The Paying Guests

hardcover jacketed

English language

Published Sept. 29, 2014 by Riverhead Books.

ISBN:
978-1-59463-311-9
Copied ISBN!
OCLC Number:
870919758

View on OpenLibrary

View on Inventaire

3 stars (10 reviews)

The Paying Guests is a 2014 novel by Welsh author Sarah Waters. It was shortlisted for the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction and named "Fiction Book of the Year" by The Sunday Times who said that "this novel magnificently confirms Sarah Waters' status as an unsurpassed fictional recorder of vanished eras and hidden lives."

4 editions

Review of 'Paying Guests' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

Set between the wars, the period is a fascinating one. So many of the young men were lost, with the women left behind. Frances and her mother have been left with a big house and bills to pay in a time where women were only just coming round to the idea of financial independence. Many of the men who returned from war, struggling to find employment, were bitter that the women had things better than them.

One things families like Frances’ could do was rent out rooms to lodgers; or paying guests as they called them to make them sound posher. I loved the chapters where they are getting used to the sounds upstairs, the invasion of privacy of having strangers in yours home but also the balance of allowing them to make the place their home too.

The minutiae of everyday life in the twenties is intricately described. It …

Review of 'Paying Guests' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

The Paying Guests is something a little different for Sarah Waters; set in 1922 London, it is a period of history I don’t expect from this author. The novel tells the story an impoverished widow and her spinster daughter who are struggling to keep their large Camberwell villa after the loss of her husband and sons due to the war. They take in a modern young couple, Lilian and Leonard Barber to help make ends meet. True to Sarah Waters form, The Paying Guest is full of tension and mystery, but there was something missing.

Granted I have only read Tipping the Velvet (I really should read Fingersmith) but what I know and expect from Waters is something set in the 1800’s. Needless to say this was an enjoyable novel, exploring the differences in classes and the effects of World War I on the people in London. This period of …

avatar for NC

rated it

5 stars
avatar for sapphiction

rated it

5 stars
avatar for 73pctGeek

rated it

3 stars