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Loading... The Paying Guests (2014)by Sarah Waters
  
» 18 more Books Read in 2014 (43) Books Read in 2015 (108) Best LGBT Fiction (25) Top Five Books of 2015 (256) Top Five Books of 2016 (657) SHOULD Read Books! (251) Reading list (159) Best Family Stories (70) No current Talk conversations about this book.  amcheri | May 25, 2021 |  What a cheat: Waters wields her well-fashioned, direct prose with all the discretion of a toddler picking up a firearm, suckering Dear Reader into a 560-page novel by promising an honest-to-God throwback and delivering instead a melodrama cobbled out of the lamest tripe imaginable. About a quarter in it's revealed that this is another novel about repressed sexuality in an older era, which the prose seems to promise a fresh view upon, but it indeed ends up being almost a paint-by-numbers lesbian potboiler. Ever see that tawdry original paperback artwork for The Price of Salt? That's this book. Gracious, this was a waste. It was my first Waters, and I look forward to Fingersmith anyway. brendanowicz | May 9, 2021 | I loved Juliet Stevenson's reading but did not care for the story at all. (  ) jlweiss | Apr 23, 2021 | It is 4.5 stars! I hesitate giving 5 stars because it felt long winding at times. Yet, this is certainly my favorite book by Sarah Waters. One can feel her growth as a writer with each one of her books. The historical background is flawless. It envelopes the reader and transports us to the years just after WWI England, among a people still in grief for the dead, the economic hardships, and the women left behind in a world that had systematically shifted. But this historical panorama does remain in the background giving a sturdy canvas for the story, yet not overpowering the main plot, which is dense and erotic in the right doses. Like other reviewers I do agree that it is too long introducing the reader to the main plot, but I want to tell everyone to hang in there, because the story does unravel into an almost thriller with very well developed characters. I love that it defies genre too. I should add that I listened in audio book with a narration by Juliet Stevenson. Her performance and characterizations were great. (  ) RosanaDR | Apr 15, 2021 | I feel relieved to have finished this book! For most of the book, I had it in my head that I'd rank it around a 3 . . . but, the ending. Nope, not happy about it. I waded through all the melodrama. "Oh, but for a cup of tea!" All the "woe is me" that whiny Francis could muster because there was enough suspense to offset it whilst I rolled my eyes. Lillian is a terrible person and annoying. I did not like the main characters. I felt sorry for everyone surrounding them. Leonard, especially, the poor chap. I do admit, I did get quite drawn into the story and could not have put it down despite my disdain for the leading ladies and my disappointment in the ultimate conclusion. Ms. Waters did do a fantastic job of compelling the (in my case disgruntled) reader to stick it out to the end. ( ) mbellucci | Apr 10, 2021 |
 "Some novels are so good, so gripping or shattering that they leave you uncertain whether you should have ever started them. You open “The Paying Guests” and immediately surrender to the smooth assuredness of Sarah Waters’s silken prose. Nothing jars. You relax. You turn more pages. You start turning them faster. Before long, you resemble Coleridge’s Wedding-Guest: You cannot choose but read. The book has you in thrall. You will follow Waters and her story anywhere. Yet when that story ends, you find yourself emotionally sucked dry, as much stunned as exhilarated by the power of art." The superbly talented Sarah Waters — three times shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize — leads her readers into hidden worlds, worlds few of us knew existed. And so it is with The Paying Guests. ..Amid this heart-crushing drama, uncaring London grinds on, a cacophony of “hooves, voices, hurrying steps, the clash and grinding of iron wheels” that threatens to destroy the hopes of summer: an utterly engrossing tale.  Novel tackles big themes but lacks bite...Yet the love story’s progression – to say more would give too much away – is not entirely convincing by the end..Characterisation has a hint of familiarity, as if characters have been derived from Waters’ bank of past creations, and they lose some of their gleam for it, though the story stays emotionally-charged...  The Paying Guests, Sarah Waters' superb, bewitching new novel, is set in 1922 London...My only quibble with The Paying Guests is its length; the last hundred pages or so chronicle a court trial and feel padded, the first time I've ever had that reaction to a Sarah Waters novel. Otherwise, this is a magnificent creation, a book that doubles as a time machine, flinging us back not only to postwar London, but also to our own lost love affairs, the kind that left us breathless — and far too besotted to notice that we had somehow misplaced our moral compass.  This fascinating domestic scenario might have made for an absorbing short novel;... Its pastiche propriety and faux-Edwardian prose (people are forever "colouring" and "crimsoning" and "putting themselves tidy") become irritants; and the novel's descent into melodrama as a murder is committed – and the inspector called – turns this engaging literary endeavour into a tiresome soap opera....Waters's unusual gift for drama and for social satire is squandered on the production of middlebrow entertainment:.. it would be good to see Waters produce something corrective and sharp, in which her authoritative and incisive dramatic style was permitted to be sufficient satisfaction on its own.
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. No library descriptions found. 
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Wikipedia in English (2)
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There are few authors who can weave a tale like Waters and I'll certainly pick up her next book.
**7/2015 Re-reading and enjoying it just as much as the first time. Maybe a little more.** (