Waters knows what she is about, and the novel’s interests are only partly in the supernatural and the ghost story. Another strong presence is that lovely minor classic of the period, Josephine Tey’s The Franchise Affair. As in her other novels, Waters has used the formal and conventional tactics of fiction — the stiffer, the better — to examine a real human situation. In The Little Stranger the conventionally emotionless narrator is pulled under the microscope; to the supernatural horrors are added the natural horrors of a cold and somewhat woman-hating nature. And, among other things, we start to consider whether his poor mother’s spirit might be playing some kind of part in these events.

I love a classical ghost story so much that I always regret any kind of departure from the genre’s beautiful conventions — I can’t help feeling that the threat of a poltergeist is dissipated if it isn’t one malevolent nature. (And Caroline’s final cry of recognition remains mysterious, seeming to rule her sister out, dead before Caroline was born, as the principal source of the violence). The fascination of The Little Stranger lies in its unerring evocation of place and time. It is a beautiful and expert divertissement, less deeply felt than Waters’s superb The Night Watch, but no less admirable for all that. This is going to be a career to look back on with great interest and admiration.

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