Monday, 2 November 2015

Read in 2015 - 30: The Paying Guests

Once before, I have read a book by Sarah Waters, The Little Stranger. You can read my review from 2011 here, if you like.


"The Paying Guests" is different - set in a different period and different place, with different characters and an overall different plot - and yet there are parallels I could not help but notice:
Just as in The Little Stranger (TLS), once again there are a family and a house at the heart of the story, both exposed to drastic changes which eventually lead to developments out of their control. 

In TLS, the family is incomplete in that the mother is widowed, and her two grown-up children live at the family home with her, both single in spite of being old enough to have families of their own. In The Paying Guests (TPG), the family is even more incomplete, practically mutilated through the death of two sons during the war, and the mother also a widow, leaving just her and her grown-up daughter behind.

TLS is set after WWII, when the era of many wealthy families in big houses each dominating their part of the country has well and truly ended, and they are forced to adapt to the change in circumstances and society.
TPG is set after WWI, which is often overlooked for having brought about changes just as dramatic as the second World War. A new "clerk class" has been established, men, husbands, brothers and sons have died or returned from the war as invalids, money has been lost and old life styles have to be abandoned nearly as much as three decades later.

This is what happens to widowed Mrs. Wray and her daughter Frances: They still live in their once comfortable house, but there is no money left to pay for even a cleaning help, and so Frances does all the house work - and actually enjoys it, although her mother, clinging to the old ways, is mortified by the thought that her still relatively wealthy neigbhours will see Frances handling the dustbin or putting up the washing.

Of course, neither of the ladies has ever held a job, or learned anything by which they could earn any money. And so there is only one solution to save them from absolute poverty and having to give up the house: To take in lodgers.
But even that is too much for the sensitive mother - she insists on calling them Paying Guests.

When Lilian and Leonard Barber, a young couple of the "clerk class", take the rooms made ready for them, they provide some financial relief to Frances and her mother. But they also mean big changes in their lives. How big and irrevocable those changes are going to be is something neither of the characters can foresee. But one thing is for sure: After that first summer with their Paying Guests, nothing will ever be the same again for Mrs. Wray and her daughter.

I enjoyed reading this book a lot, although I never really warmed to Lilian. But everything is told so well, described so vividly, that the book's lengthiness (which is, I suspect, all part and parcel of the story) is forgiven. Sarah Waters' style of writing is one I very much like. Let me give you an example:
She loved these walks through London. She seemed, as she made them, to become porous, to soak in detail after detail, or else, like a battery, to become charged. [...] She was at her truest, it seemed to her, in these [...] moments when, paradoxically, she was also at her most anonymous. She never felt [it] when she walked with someone at her side. She never felt the excitement that she felt now, seeing the fall of the shadow of a railing across a set of worn steps.
Leave out "through London" at the beginning of the paragraph, and replace the last bit about the shadow of a railing with anything that one may see during a walk, and you have a rather good description of why I like my lone walks so much and need them in order to keep sane and a decent human being the rest of the time when I am not alone.        

The author talks about "The Paying Guests" in a 4-minute video clip here on youtube. 

26 comments:

  1. I've never read anything by this author, nor heard of her I think. I "get" that quote about walking (alone), though! :)

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    1. Came back to check that quote... Afterthought: Did one really talk (much) of charging batteries already back in those days, just after WWI??

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    2. Apparntly they did! Sarah Waters says in the short interview I have linked to that she enjoys the research part of her historical novels (which she considers this book to be) a lot, and that she reads many books from the time as much as books about the time, and also diaries, letters etc. written in the era to get the idiom right. I can't imagine she would have overlooked that bit. Electricity, cars and machines were firmly established parts of everyday life in 1920's London.

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    3. I find that Sarah Waters has been translated into Swedish as well and the Talking Book Library (from which I'm allowed to download) even has this title in English. I might give it a try :) Just now I have two or even three other books going though so I'll put it on my waiting list for now...

