They say you should never meet your heroes. You'll only be disappointed. I've met the occasional ageing rock star. 'They' have a point.
Literary heroes, I hope, will be different. Overwhelming and overly articulate, sure, but I'm more likely to be monosyllabic and tongue-tied than unimpressed.
In the case of Sarah Waters, who is to take part in a Guardian book club debate at King's Place in London about her Gothic Victorian novel The Little Stranger, I'm more than willing to take a punt on being impressed.
The Little Stranger is compelling reading. I couldn't put it down, but couldn't sleep for the images it put in my mind. It's a heck of a long time since a book affected me so profoundly simply for the melodramatic tone in which it was written.
A year after reading the book I still find myself staring at crumbling old mansions and half expecting to find an anguished, overwrought face at the window. Inevitably, I also find myself wondering whether each venue would be a suitable location for the TV dramatisation of the book. Both Fingersmith and Tipping The Velvet got the BBC costume drama treatment.
The Little Stranger would be an obvious Gothic thriller to serialise. It's got all the suspense of The Woman In Black and, unlike the theatre production we attended last year, the suspense won't be marred by the histrionics of a class of 14-year-old girls screaming in unison.
Anyway, I've booked a place at the Guardian Book Club's Evening with Sarah Waters.
I recently came across the intriguing fact that the hotel used to film many of the Hammer Horror films and The Rocky Horror Show is still in business. It's not far from Oxford and I'm due a weekend away. I might just try and scare myself silly and book in for a night, Little Stranger in hand.
No comments:
Post a Comment