements is an issue, is that there is no real insight into the crumbling psyches of the individuals being effected like there is in The Haunting of Hill House. I think that is the biggest problem I have with the distant narrator.
Post a Comment