Faraday begins visiting the Ayreses on a regular basis. With the pretext of helping Roderick with an experimental medical treatment, Dr. The Ayres family has fallen on hard times, and are barely able to keep the estate afloat. Ayres, a widow her daughter Caroline, who is in her twenties and unmarried and her son and heir Roderick, who was a pilot in the war and was badly wounded and burned in a crash. He dismisses her fears - the house is nearly empty nowadays, with only a full-time housekeeper Mrs. Faraday that she's unhappy in the big house, which gives her the creeps.

The maid seems to be shamming, but confesses to Dr. He's not the Ayreses' regular doctor, but one day he's called out there as a substitute, to check on a young maid who's ailing.

Faraday was able to rise above his station through hard work and his parents' sacrifices. Though his mother was in service and his father a shopkeeper, Dr. He grew in the shadow of Hundreds, a grand country house owned by the local gentry family, the Ayreses. Set just a couple of years after the end of World War II, The Little Stranger is an atmospheric story told in the first person by a British country doctor, John Faraday. But like my last RIP book, We Have Always Lived in the Castle, it wasn't quite what I was expecting. I bought The Little Stranger at a library sale not long after I finished (and loved) Fingersmith, so I've been looking forward to reading it.

With The Little Stranger, I've not only read another book for the RIP Challenge, I've also finally completed another owned-and-unread book from the TBR shelf.

The little stranger book review