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    4. When I was a small child the batteries (known as accumulators) for my grandparents' wireless were taken to a shop to be charged every so often.

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    5. Thank you for this small but not unimportant detail.

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    6. I say thanks for that piece of info as well, as it was I who started wondering ;) In my childhood I think the only kind of batteries I ever heard of being charged were those in cars.

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  2. I've seen notice of this book but haven't read about it till now. Such a well-written review, and I am intrigued. I love what you wrote about your walks.

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  3. I've just read this book and generally I agree with you about it. It is wonderfully well researched but I too couldn't really like LIlian. In fact, she seemed oddly self centred and immature to me, and I kept expecting her to let Frances down in some way. I have also read The Little Stranger - what I found most interesting about that was also the marvellous sense of period and the research. I read some of the source books she mentioned in fact, and found them very interesting too!

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    1. Immature! That certainly fits Lilian, I just couldn't think of the word when talking about her. To me, she seems very much like a person who rather let things happen, hoping for them to sort themselves out, than to make them happen. Why I do understand some people are by the nature of their character more passive than others, I don't always have much patience for them.

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  4. I didn't like any of the characters in the book, but found the story so well written I could hardly put it down. I read The Little Stranger too and liked it as well.

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    1. Same here! I sometimes had to stop myself from starting on the next chapter because it was getting really late and I knew I wanted to get up not feeling like a zombie the next morning :-)

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    2. There's something about Waters' writing that keeps me turning pages long after I should have closed the book and gone to sleep, too!

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  5. A great review indeed, looks like a fine book to add to the reading list. Thanks for sharing.

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  6. I thought I would need to buy a copy of this because it sounds very interesting, but my library does have a copy which I have now requested. A very good review, Meike.

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    1. Thank you, Kristi! Good idea to get it from the library. It will be interesting to know what you think of it.

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  7. I really loved The Paying Guests, which I read first, followed immediately by The Little Stranger. The only problem I had with TPG was that for me, the ending fell a little flat. I was left feeling a tiny bit let down. But TLS had an ending that I consider very nearly perfect so it's my favorite of the two. I just discovered Sarah Waters a couple of months ago and I should probably decide on which book of hers will be #3 for me.

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    1. In my personal ranking, TLS comes before TPG, too. Not because of either book's ending, but because I just didn't like Lilian very much, and the whole story of TPG did not "speak" to me in the same way as TLS did.
      Which other Sarah Waters books have you read? Do you post reviews on your blog?

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    2. I reviewed TLS on my blog. I haven't read anything else by Sarah Waters yet.

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    3. Thank you for letting me know, Jennifer! I have just been to your blog to read your review of TLS. I hope your friend finished it and you were able to compare notes :-)

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  8. The only one of SW’s books I’ve read is ‘Fingersmith’, or should I say: partly read. I disliked it so much, got so bored with its endless length, that I put it down. It’s a pastiche on the Victorian novel, maybe that’s why I didn’t stick with it. I prefer the real thing to pastiche.

    I wonder, should I try a more recent novel by her? She is very well regarded in the UK and often short-listed for prizes.

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    1. I've not read "Fingersmith", but I do agree that Sarah Waters has a tendency to lengthiness. In some books, like TPG, I imagine it is deliberate, because the main character's life seems such an endless row of household chores, small rituals like always taking a watery cup of cocoa with her elderly mother at the same time before going to bed, and not really leading anywhere.
      In "TLS", I didn't feel as if it was lengthy, but enjoyed the descriptions of places and people.

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  9. Wonderful review, you should be a writer yourself, you're great at writing!

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    1. Now you've got me blushing, Francesca - mille grazie!! Well, I am a writer of sorts, am I not? This blog is the perfect literary format for me :-)
      (There are a few short stories I have written and published here on my blog. If you are interested, simply click the label "Short Stories" at the top of the page.)

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