Sarah Waters, having once bagged a coveted spot amongst Granta’s Best Young British Novelists, is working hard with this, her fifth novel, to keep the epithet—give or take the “young” part (although in novelist years, 43 is still whippersnapper territory). Waters, a self-labelled lesbian writer, has written extensively on Sapphism in past books, often within a Victorian context. She turns away from these themes a bit here, but carries over the dark, sinister overtones, re-tooling them into a full-on, down-the-hatches ghost story, which, like her last novel, Night Watch (shortlisted for both the Booker and Orange prizes), takes place in post-war 1940s England. Read more…