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hesmykindofgirl's review
2.0
yeah… not for me.
it started off well! I quite liked frances at the beginning, and I was intrigued by her status as an activist-turned-spinster. but I kept wishing for something to happen and like, it didn’t. lol. which is sad, considering how much I loved tipping the velvet.
it started off well! I quite liked frances at the beginning, and I was intrigued by her status as an activist-turned-spinster. but I kept wishing for something to happen and like, it didn’t. lol.
Spoiler
and the stuff that did happen towards the end was more just anxiety-inducing than suspenseful, so did not engage me at all.lastpaige111's review
5.0
I discovered this novel on a shelf in the tiny Reading Lasses in Wigtown, Scotland, and as soon as I opened it, I was hooked. It was my friend on my return flight--every time I awakened from a doze, I reached for it. I expected a good read--I found a literary achievement that blew my socks off.
In this gripping and nuanced exploration of human passion, relationship, morality, and fear, Waters conveys the brain swirls that affect all of us who have a conscience. Her early 20th Century London isn't very far off from today's world of socio-economic and gender biases and how they intersect.
Warning: There are moments of emotional darkness so vivid you'll have trouble coming up out of them.
In this gripping and nuanced exploration of human passion, relationship, morality, and fear, Waters conveys the brain swirls that affect all of us who have a conscience. Her early 20th Century London isn't very far off from today's world of socio-economic and gender biases and how they intersect.
Warning: There are moments of emotional darkness so vivid you'll have trouble coming up out of them.
eileenthecrow's review
1.0
i was under the impression that affinity was less popular than this, and hence thought (affinity) to be a worse book (for some reason) (popularity =??? quality??? no??? what was i thinking) and since i loved affinity so much, i had really high hopes for the paying guests......... i was wrong. this was dreadfully boring. i don't know how she managed to make it this boring. i had to skip half of it and i was still bored. i was skipping 10 pages and the story was still dragging on. how is that even possible
klarial's review
5.0
I only knew the bare bones of the plot of this novel before I began reading it and I definitely think that is the best way to go into it. There are some lovely and exciting twists and turns which I believe would be best enjoyed if you did not anticipate them. With that being said I am going to only give a very brief synopsis of the plot in this review, I want everyone to enjoy this novel as much as I did! The Paying Guests tells the story of Frances Wray, a young woman in post World War I England who is struggling to keep herself and her mother afloat after losing her father and brothers during the war. Added to this is the discovery that her father did not leave their finances in the best of order prior to his death. In an attempt to keep their home and some semblance of their old life, Frances and her mother take on a young married couple as boarders (the titular paying guests), Mr. and Mrs. Barber. The story starts at a slow simmer, taking us through the developing relationships of these characters, as the relationships intensify the heat gets cranked up, all the way to a terrifying climax. The second act of the novel explores the aftermath of this climax and how it affects the characters. Though the heat definitely gets turned down the tension carries through the end of the novel. I think that is the best I can do without giving away too many details. Trust me its all worth it, the slow simmer, the climax, the tension, they all come together to create a lovely, engrossing novel.
It isn’t just the structure of the novel that made me enjoy it as much as I did there are many other compelling things. Frances, for example. We experience the story through her eyes and she felt so real to me. She is a complex, flawed character and even when I didn’t agree with what she was doing or saying I understood her motivations, and that makes for a great protagonist. I also love a story with a strong sense of time and place and The Paying Guests certainly delivers on that front. Even if you don’t have a great deal of knowledge about post WWI England you can’t help but feel that atmosphere surrounding the novel. Being on the brink of changing times, shown mostly through the relationship between Frances and her Victorian-minded mother. Post war frustrations, Frances repeatedly voices her opinion on the pointlessness of the war and the high price England paid to participate. And of course the fun references to sculleries, hat pins, and waved hair. All of these elements combine to give the novel that sense of time and place and I immensely enjoyed being immersed in that world.
In addition to everything mentioned above, The Paying Guests also has some lovely, poignant writing. One passage the stands out to me as a great example of this happens early in the novel when Frances takes a trip to London.
“She loved these walks through London. She seemed as she made them, to become porous, to soak in detail after detail; or else, like a battery, to become charged. Yes, that was it, she thought...it wasn’t a liquid creeping, it was a tingle, something electric, something produced as if by the friction of her shoes against the streets. She was at her truest, it seemed to her, in these tingling moments - these moments when, paradoxically, she was also at her most anonymous.”
