The Paying Guests, by Sarah Waters
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The Paying Guests, by Sarah Waters
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It is 1922, and London is tense. Ex-servicemen are disillusioned, the out-of-work and the hungry are demanding change. And in South London, in a genteel Camberwell villa, a large silent house now bereft of brothers, husband and even servants, life is about to be transformed, as impoverished widow Mrs Wray and her spinster daughter, Frances, are obliged to take in lodgers. For with the arrival of Lilian and Leonard Barber, a modern young couple of the 'clerk class', the routines of the house will be shaken up in unexpected ways. And as passions mount and frustration gathers, no one can foresee just how far-reaching, and how devastating, the disturbances will be. This is vintage Sarah Waters: beautifully described with excruciating tension, real tenderness, believable characters, and surprises. It is above all, a wonderful, compelling story.
The Paying Guests, by Sarah Waters- Amazon Sales Rank: #739515 in Books
- Published on: 2015-06-02
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 6.50" h x 4.25" w x 1.25" l,
- Binding: Paperback
- 638 pages
Amazon.com Review
An Amazon Best Book of the Month, September 2014: It is 1922, in a genteel house in a genteel neighborhood just outside of London. Here, the widowed Mrs. Wray and her 26-year-old daughter, Frances, pass each day very much like the day before—with Frances busying herself with household chores, maybe a bit of needlepoint, and her mother nibbling on a lunch of cauliflower cheese while making notes for the parish newsletter. In less skilled hands, such prolonged stage-setting would test even the most patient reader. But in Waters’, it’s mesmerizing, with every small but evocative detail serving to transport you further into this place and time. Take a deep breath as you’re reading, because as soon as you are you lulled into the calm cadence of these lives, the Wray’s tenants—the “paying guests” they have taken in to help with the bills—turn everything topsy-turvy, and by the novel’s conclusion, you have gone from straight-up period piece, to love story, to edge-of-your-seat crime thriller (and not the American kind “with a plot full of holes” that the Wrays suffer through on picture-house Wednesdays). For a story set just after WWI, some of the themes Waters touches on are surprisingly contemporary. History does repeat itself sometimes, and so it goes for Sarah Waters, with yet another masterful novel. –Erin Kodicek
Review Absolutely brilliant -- Jacqueline Wilson Sunday Times A page-turning melodrama and a fascinating portrait of London on the verge of great change Guardian Waters's page-turning prose conceals great subtlety. Acutely sensitive to social nuance, she keeps us constantly alert ... From a novelist who has been shortlisted for the Booker three times, this is a winner Intelligent Life (The Economist) The novel's remarkable depth of field - from its class-ridden background to its individuals' peccadilloes - is sharply portrayed by an author writing at her best. Waters's 20-20 vision perceives the interior world of her characters with rare acuity in a prose style so smooth it pours down the page in a book to be prized Scotland on Sunday A sumptuously subdued story of making do and getting by after the great war -- Philip Hensher Guardian Brilliantly involving ... juicy, beautifully observed [and] not afraid to be explicit Metro A triumph Woman & Home You will be hooked within a page ... At her greatest, Waters transcends genre: the delusions in Affinity (1999), the vulnerability in Fingersmith (2002), the undercurrents of social injustice and the unexplained that underlie all her work, take her, in my view, well beyond the capabilities of her more seriously regarded Booker-winning peers. But The Paying Guests is the apotheosis of her talent; at least for now. I have tried and failed to find a single negative thing to say about it. Her next will probably be even better. Until then, read it, Flaubert, Zola, and weep -- Charlotte Mendelson Financial Times A masterpiece of social unease ... It isn't so much the plot that makes you read on - the novel's armature is a comparatively uncomplicated suspense narrative but barnacled to it is an astonishing accretion of detail ... A virtuoso feet of storytelling -- Jane Shilling Evening Standard She give(s) us a poignant love story which symbolically sees in the death of the old order, the death of the old fashioned husband and maybe the birth of an era of love without secrets Independent Waters is brilliant The Times A nod towards Little Dorrit also seems perceptible in the book's quiet ending amid the bustle and clamour of London. Unillusioned but tentatively hopeful, it is a beautifully gauged conclusion to a novel of ambitious reach and triumphant accomplishment -- Peter Kemp Sunday Times The Paying Guests demonstrates the writerly qualities for which Waters is esteemed, proving as 'fantastically moody and resonant', in terms of the rendering of domestic space, as a novel the author herself described as such and which she once said she would like to have written: Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca Literary Review Sarah Waters is, quite simply, one of our greatest writers -- Joanna Briscoe Sunday Express Another wild ride of a novel ... [I was] helplessly pulled along by the magnetic storytelling -- Tracy Chevalier Observer Sumptuous ... The writing is impeccable. A joy in every respect -- Lionel Shriver New Statesman An uninterruptable joy of a novel ... Sarah Waters at her tip-top best -- Juliet Nicolson Evening Standard The Paying Guests is so evocative and compelling that all the time I was reading, I had a feeling it was me who had done something terrible, instead of her characters -- Rachel Joyce Observer Fiction book of the year This novel magnificently confirms [Sarah Waters's] status as an unsurpassed fictional recorder of vanished eras and hidden lives Sunday Times The Paying Guests reminded me just how clever it is to create characters that captivate through their adventures in a world so well-realised that you can almost reach out and touch it -- Zoe Strachan Sunday Herald I raced through it, breathing fast and when I had finished had to reread parts of the wonderful early chapters. I don't like historical novels but this is the exception. I shall let a few months go by and then read it all over again with, I'm sure, undiminished pleasure -- Ruth Rendall Guardian Super-gripping ... There is a huge momentum to this story -- William Leith Evening Standard Sickeningly tense - and thumpingly good Daily Mail You know you are in the hands of a skilful, confident writer when you read a Sarah Waters book. She slowly reels you in. She weaves plots and themes that creep up and entangle you while you are innocently following her characters. They go about their shadowy business and by the time you raise your head from the page to take a breath, you're hooked -- Viv Albertine Telegraph Waters is an author to cherish Guardian Masterly... delightful... tremendously vivid... Waters is a cracking storyteller Tatler Waters is not simply one of our best historical novelists, but one of our best novelists ... sooner or later, she's going to be given the Booker. If you haven't already, start reading her now, and be one step ahead of the crowd -- Matt Thorne Independent on Sunday
About the Author Sarah Waters was born in Wales in 1966. She has been shortlisted for the Man Booker and Orange prizes and has won The South Bank Show Award and The Somerset Maugham Award. Four of her novels have been adapted for television. She has been named as author of the Year four times - by the Booksellers Association, Sunday Times, Waterstone's and The British Book Awards.
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Most helpful customer reviews
233 of 249 people found the following review helpful. PLEASE Masterpiece/BBC Make This a TV Show! By Mary Lins Perhaps I am too enamored of Masterpiece and BBC shows such as “Sherlock”, “The Bletchley Circle” and “Foyle’s War”, for, the entire time I was reading Sarah Waters’ wonderful new novel, “The Paying Guests”, I was casting it for a period-piece Masterpiece Mystery. All the ingredients are here: wonderful characters of all classes and temperaments, a richly moody time in London history, an arresting story of love, murder and betrayal that asks the ultimate question about doing the right thing and at what personal cost?Sarah Waters is a masterful storyteller, not just because her plots grab you, but because her prose is sublime. I have many reader pals for whom “prose is everything” and they will gobble this treat up like the richest dessert. Suspense like Waters’ takes my breath away, and the quality of writing reminds me why I love to read.The first third of the novel sets the stage and introduces us to the once happy home in a good area of London where Francis Wray and her mother now live. It’s 1922 and the post-WWI economy has forced them to take in boarders, the “paying guests”. Enter Lillian and Len Barber, a young married couple recently moved out of Len’s parent’s house to rent rooms with the Wrays. Francis is almost immediately attracted to Lillian, and Lillian is unhappy with Len; the stage is illuminated.The middle third of the novel contains the thrillingly suspenseful commission of several crimes. Here Waters speeds up the action and this reader couldn’t turn the pages quickly enough.The last third deals with the aftermath of the crimes and is every bit as gripping and suspenseful. As the revelations of this early twentieth century investigation unfold and a trial begins, we have surrendered ourselves completely to Sarah Walters’ bewitching tale.
345 of 391 people found the following review helpful. TURGID AND OVERWRITTEN By Charlotte Vale-Allen I have been a long-time fan of the author--since Fingersmith, in fact. I have liked some of her books better than others, with Fingersmith remaining my favorite. So The Paying Guests comes as a deep disappointment. It is overwrought and lugubrious, with central characters it is very hard to care about. Ironically, I found the secondary characters more alive, more viable than Frances and Lilian, the primaries. Leonard, the husband, and Lilian's family, all breathe deeply, bubbling with energy, and step off the pages. But Frances and Lilian are a tiresome duo and 560 pages of their few ups and many, many downs make for difficult reading.The Paying Guests are at Frances's home because there is a great need for the income they bring to her and her widowed mother. But aside from an early mention of what that cash represents, and given that the money is so badly needed, it seems a most serious omission to go close to 500 pages before it is mentioned again.Frances's endless internal anguishing becomes hard to take. This is a woman who lacks very little degree of lightness or humor. She just can't get outside of her own head. And Lilian is something of a cipher. The view of her character seems to change depending on Frances's whims and moods. There are moments when things jolt to life, most notably the confrontation scene between Lilian, her husband Len, and Frances. There is great tension in this encounter but it is soon overwhelmed by the massive weight of pages and pages of interior description.Having looked at the other reviews, I'm kind of amazed to see this book referred to as a "thriller," and as possessed of the makings of a Masterpiece Mystery. We can't have read the same 560-odd pages. This novel would have been better served by more stringent editing, cutting away some of the endless tours through Frances's mental maundering so that the narrative drive was stronger and sharper. As it stands, this book is slow-going--truly a slog to get to the end.
