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A review by klarial
The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters
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.