The Paying Guests

  • Type: Ebooks
  • By: Sarah Waters
  • Age Category: Adults
  • Genre: Historical Fiction
  • Recommended by: Tom S.
  • ISBN/UPC: 9780698157705
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Love breaks through stifling social convention

It’s London, 1922, and Frances is approaching spinsterhood, living in genteel poverty with her mother in the family’s formerly grand house, now on the verge of going to seed.  To make ends meet, they take in boarders – a young, vaguely bohemian couple from a social stratum lower than their own.  Living in close proximity with strangers is difficult, but then Frances develops a crush on the female of the couple – Lillian – which eventually blossoms into a passionate love affair.  In the second half of the book, Frances and Lillian are involved in a criminal investigation that tests the limits of their relationship.
 
This book is long, and the pace leisurely, but the close historical detail is excellent – for example, it’s the Jazz Age but Frances’s home has neither indoor toilets nor modern bathing
facilities, and the pervasive postwar gloom that hangs over London is thick as clotted cream.  Characterization of the main players is similarly rich.  Frances is buried up to her neck in bitter memories, class-bound duties, and gendered expectations, so when she begins her affair with Lillian, it’s like a lighted candle in a dark cellar.
 
Try this if you like literary fiction with a strong sense of place and time.