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. 

Life: It Goes On - July 5

Happy Sunday and happy day after the 4th of July! I hope you all are having a wonderful holiday weekend. I struggled with celebrating this year; but, in the end, celebrated what this country was founded on and what it could be. We've had a lot of clouds of late, including a 2" rainfall on Friday evening; but today is starting off sunny, which always gives me more energy to get things done. 

Last Week I: 

Listened To: John Green's Everything Is Tuberculosis. 

Watched: So. Much. Soccer. 

Read: Still reading Happy Land, although I need to finish it pretty soon as I have 5, yes 5, books ready for pick up at the library. 

Made: Fettuccine carbonara, blt salad, and last night we bbq'd chicken thighs and I made homemade ice cream and chocolate sauce. This may be the first 4th in 20 years that I didn't make red velvet cake but since I always make it for Mini-him's bday in July, I've decided once a month is plenty. 

Enjoyed: A quick visit from Miss H during the week. Time with family yesterday and dinner and fireworks with friends last night. We didn't have to buy a single firework; we just sat in a neighbor's driveway and watched displays going off all around us. 

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This Week I’m:  

Planning: On working some more on the basement. I've made good progress last week which was an incentive to keep going. Now if I can just keep the Big Guy from pulling things back out of the donation pile, I'll make even better progress. 

Thinking About: A couple of trips we'd like to take this summer and maybe even a real vacation. 

Feeling: A little sad. I'm really missing my parents this weekend. They loved the Fourth of July. I've told you before about the neighborhood breakfast my parents started in 1976; this year was the 50th anniversary of that first breakfast and my dad had so hoped to be alive and able to go to it. 

Looking forward to: I think a quiet week. Although I haven't looked at the calendar yet, so I may well be forgetting something. 

Question of the week: How did you celebrate yesterday? 

Less Is Lost by Andrew Sean Greer

Less Is Lost by Andrew Sean Greer

272 pages

Published September 2022 by Little, Brown and Company

Publisher's Summary: 

“Go get lost somewhere, it always does you good.”

For Arthur Less, life is going surprisingly well: he is a moderately accomplished novelist in a steady relationship with his partner, Freddy Pelu. But nothing lasts: the death of an old lover and a sudden financial crisis has Less running away from his problems yet again as he accepts a series of literary gigs that send him on a zigzagging adventure across the US.

Less roves across the “Mild Mild West,” through the South and to his mid-Atlantic birthplace, with an ever-changing posse of writerly characters and his trusty duo – a human-like black pug, Dolly, and a rusty camper van nicknamed Rosina. He grows a handlebar mustache, ditches his signature gray suit, and disguises himself in the bolero-and-cowboy-hat costume of a true “Unitedstatesian”... with varying levels of success, as he continues to be mistaken for either a Dutchman, the wrong writer, or, worst of all, a “bad gay.”

We cannot, however, escape ourselves—even across deserts, bayous, and coastlines. From his estranged father and strained relationship with Freddy, to the reckoning he experiences in confronting his privilege, Arthur Less must eventually face his personal demons. With all of the irrepressible wit and musicality that made Less a bestselling, Pulitzer Prize-winning, must-read breakout book, Less Is Lost is a profound and joyous novel about the enigma of life in America, the riddle of love, and the stories we tell along the way.

My Thoughts: 

I read and reviewed Greer's 2017 Less (review here), which won Greer the Pulitzer Prize and which I felt had a lot to teach me and which I really enjoyed. I wrote then that I had two of Greer's other books on my Nook (still haven't gotten to those), but that I feared they would not be able to live up to Less which was so very good. Unfortunately, this one didn't either, at least not for me. Which is not to say I didn't enjoy it; it was just always going to be tough to live up to the first book. 

This book finds Less crossing the country in a mad effort to try to earn enough money to pay back rent on the home he's been living in for more than a decade without any idea rent should have been paid. Less has been a successful writer so there is some demand for him, but he's struggling to write the next great book so off he goes, in part to earn money and in part to try to find the father that left him years ago. To say that for a smart man Less is often clueless is an understatement. So, of course, he finds himself in one ridiculous situation after another which give the book a lightness. But Less is also trying to find himself and what he wants for his future so there is plenty of weight to the book as well. 

While this one didn't pull me in as much as the first book, Greer's writing still impressed. You can't help but care about Arthur and hope that he finds what he needs. Maybe what this book has done is give me a lower bar for those books I already own to reach. And Greer's latest book, Villa Coco, which recently came out and which I'm waiting to get from my library. 

