Sarah Waters’ latest novel has made the recently-announced Booker Prize shortlist. It’s the third time on the shortlist for Waters and we’re wondering whether this might be the year the darling of lesbian lit takes the gong. Carolyn Ride reviews the book that’s put Waters in contention once again.

Sarah Waters (Tipping The Velvet, Fingersmith, Night Watch) is renowned for her sexy, visceral and engaging historical fiction and for enjoying both a loyal lesbian fanbase and mainstream appeal. Three of her novels have been adapted for the small screen. Her new post- World War Two novel, The Little Stranger, may disappoint some. There is no overt sexuality, straight or gay. However, the key elements that make Waters so beloved to readers – detailed prose, unreliable but compelling characters, increasing tension culminating in a shocking twist – are all there in spades.

The narrator is Doctor Faraday, an ageing bachelor who – thanks to the sacrifices of his servant parents – has become a doctor in rural England. He has not succeeded financially, though, and is as resentful of the persistent English class system as he is fascinated by the memory of Hundreds Hall, a grand mansion he visited once in 1919 when his mother was a maid there.

His chance to revisit the place 30 years later comes when he is summoned to attend to 14-year old Betty, housemaid to the aristocratic but shabby Ayres family who own Hundreds Hall. Neither the crumbling hall nor the three remaining Ayres are doing well in an age of postwar austerity and money-fuelled class mobility. Doctor Faraday gets increasingly involved with the family, helping wounded and bitter son Roderick with his injuries and falling for universally overlooked spinster daughter Caroline. Yet the Ayres’ troubles go from bad to worse, with the appearance of a mysterious, malignant force which terrorises the family and causes events – their gentle dog savaging a neighbour’s child, a devastating fire – that threaten to destroy their already precarious position. Is it a poltergeist, psychological reactions to stress, or deliberate acts by one of the characters (all of whom have the necessary malice to ruin others)?

As a huge Sarah Waters fan, I was surprised to find The Little Stranger slightly long-winded and unengaging at first. Usually she plunges the reader straight into the world she’s describing. However, perseverance paid off; at least until the anticlimactic ending. At least for most of the novel, I was hooked by the story, fascinated by the characters (all of them intriguing, none of them loveable) and seduced by the author’s sense of place and plot. Hundreds Hall is a character in its own right, and Doctor Faraday is one of literature’s ultimate ‘unreliable narrators’. Best of all, Waters’ characters are products of their place, time and class, with all the gruesome prejudices and snobbery of the time. None of them are modern people, with modern liberal viewpoints, plonked into a historical setting to make the reader identify with them.

Spooky and spectacular or overwrought and overlong? Both were true for me with this book, but it would make a great discussion point in a book club.

Carolyn Ride is a writer, editor and reviewer – when asked nicely.

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Carolyn Ride seeks out some cheery reading with the recently re-published dystopian classic that inspired the cult film Soylent Green.

I bet Nicholas Stern has read this book.

Maybe you haven’t read this classic work of environmental dystopia, published in 1966 and set in 1999 New York, but you may have seen the 1973 film adaptation, Soylent Green. OK, Harrison got his dates skewed but it doesn’t make this book any less convincing or prescient.

In the novel, 1999 New York is overpopulated, constantly under threat from droughts and heatwaves, and food is so scarce people riot every time their rations are cut. The rations in question are tasteless seaweed crackers. Only the frail and old get to supplement their meagre diet with the occasional teaspoon of peanut butter and meat flakes (made from snails). Fresh fruit and vegetables are unheard of (especially since the US is mostly dustbowl).

Diseases like kwashiorkor, a protein deficiency, are common. Only the rich can dream of such unattainable luxuries as showers, privacy, and the occasional soylent (soy and lentil) steak.

Overworked cop Andy Rusch has to battle riots, heatwaves and millennial hysteria to find whoever killed a wealthy businessman. Meanwhile, his friend Sol fights in support of birth control; Shirl, the murdered businessman’s kept woman, has to learn to survive without the dubious protection of rich men; and a little boy, Billy Chung, enters a world of trouble after stealing valuable Soylent steaks.

Make Room! Make Room! sometimes chooses polemic over plot, a common error in books with Something Important To Say. He’s also not terribly inventive with his characters’ names and speech so they sound dated. There’s no way Harrison could have predicted how Americans would talk in 1999, but he could have guessed they wouldn’t discuss ‘stool pigeons’.

Still, what an achievement this novel is! I can really smell and feel the sweat of millions of jostling bodies, the despair at being turned away empty-handed from the communal water tap, and even the triumph of the character who spies a nice, juicy, edible…rat!

Science fiction does love a dystopia, not least since utopian futures would make lousy reading (“Wow, the future turned out super-fun, hey? Well, that’s all for now. Byeee!”) [TW: Hey! That’s my novel!]

What’s refreshing about Make Room! Make Room! is that Harrison’s dystopia is not, like so many others, ruled by technology. The police state is not watching you. The police equipment is from the 1970s and they can’t even clear the most obvious murders. Humans didn’t create any technology that then turned on us and tried to destroy us. We didn’t discover other worlds and colonise them. People communicate by messenger boy, barges are powered by people pulling ropes, and cars serve no purpose except to house the homeless.

If you can handle a plausible if frightening future in these times, then I recommend this book. If you have a really strong stomach (not only for the plot twist but for Charlton Heston) see the movie Soylent Green. The movie changed quite a few things from the novel, such as the year (2022) and a major plot point. Like Make Room! Make Room!, the movie is a classic. Invite your friends to come over and watch it with you. Maybe skip the popcorn.

Carolyn Ride is a writer, editor and often simply referred to as “the book lady on the radio”. 

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