The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters

The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters

Read by Juliet Stevenson

21 hours, 29 minutes

Published September 2014 by Riverhead Books

Publisher's Summary: 

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.

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. Little do the Wrays know just how profoundly their new tenants will alter the course of Frances's life-or, as passions mount and frustration gathers, how far-reaching, and how devastating, the disturbances will be.

Short-listed for the Man Booker Prize three times, Sarah Waters has earned a reputation as one of our greatest writers of historical fiction, and here she has delivered again. A love story, a tension-filled crime story, and a beautifully atmospheric portrait of a fascinating time and place, The Paying Guests is Sarah Waters's finest achievement yet.

My Thoughts: 

I picked this one up after I'd read Water's 2009 The Little Stranger and 2002 Fingersmith. It has languished on my bookshelves for years now, so when I saw it was available in audiobook just when I was needing a book, I didn't hesitate. 

You may have noticed that this book is 21 and a half hours long which means, for me at least, that a book is really going to have to a lot going on to keep a reader's interest. But this book is a slow-burn of a novel that managed to hold my interest for all of that 21 and an half hours. 

The book is, essentially, three parts. The front end becomes a love story, the middle a shocking jolt, and the last part more of a crime story which left me very much wondering how Waters was going to keep her heroine out of trouble, whether or not Lilian was to be trusted, and whether or not Lilian and Frances' relationship could survive. 

Waters' writing is superb, as ever. She paints a vivid picture of life after the Great War, particularly what it was like for women who had lost their husbands and their means of life. Frances and her mother, despite their circumstances, still believe themselves to be above, in station, the Barbers, despite the fact that the Wrays could not survive without the money the Barbers pay them. Frances has been forced to do all of the housework, but hides it from the neighbors (who surely know what is happening). The Wrays initially are very uncomfortable with the interactions they are forced to have with the Barbers. Leonard is brash and flirtatious with Frances, making her very wary of him. But she grows closer and closer to Lilian, despite their statuses, and it reopens Frances' past relationship with another woman which disgraced the Wray family. 

I can't get too far into explaining what happens beyond that without giving away too much. Suffice to say that the relationship between Frances and Lilian causes trouble that will put them both in danger and tests that relationship. 

Hopefully I've given you enough to understand that this book will not be for everyone, particularly given some intimate scenes. For me, that wasn't an issue; this is simply a different love story, filled with yearning and hope.