190 of 215 people found the following review helpful. The Paying Guests By Brendan Moody All of Sarah Waters' novels have historical rather than contemporary settings, and most have featured lesbians as prominent characters, but I think she is best described not as a lesbian novelist (there's something faintly diminishing about that label), or even as a historical novelist, but as a writer of literary thrillers. That this may seem an odd label is a sign of how, despite certain common settings and themes, Waters adapts her tone and style to the demands of each type of thriller: erotic (TIPPING THE VELVET), Gothic (AFFINITY and FINGERSMITH), or ghostly (THE LITTLE STRANGER). Even THE NIGHT WATCH, perhaps the least plot-driven and most "literary" of Waters' novels, attains a certain thrilling quality from its reversed narrative structure. So what type of thriller is her latest, THE PAYING GUESTS? That would be telling.At first it seems to combine elements of THE NIGHT WATCH and THE LITTLE STRANGER, though with a setting after the First World War rather than the Second. Like the Ayres family of THE LITTLE STRANGER, the Wrays face social and emotional upheaval as a result of post-war changes. But theirs is a more modest existence: the home they can no longer maintain is no grand manor but an ordinary house, one that was once full of life but now feels empty after the loss of two sons in the war, and the sudden death of the father around the same time. The latter grief revealed a series of bad investments that has stretched the family's finances to the breaking point: even with Frances Wray doing all the housework there isn't enough for her and her mother to live on. And so they make the fateful decision to rent part of the upstairs to what decorum demands they call, not lodgers, but paying guests.As that meaningless distinction might suggest, the theme of class anxiety is prominent in the novel's first pages, as the Wrays adjust to the somewhat bracing behavior of Lilian and Leonard ("Lil and Len") Barber. Waters has a keen eye for the small disturbances that inevitably follow from sharing a household with even well-behaved and likable strangers. More importantly, she understands how people do and do not conform to ideas of character type. There's a harshness to Frances from all she has lost, and a snobbishness about sharing her house with lower-class types, but she's hardly a stereotypical spinster: she has alternating impulses toward generosity and cruelty that are very true to life, and Waters gradually reveals a personal history that speaks both to Frances' personality and to the particular concerns of that historical moment. Another of Waters' rare gifts is the ability to create in readers a sense of the past, not through the layering of conventionally vivid language or of period detail, but through describing ordinary moments in which difference reveals itself by flashes. Although the narrative moves slowly in this opening section, its creation of the rhythms of daily life is so natural, so careful to avoid moments of false drama, that it never feels slow-moving. In some ways, this is the best part of the novel.Given time, of course, the plot kicks in. I won't say too much about it, although Waters' longtime readers may be able to work out some of its developments in advance, as I did. Past a certain point, there's really only one way things can go, which makes the book less exciting on narrative terms than some of Waters' others, though that may just be my impression because this type of thriller isn't one I especially enjoy. The demands of the plot also work against the subtler exploration of character and setting that had been a strength earlier on, though the ambiguities of character are not so much abandoned as submerged. As in earlier novels, Waters is interested in the way secrets, even welcome ones, force a moral and emotional coarsening, and in the line between love and infatuation. This material may feel a little familiar by now, but Waters can evoke a state of mind with such intensity that the reader begins to feel it herself. Perhaps that's why, despite finding the turns of the plot underwhelming in places, I read the book almost continuously from the moment I received it to the moment I turned the final page.That final page avoids what had seemed a last predictable plot twist in favor of something I had been hoping for but hadn't believed Waters would dare to do. The ending of THE PAYING GUESTS captures the great virtue of Waters' novels: her ability to combine the narrative matter of the thriller with a psychological realism that makes these books more than just page-turners. Frances Wray may be caught up in an entirely conventional sequence of terrible events, but her mindset, and her times, are less conventional, and will offer even readers who share my limited enthusiasm for this subgenre much to enjoy. And those who love that subgenre will find that this is what Sarah Waters always offers: one of the best thrillers of the year.
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