The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters
My rating: 5/5 cats
this is another stunner from sarah waters, who seems to be back to her full strength after the divisive The Little Stranger. this book, to me, was nearly as good as the unbeatable Fingersmith.
this is her first novel set just post-WWI, and it is such a perfect setting for her to be writing in, considering her typical themes of gender and class. WWI was an unprecedented situation for england, with far-reaching and unforeseen consequences affecting those left behind. while the boys were off fighting, the women were left behind to pick up the slack, and were granted more employment and social opportunities than they had previously enjoyed. when the men came back, those who managed to survive the fighting, they were frequently unable to find work, and were resentful, suspicious, and frequently even violent towards women who had become almost a different species in their absence. these men didn’t fit into the postwar world, they were diminished; their prospects had vanished. the end of the fighting and the return of the men affected the women, too, who had flourished in the relaxation of public scrutiny, in the different demands of a world without men, especially those women who were not looking for a husband to take care of them.
which brings us to frances. frances is adjusting to the postwar climate as best as she is able. she is unmarried, her father and brothers have died, and she and her mother’s social position has altered drastically. her father’s mismanagement of their finances has forced them to go without servants, leaving the household chores to frances herself. the possibilities the war offered to women like frances have evaporated, and she is as resentful as the returned soldiers, her prospects just as dried-up, her life reduced to scrubbing the floor on her hands and knees day after day. in order to bring in some money, she and her mother suffer the further humiliation of taking on boarders, or as they are more elegantly-termed, “paying guests,” renting out a portion of their overlarge house to a lower-class young couple, lilian and leonard barber.
the arrival of the barbers is jarring to frances. they are young, modern, and unfettered by the genteel manners to which she is accustomed, even though she herself has had a flirtation with impropriety during the war which landed her both in jail and into the arms of another woman. but now she is on her own, trying desperately to keep up appearances for the sake of her pride and the comfort of her mother, and the barbers are a necessary evil to be endured.
what follows is a difficult period of adjustment, where the boundaries between private and public spaces blur, the most tense and awkward game of snakes & ladders ever is played, the forced intimacy of the lodgers breaks down several different types of barriers, and then something awful, horrible, terrible occurs – one of the most intensely graphic scenes i have ever read which then paves the way for a series of increasingly-precarious situations compromising all of the characters.
it’s a good thing frances is so good at keeping secrets.
sarah waters is just so, so good. she has written a deeply romantic, morally complicated book that is a triumph both as historical fiction and as a character-rich psychological suspense thriller. it lacks the mind-bending loyalty-shifts that made Fingersmith such an outstandingly original work, but this stands firmly on its own, and is a definite must-read.
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GIMMIE GIMMIE GIMMIE GIMMIE
three months later:
I HAVE IT I HAVE IT I HAVE IT
ALL MY DREAMS ARE COMING TRUE!
