Having said that, if you've liked and enjoyed Sarah Waters's books before, I think you will like this one. I loved it. It's a little slow getting started--the vaunted ghost doesn't appear until about a third of the way through the book--but it's very absorbing and I was hooked by the end of the first chapter. Waters does a good job with her characters, as she always does--I thought Caroline and Faraday were particularly well-characterized. The characterization of Faraday has to be quite subtle, because the book is framed as a story he's telling about other people, and I really admired the skill with which Waters handled this.
I've seen some complaints that the book isn't creepy enough, but I thought it was extremely creepy--maybe because I was reading it late at night with only a lamp for light--but it was creepy enough that it invaded my dreams the night I finished it. The last few paragraphs made me want to reread and reevaluate the events of the rest of the book.
This book isn't as elegantly written as others on the longlist--I'm thinking specifically of Brooklyn and The Wilderness--but it is effective in creating an eerie atmosphere. The descriptions of the house, in particular, are quite detailed:
One corner was given over to a punishing-looking ironframed bed, with a dressing-table close beside it and, next to that, an antique washing-stand and mirror. Before the Gothic fireplace stood a couple of old leather armchairs, handsome enough, but both very scuffed and split at their seams. There were two curtained windows, one leading out via those convolvulus-choked stone steps to the terrace; in front of the other, and rather spoiling the lovely long line of it, Roderick had set up a desk and swivel chair. He had obviously put the desk there in order to catch the best of the northern daylight, but this also meant that its illuminated surface—which was almost obscured by a litter of papers, ledgers, folders, technical books, dirty teacups and overflowing ashtrays—acted as a sort of magnet on the eye, irresistibly drawing one’s gaze from every point in the room. The desk was clearly a magnet for Roderick in other ways too, for even while talking to me he had gone across to it and started rooting about for something in the chaos.
These kinds of descriptions can be a turnoff for some people, and they don't always work for me, but in this book I thought they set the scene well and I really enjoyed them. But this is not a novel that you read for the author's way with a sentence--although there's nothing wrong with Waters's style, it's not anything particularly special--it's a novel you read for plot and theme and setting.
The Little Stranger as twisty as Fingersmith, and I still think the story of Affinity was more original. But I still really liked this book and would highly recommend it. I don't know that it will make the shortlist--I think there's a lot of competition for those six slots--and it certainly doesn't deserve to win. Did Henry James do it better in The Turn of the Screw? Well, yes. But The Little Stranger remains a pleasantly creepy, compulsively readable ghost story.
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