This post was written by Hannah Merritt on behalf of the Department of External Relations.

On Monday 14 November, Sarah Waters, the award-winning author of Tipping the Velvet, Fingersmith and The Night Watch, visited Birkbeck as part of the Man Booker Foundation’s University Initiative.  I arrived early to secure my seat, which turned out to be a very good thing indeed.  More and more people poured through the door until the crowd spilt over into the gallery above as well.   They had all come to hear Sarah Waters talk about her latest book, The Little Stranger.  Many, including myself, had copies of the novel firmly in hand.  I read the book in the week before the event.  It was the first time I had read a Sarah Waters novel and it won’t be my last.  Sarah’s writing draws you into the period she writes about and her descriptions of the crumbling house Hundreds Hall make you feel like you’re watching its decay yourself.

Russell Celyn Jones, Professor of Creative Writing at Birkbeck, hosted the event.  Russell and Sarah had an existing connection: he was a judge for the Man Booker Prize in 2002 when Sarah’s previous novel Fingersmith was nominated.  Sarah kicked off the event by reading two extracts from The Little Stranger.  The first was the opening scene, in which Dr Faraday, the narrator, describes his first visit to Hundreds Hall as a child.  The vision of the house in its prime sets the scene for the despair of its later crumbling state.  The second extract came from about a third of the way through the book, when Roderick describes the spooky happenings in his room, where collars and cufflinks jump from the dresser to the wash basin behind his back.  I remembered this scene vividly from my first reading of the book: it was the first (though not the last) time I felt shivers run down my spine and made me grateful that I was sitting in a well-lit room!

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