Sarah Waters: ‘Some of my readers really did hate me. They felt let down’

As The Little Stranger opens in cinemas, the novelist shares the betrayal felt by some lesbian readers over her supernatural whodunnit – and why it is a perfect metaphor for Brexit Britain“There’s something in this house that hates us,” Caroline Ayres (Ruth Wilson) whispers towards the end of the new film adaptation of Sarah Waters’s 2009 novel The Little Stranger.

Waters describes the novel as “a sort of supernatural country house whodunit”, and of all her books, it “is the one right from the heart of me … It’s the book that my 10-year-old self was destined to write.

I was really into the gothic as a kid, and loved watching horror films.” So the idea that it has now become a horror film is “incredibly pleasing”.Set in Warwickshire in the aftermath of the second world war, The Little Stranger shows a world caught between the death of

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