Stephen King's favorite book of 2009
DC
by Stephen King
http://xrl.us/King1
The best book I read this year was �The Little Stranger,�
by Sarah Waters (Amazon.com: http://xrl.us/LitStr ). Like
Waters�s �The Night Watch,� it�s set in rural England, just
after the Second World War, and like her novel �Affinity,�
it touches on the supernatural�in this case a ghost which
may or may not inhabit Hundreds Hall, an estate house
fallen on hard postwar times. The Ayres family living there
is in what was once called �reduced circumstances.� In this
case that includes being reduced to holding the wallpaper
of the great rooms together with thumbtacks. To them comes
Dr. Faraday, who narrates this story (which is as much
about the ghosts of the English class system as it is about
the kind that billow drapes and shiver chandeliers) in a no-
nonsense plain style that may remind readers as much of Pat
Barker as of Shirley Jackson. Like the best ghost stories,
this is a tale of deepening obsession, and the first evil
manifestation, involving an unpleasant little girl and a
normally inoffensive old house-dog, is authentically
horrifying.