Holland’s life, and the creepiness of his preserved study-and it all goes down like butter.ĭetective Sergeant Harbinder Kaur, a fierce young Indian woman who is investigating the case, also has a voice in this tale and readers get to see that Kaur suspects Clare of the crimes. There are ghost stories inside of ghost stories, creepy notes left for Clare in her journal, fog, spookily isolated homes (Clare’s specifically), the mystery of R.M. Thus begins a spooky murder mystery that Griffiths, a lover of Victorian fiction and specifically Wilkie Collins, imbues with the hint of a gothic.

After class, Clare gets the terrible news that her colleague and fellow teacher Ella has been killed.

Holland, once lived in the “old” part of Clare’s school where his study is still kept intact. The story centers on Clare Cassidy, a divorced mom who teaches at a high school in a British town.Īs the book opens, it’s Halloween and Clare is taking her class through a reading of a well-known ghost story, “The Stranger.” The author of the story, R.M. The same voice that brings Ruth to life-the funny, intelligent, eminently readable voice of Griffiths-is also on full display in this wonderful novel. So it's no more awful than pronouncing 'comfortable' as a trisyllable, as recorded in any dictionary you care to consult, rather than something approximating the spelling (which I defy you to find in well-ordered spoken English).Those of you who love Elly Griffith’s series character Ruth Galloway, snuggle up-you’re going to love the standalone novel The Stranger Diaries every bit as much. Moreover, it's how English learners should learn to pronounce the form in order to approximate native-speaker usage. I certainly do! Because that's normal educated English (as well as uneducated), whether American, British, or I assume Jamaican, Nigerian, Indian, etc. Particularly when I'd bet money that in casual speech both of you ladies pronounce 'should've' sometimes indistinguishably from 'should of' and other times from 'shoulda' (which last is generally spelled solid, in my experience). And that's no matter whether they're marginalized speech-like 'Black' English or Irish English in, say, Cynthia Harrod-Eagles's Inspector Slider novels-or the less distinctive dialect spoken in these characters' 'idyllic seaside town' (to quote the blurb). Those perspectives support me in being absolutely fine with writers who represent the spoken dialects of their characters rather than edited written English. in English literature, and I've a certificate in TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages). Rather, I would have applauded Griffiths's choice.

But if I had noticed that, or the 'should a' that Lore (the other answerer here) complains of, it wouldn't have bothered me. But if I had noticed that, or the 'should a' that Lore (the other answerer here) complains of, it wouldn't have bother …more No, I'm afraid I didn't notice.

The stranger diaries elly griffiths