The Paying Guests: shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction
Aug 2014 · Hachette UK
3.9star
63 reviewsreport
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576
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About this ebook
'A page-turning melodrama and a fascinating portrait of London on the verge of great change' Guardian
It is 1922, and in a hushed south London villa life is about to be transformed, as genteel widow Mrs Wray and her discontented daughter Frances are obliged to take in lodgers. Lilian and Leonard Barber, a modern young couple of the 'clerk class', bring with them gramophone music, colour, fun - and dangerous desires. The most ordinary of lives, it seems, can explode into passion and drama... A love story that is also a crime story, this is vintage Sarah Waters.
'Another wild ride of a novel... magnetic storytelling' Tracy Chevalier, Observer
'You will be hooked within a page' Charlotte Mendelson, Financial Times
'Sumptuous... the writing is impeccable. A joy in every respect' New Statesman
'An unsurpassed fictional recorder of vanished eras and hidden lives' Sunday Times
It is 1922, and in a hushed south London villa life is about to be transformed, as genteel widow Mrs Wray and her discontented daughter Frances are obliged to take in lodgers. Lilian and Leonard Barber, a modern young couple of the 'clerk class', bring with them gramophone music, colour, fun - and dangerous desires. The most ordinary of lives, it seems, can explode into passion and drama... A love story that is also a crime story, this is vintage Sarah Waters.
'Another wild ride of a novel... magnetic storytelling' Tracy Chevalier, Observer
'You will be hooked within a page' Charlotte Mendelson, Financial Times
'Sumptuous... the writing is impeccable. A joy in every respect' New Statesman
'An unsurpassed fictional recorder of vanished eras and hidden lives' Sunday Times
Ratings and reviews
3.9
63 reviews
Donna Green
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January 19, 2019
I loved the descriptions in the book, I felt like I walked the streets with the characters and experienced life in a time long before I was born. It was similarly enjoyable to get a feel for the social norms of the time too. The story itself was a real page turner. I could not wait to get back to the story. A really good read. Reccomed this book.
1 person found this review helpful
Fee Eyles
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September 6, 2015
Dark and twisty, light and funny all adding up to what felt like a 'real' story.
2 people found this review helpful
Moira Mcqueen
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June 27, 2015
first time reading Sarah Waters I enjoyed the quality and description of the era in which it was set just could not take to any of the characters and after about half way through started to skip pages .It was not a bad book just loke the curates egg good in part
About the author
Sarah Waters, who was born in Wales, has been described as 'one of the best storytellers alive today' (Matt Thorne, Independent), and there can be no doubt that readers and critics alike have been gripped by her extraordinary imagination. Sarah Waters' first novel, Tipping the Velvet, won a Betty Trask Award, and was shortlisted for the Mail on Sunday/John Llewellyn Rhys Prize. Her next novel, Affinity, won the Somerset Maugham Award and the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award while Fingersmith and The Night Watch were both shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the Orange Prize. The former also won the CWA Ellis Peters Dagger Award for Historical Crime Fiction and the South Bank Show Award for Literature. The Little Stranger was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2009 and The Paying Guests was shortlisted for the Baileys Prize in 2015. Tipping the Velvet, Affinity, Fingersmith and The Night Watch have all been adapted for television, The Little Stranger was adapted as a film by Lenny Abrahamson, and Fingersmith inspired Park Chan-wook's film, The Handmaiden. Sarah Waters has been named Author of the Year five times: by the British Book Awards, The Booksellers' Association, Waterstone's Booksellers, Glamour Magazine Awards and the Stonewall Awards. In 2019 she was awarded an OBE for services to literature.
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