The one thing I could see being a struggle for some readers with this novel is pacing. It definitely has a slower start and I have also read some criticisms about the last 100 pages or so being quite sluggish. Though I can see some merit to these criticisms, I loved everything else about this novel so much that even the slower parts of the plot were engaging for me. I didn’t find my interest waning once and by the time I reached the end I found myself wanting more time with this place and these characters. So if a deliberately paced, post war novel with a complex female character and a twisting plot at its center sounds like your cup of tea, pick up The Paying Guests. I don’t think you’ll regret it.
It isn’t just the structure of the novel that made me enjoy it as much as I did there are many other compelling things. Frances, for example. We experience the story through her eyes and she felt so real to me. She is a complex, flawed character and even when I didn’t agree with what she was doing or saying I understood her motivations, and that makes for a great protagonist. I also love a story with a strong sense of time and place and The Paying Guests certainly delivers on that front. Even if you don’t have a great deal of knowledge about post WWI England you can’t help but feel that atmosphere surrounding the novel. Being on the brink of changing times, shown mostly through the relationship between Frances and her Victorian-minded mother. Post war frustrations, Frances repeatedly voices her opinion on the pointlessness of the war and the high price England paid to participate. And of course the fun references to sculleries, hat pins, and waved hair. All of these elements combine to give the novel that sense of time and place and I immensely enjoyed being immersed in that world.
In addition to everything mentioned above, The Paying Guests also has some lovely, poignant writing. One passage the stands out to me as a great example of this happens early in the novel when Frances takes a trip to London.
“She loved these walks through London. She seemed as she made them, to become porous, to soak in detail after detail; or else, like a battery, to become charged. Yes, that was it, she thought...it wasn’t a liquid creeping, it was a tingle, something electric, something produced as if by the friction of her shoes against the streets. She was at her truest, it seemed to her, in these tingling moments - these moments when, paradoxically, she was also at her most anonymous.”
The one thing I could see being a struggle for some readers with this novel is pacing. It definitely has a slower start and I have also read some criticisms about the last 100 pages or so being quite sluggish. Though I can see some merit to these criticisms, I loved everything else about this novel so much that even the slower parts of the plot were engaging for me. I didn’t find my interest waning once and by the time I reached the end I found myself wanting more time with this place and these characters. So if a deliberately paced, post war novel with a complex female character and a twisting plot at its center sounds like your cup of tea, pick up The Paying Guests. I don’t think you’ll regret it.
jomasini's review
3.0
A bit long. Too much book for the amount of plot. But well written and enjoyable to read
hamilgrom's review
3.0
This is my first time reading Sarah Waters and despite feeling somewhat cold toward this novel I'm still interested in reading some of her other works.
To me, this novel was a well-written character study. Frances is a dynamic character and the book provides engaging insights into human life through her character.
Where the novel lost me was the plot, or lack thereof. 500+ pages and so little happens, so much is repeated and not a lot of it is terribly interesting or even consequential to the characters in the book.
I do not regret reading the book but I would hesitate before recommending it to a friend.
To me, this novel was a well-written character study. Frances is a dynamic character and the book provides engaging insights into human life through her character.
Where the novel lost me was the plot, or lack thereof. 500+ pages and so little happens, so much is repeated and not a lot of it is terribly interesting or even consequential to the characters in the book.
I do not regret reading the book but I would hesitate before recommending it to a friend.
alisonhori's review
2.0
I was really looking forward to this book from the description I had read (which turns out to have been so brief as to be totally useless because I had no idea what this book was really going to be about). I was interested all of the pieces that were established to set this story up...post War England, Lesbian life styles at that time, the blurring of class lines...I thought all of it was very promising although dragged a little...but once we got to the meat of the story about half way through, it all feel apart for me. Totally cliqued and familiar..and worse, boring characters all with rather dull personalities and morals....to go through such torment to be involved with any of these people seems ridiculous. By the last quarter (the heart of the drama of the book)...I pretty much just wanted the whole thing to end already..and it pretty much could have there since really there is not much resolution by the end anyhow. This book had some neat parts to it but overall, it missed for me.