The Paying Guests

Summary (from the publisher): 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.

With the arrival of Lillian and Leonard Barber, a modern young couple of the “clerk class,” the routines of the house will be shaken up in unexpected ways. Little do the Wrays know just how profoundly their new tenants will alter the course of Frances’s life—or, as passions mount and frustration gathers, how far-reaching, and how devastating, the disturbances will be.

Short-listed for the Man Booker Prize three times, Sarah Waters has earned a reputation as one of our greatest writers of historical fiction.

 

Review: In post-war London of 1922, Frances Wray is the spinster daughter of impoverished widow Mrs. Wray. With both brothers and father dead and gone, the two women resort to taking in lodgers to pay their bills. Yet little does Frances know how greatly the arrival of Lillian and Leonard Barber will transform her life.

 

This novel has a slow and steady buildup and is laced with anxious anticipation from the opening scene. In it, Frances is nervously waiting for her new tenants to arrive, only to have them catch her staring at them from an upstairs window: "Feeling trapped and on display in the frame of the window, she lifted her hand, and smiled" (4). From the beginning, it feels just so slightly off to have strangers in their home. Even the furniture seems displeased with the arrangement as Frances comments, "Her mother's bits of bedroom furniture seemed to her to be sitting as tensely as unhappy visitors: she could feel them pining for their grooves and smooches in the floor of the room above" (15). Frances is also thrown off by the innuendo-laced comments from Mr. Barber, who turns conversations about cucumbers in the garden into uncomfortable, suggestive chats.

 

Yet Frances' seeming unease morphs into something else entirely as passion mounts within the home - and ultimately leads to a grisly tragedy. It's difficult to discuss the main plot points without giving away the plot, but suffice it to say that an illicit love takes a dark turn and leads Frances to do and act in ways she never thought possible. Frances must confront the reality of her own convictions and finds herself lacking. As the novel plays out to its conclusion, Frances' fear and anxiety continue to race along at a staccato clip that made this quite stressful at times to read. Waters did an excellent job of setting the scene and putting her readers in the shoes of Frances, who is fearful beyond anything in her imagining at where her actions might take her.

 

It's fitting that Frances and Lillian bond over a shared love of Anna Karenina, an infamous story of a love affair gone wrong. Yet it is ironic that neither seem to notice the parallels in their own story. The novel did drag a bit near the end, and at times the descriptive language was less than inspired, yet Waters masterfully built up the tension of the novel. Additionally, the abortion scene and illicit homoerotic love affair was well done, and the open ended conclusion felt fitting and believable.

 

Review: 4