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The Paying Guests

The Paying Guests 1

by Sarah Waters
Paperback
Publication Date: 26/08/2014
2/5 Rating 1 Review

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$32.99
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.

For 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. And as passions mount and frustration gathers, no one can foresee just how far-reaching, and how devastating, the disturbances will be.

This is vintage Sarah Waters: beautifully described with excruciating tension, real tenderness, believable characters, and surprises. It is above all, a wonderful, compelling story.
ISBN:
9780349004587
9780349004587
Category:
Historical Fiction
Format:
Paperback
Publication Date:
26-08-2014
Publisher:
Little, Brown Book Group
Country of origin:
United Kingdom
Pages:
576
Dimensions (mm):
152x233x44mm
Weight:
0.73kg
Sarah Waters

Sarah Waters was born in Wales. She has won a Betty Trask Award, the Somerset Maugham Award and her books have been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the Orange Prize.

Tipping the Velvet, Affinity, Fingersmith and The Night Watch have been adapted for television. Sarah Waters has been named Author of the Year four times: by the British Book Awards, the Booksellers' Association, Waterstone's Booksellers and the Stonewall Awards. She lives in London.

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I don't know why I keep on getting sucked in to reading Sarah Waters' books, because I haven't enjoyed any of the ones that I have read. And every time I start reading them I curse myself for being so stupid and believing the hype and being displeased again.

There is a consistent theme of lesbianism in a lot of her stories, which of course is a popular theme considering she keeps on writing the same type of novel over and over again, but the synopsis of this particular one led me to believe the plot was something different altogether.

I don't want to spoil this for those who will read it, and I think that it's best left to unravel organically as a story rather than listing plot points here, but there was an expectation on my behalf that this would be a more "downton abbey/whodunnit" type of book, and so was disappointed when I got drawn into a clandestine romance that Sarah's written about before (and one which was not to my liking the first time I read Fingersmith)

There is a lot of repetitive narrative in this book, which makes it feel overly long to read. The tension is long drawn out, too much so for me, as I tired quickly of reading the same thoughts and concerns the characters had over and over again.

I enjoyed the start of the book, where there was suspicions of what you think is about to occur, however when the plot started to evolve I became slightly disgruntled for reasons stated above. There is certainly interesting themes covered in this book, and there was quite a bit of drama at the end that I enjoyed, but overall I just felt that I'd been duped into thinking this was a book of an altogether different story.

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