The Paying Guests

Let me start by saying that I loved this book. I see there are quite a few 3, 2 and 1 star reviews, with various reasons given, and all I can say is that those reviewers just didn\’t get it. This is a prose-heavy book, written in the style of many authors of English mysteries (although this technically is not a mystery) and evocative of a bygone age, in this case, 1922 post-First World War. The widowed Mrs. Wray and her unmarried daughter, Frances, live in a formerly grand villa in an exclusive and high-class neighborhood of South London. Frances is in her late 20\’s and is unmarried, which in that day and time classified her as a \”spinster\”. They have fallen on hard times financially following the death of Mr. Wray and the discovery that the had totally mismanaged and lost any fortunes they may have had. Mrs. Wray and Frances were first forced to dismiss their servants and cook and Frances took on the onerous task of maintaining the house. This was a time before modern cleaning products and appliances, and reading about Frances\’s routine household duties made me feel exhausted – just the necessary daily chores sound overwhelming today. They are finally at the point where they owe the grocer, the butcher and everyone else, and they make the decision to rent out part of the house, or in the parlance of the day, take in paying guests. Enter Lilian and Leonard Barber (Lil and Len), a young couple several years younger than Lilian. England adhered very strictly to a class system at that time and the Barbers, while a respectable couple, were members of the slightly lower \”clerk class\”, despite Len\’s good-paying job and his salary advancements. This creates some major changes in the household – to provide a suite of rooms for the Barbers, Mrs. Wray is required to move her bedroom. Frances retains her bedroom on the same floor as the Barbers\’ rooms, and this necessitates sharing the landing with the couple. The house has no bathroom and an outhouse is located outside the kitchen, which requires the Barbers to go through the Wrays\’ kitchen to get to it. The only bathtub is also located off the kitchen – fortunately very few people bathed daily in that era. Frances handles most of the dealings with the Barbers. She finds Len agreeable, for the most part, but perceives a suggestive undertone in some of the things he says. She gradually becomes more and more friendly with Lil, and it slowly becomes apparent that this is becoming a romantic interest. I definitely don\’t want to put any spoilers in this review, because this is a story that unfolds slowly like a flower opening. Each delicately-nuanced development reveals a new aspect to the story until these events and prior events stand in a line like dominos just waiting for the slightest touch of a finger to bring everything crashing down. Frances at first appears sensible and no-nonsense, but slowly layers are peeled away to reveal a nervous, apprehensive and somewhat innocent young woman. Lil appears to be a somewhat flighty girl, insecure about her class status and obsequious to those of a \”higher class\” like the Wrays. As the blurb for the book states, there is a murder about halfway through the book and from that point, the suspense starts to build. I stayed awake half the night to finish the book. I had several possible endings in my mind, but never came near to guessing what actually happened. I found the ending satisfying. To those reviewers who felt there was \”graphic sex\”, be assured that sex is only very lightly touched upon and not detailed. Those readers may have been offended by the lesbian overtones, but that element really only added to the suspense because of the prohibitions, both social and legal, against it in England in that era. I totally enjoyed the detailed descriptions of the locale, the day-to-day goings on in this period right after the war, with the return of a multitude of now-unemployed former soldiers, the habits and lives of the various \”classes\” and how people lived and dressed at that time. The day-to-day lives of the main characters and the dramatic events that overcame them were exciting and suspenseful. I definitely recommend this book to anyone who enjoys English mysteries and psychological thrillers.

This is a beautifully written, delicately nuanced book. Talking place in post-war London in the early nineteen twenties, a genteel mother, Mrs. Wray, and daughter, twenty something Frances, finding themselves unexpectedly impoverished upon the death of the family breadwinner, decide to take boarders into their home in order to survive. They take in a young married couple, Lillian and Leonard Barber, on their way up the ladder of success and seeming respectability into the burgeoning middle class. Frances, who leads a somewhat constrained and solitary existence, finds herself drawn to the colorful and thoroughly modern Lillian, and a friendship develops. What is surprising is where their friendship takes them. Expect the unexpected. This book is one to be savored, as the author takes the reader into a freefall of unexpected passion between two unlikely protagonists. Set against the social mores of a bygone time, the book engages the reader in a strange, almost hypnotic way with its authenticity of time and place. When the unthinkable happens, the author weaves a tapestry of heart pounding suspense around a well-spring of passion. It is an absolute page-turner.

It is 1922 and in an older house, the widow Mrs. Wray and her daughter Frances try to keep things together, keep the house up, and continue to pay the bills left by the late Mr. Wray on his death. They no longer have servants, but Frances does all the work around the house, still they are falling further and further behind. To bring in a little money, they decide to take in paying lodgers. Enter the Barbers, Leonard and his wife Lillian. They turn the Wray house upside down, first just by just the chaos of their being there and then, as the story progresses (Waters writes a great narrative), the story goes from a period drama to love story, to crime drama that will have you turning pages as quickly as you can to get to the end. It\’s the sort of book where you wish you could re-visit the characters 6 months after the story ends. I was up until 2 a.m. finishing this, something I can say about very few books!

so the story goes, when Dusty Springfield ran into Carole King at the Brill Building in NYC during the early 1960s, she remarked at how much music came out of such a little bit of a thing. you could be equally impressed with the transformative story-telling of Sarah Waters. that said, The Paying Guests is a very generous story. as usual, Sarah Waters was able to create a time in history that was accurate to the point, for me anyway, of actually being in this post WW-I town outside of London. it was very sexy and had all the madness of a new romance that can drive many to do things that should not be done. that said, this would be another one of Sarah Waters’ perfect stories with one exception. the criminal and legal issues were circular and even a bit tedious. because this took over about one third of the book, and at the end, the result was that the excitement and thrall didn’t linger the way i would have liked. but still it was really great.

Hard to describe. Set in England post World War I. This is a book of two parts. The first reads like scandalous Jane Austin or Charles Dickens with forbidden romance. Then turns into an almost Alfred Hitchcock plot of crime and fear of punishment. I thought the pace of the first half was excellent, the author built it slow but never too slow. The second half feels a little rushed and repetitive at the same time.. I waited for a big twist at the end but only to be disappointed. the books seems to slowly exhale. When I wanted a final gasp. I also had a hard time finding a likeable character . Not that I always need somebody to root for. But it does personalize the story a little more.

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