Life: It Goes On - June 29

Happy Monday evening! This past week was not an intentional break at all. Started last week with a nasty cold that turned into almost a week of sinus headache and I've been almost useless unless it absolutely had to get done. At least I did get some reading done, so there's that. 

The Last Two Weeks I: 

Listened To: M.L. Stedman's A Far-Flung Life and Susan Jane Gilman's Undress Me In The Temple of Heaven. Today I started John Green's Everything Is Tuberculosis. 

Watched: More soccer than I've watched in all the rest of my life combined. Also, The Penguin Lessons, starring Steve Coogan, which is based on a true story of the same name written by Tom Michell. Coogan plays Michell, who saves a penguin in Uruguay and then the penguin decides to bond to him. Michell ends up taking the penguin back to Argenitina, where he is teaching in the 1970's, and the penguin helps him become a better teacher and better person. We both really liked it a lot and would recommend it.

Read: I finished Peter Geye's A Lesser Light and Monica Wood's How To Read A Book. Yesterday I started Dolen Perkins-Valdez's latest, Happy Land. This is my fourth of Perkins-Valdez's books, having previously read Wench, Balm, and Take My Hand. 

Made: BLTs and blt salad, homemade Mac and cheese, stir fry, smoothies. Mostly easy, comfort food. It will be much more of the same this week, what with the heat wave we've just started. 

Enjoyed: Book club friends and I went to hear Lisa See promote her latest book, Daughters of The Sun and Moon. Learned a lot; she does a great job. We followed that with dinner and drinks and it was such good therapy. 

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This Week I’m:  

Planning: Miss H is coming up tomorrow night to pick up a new car and will be spending the night and a chunk of Wednesday here so I've taken Wednesday off to spend with her and I'm hoping to get through some more of the things she's still got at my house. 

Thinking About: How to celebrate the Fourth. 

Feeling: Still lethargic but at least able to finally convince myself to get some things done. 

Looking forward to: See Planning. We haven't seen Miss H since Christmas! 

Question of the week: I feel like this has been a banner 12 months for books and I'm struggling to keep up with the ones I want to read. What's one book you've read in the past 12 months that you can't recommend enough? What's one you'd suggest I skip? 

Brother and Sister by Diane Keaton

Brother and Sister: A Memoir by Diane Keaton

Read by Diane Keaton

4 hours, 29 minutes

Published February 2020 by Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group

Publisher’s Summary: 

When they were children in the suburbs of Los Angeles in the 1950s, Diane Keaton and her younger brother, Randy, were best friends and companions: they shared stories at night in their bunk beds; they swam, laughed, dressed up for Halloween. Their mother captured their American-dream childhoods in her diaries, and on camera. But as they grew up, Randy became troubled, then reclusive. By the time he reached adulthood, he was divorced, an alcoholic, a man who couldn't hold on to full-time work—his life a world away from his sister's, and from the rest of their family.

Now Diane is delving into the nuances of their shared, and separate, pasts to confront the difficult question of why and how Randy ended up living his life on "the other side of normal." In beautiful and fearless prose that's intertwined with photographs, journal entries, letters, and poetry—many of them Randy's own writing and art—this insightful memoir contemplates the inner workings of a family, the ties that hold it together, and the special bond between siblings even when they are pulled far apart. Here is a story about love and responsibility: about how, when we choose to reach out to the people we feel closest to—in moments of difficulty and loss—surprising things can happen. A story with universal echoes, Brother & Sister speaks across generations to families whose lives have been touched by the fragility and "otherness" of loved ones—and to brothers and sisters everywhere.

My Thoughts: 

In the early years of their lives, Randy and Diane slept in the same room, sharing a bunk bed. When they moved into a new house, they no longer shared that room. Grown Keaton wonders if Randy's life would have been different had that not been separated so early, had he had a friend to confide in every night, had they not had other siblings. She ponders the "what-ifs" had Randy been raised differently. But she doesn't throw blame and she doesn't make excuses for his behavior or his troubles. Randy was blessed to have a family who cared so much and never stopped trying to help him. 

Keaton was candid and honest about how difficult Randy's mental health and addiction were on the family and on her She struggled to be honest about what was happening, to be caring. But she also found she needed to be tough when it was called for. 

As Diane's rose to fame, she had to also straddle Randy's descent. Fortunately, her rise allowed Randy to have the best care possible for the rest of his life, something she became well aware of being hard to find, even when you have money. In the end, Keaton is able to look back with humor at the things Randy did and be in awe of the way his brain worked and not entirely sad by the turn his life took and the toll it took on the family. 

It's so wonderful to hear Keaton's voice and I highly recommend the audiobook. But I know that I missed out on those photos, letters and art. I'm thinking a read/listen option is the way to go with this one!