#am reading The Paying Guests

Author: Sarah Waters

Discovered: Foyles, Waterloo station

Where read: (in part) The 15:55 from Victoria to Maidstone

What's the story?

In the aftermath of WWI Frances and her Mother are forced to take in lodgers to their suburban home in South London. As a young professional couple, The Barbers, move in Frances must come to terms with the life changing consequences of sharing her home with other adults.  

The Word's Shortlist view:

Though Sarah Water’s is well established as a writer of contemporary fiction The Paying Guests is the first Waters novel I have read and reviewed. First impressions? Beautifully written, well structured and perfectly captures the post war period with grieving and dismayed people (most often women) adjusting to a new world.

The first half of the story sees Frances’s infatuation with lodger Lillian Barber turn into a visceral and physical relationship as picnics in the park turn to parties and snatched moments of intimacy on the landing. “What did she want? Frances couldn't tell......There had been too much dancing back and forth.” 

Waters expertly builds the tension as the couple’s relationship develops within the suffocating intimacy of the house right alongside France’s mother and Lillian’s husband Leonard.“I barely knew I had skin before I met you”; Frances reveals following an afternoon in the scullery.

In the second half the novel turns crime drama as the couple are thrust into the heart of a violent murder that pushes their embryonic affair to the limit.   

The book is most successful in the early chapters, in which characters are given centre stage over events, and does feel a little heavy in the later court room scenes. The ending won’t appease all readers but I particularly enjoyed the ambiguity around what punishment looks like. A page turner, for the most part, with explicit realism and authentic characters that are a cut above much of the top 10 paperbacks you could pick up this summer.  

Who should read this book?

Fans of Sarah Water’s period lesbian dramas and fans of memorable contemporary fiction.

What’s next on the bookshelf

The Children Act by Ian McEwan

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The Word's Shortlist

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