Waters is a master of the slow build, of the gradual assemblage of tiny random moments that result in a life-altering love. He's a bit of a lout, and she's something of a flirt, but in Frances' orderly, boring world, they function the way sunrise does in a gloomy room: Suddenly you're compelled to open wide the window - or in Frances' case, her heart. To cope, Frances and her mother decide to take in lodgers, the "paying guests" of the title: a nice young couple a notch or two below them on the social scale. Families like Frances' - once wealthy - now find the cupboard bare. World War I has recently ended, but not before consuming hundreds of thousands of British lives and leaving the nation economically devastated. The Paying Guests, Sarah Waters' superb, bewitching new novel, is set in 1922 London. But then Frances falls in love, and the carefully wrought edifice of her life collapses in a heap of passion and catastrophe. Normally she's an intelligent, reliable, resourceful young woman, a companion to her widowed mother, keeper of the large house on Champion Hill in which the two of them rattle about, now that the men of the family have died. How?įrances has it bad, and that's not good. Your purchase helps support NPR programming. Close overlay Buy Featured Book Title The Paying Guests Author Sarah Waters
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