Her previous book, “The Little Stranger,” was the first to feature a male protagonist, in a dazzling, Jamesian ghost story set in a decaying country house in the years after WWII, when England’s class structure was being demolished along with the vast estates its upper caste could no longer afford to maintain. All delved into lesbian relationships and female friendships, with complex yet sympathetic characters as memorable as any in recent fiction. Her novels “Tipping the Velvet,” “Affinity” and “Fingersmith” featured Victorian London as backdrop “The Night Watch” leaped forward to England during the Blitz of World War II. Her next will probably be even better.Sarah Waters seems to revel in 19th and 20th century British history as a dolphin does in water: Her literary depictions of domestic life, manners, architecture, class structure, the weight of war and the volatility of love all appear as effortless as they are beautifully executed. I have tried and failed to find a single negative thing to say about it. But The Paying Guests is the apotheosis of her talent at least for now. At her greatest, Waters transcends genre: the delusions in Affinity (1999), the vulnerability in Fingersmith (2002), the undercurrents of social injustice and the unexplained that underlie all her work, take her, in my view, well beyond the capabilities of her more seriously regarded Booker-winning peers. It is above all a wonderful, compelling story. This is vintage Sarah Waters: beautifully described with excruciating tension, real tenderness, believable characters, and surprises. And as passions mount and frustration gathers, no one can foresee just how far-reaching, and how devastating, the disturbances will be. And in South London, in a genteel Camberwell villa, a large silent house now bereft of brothers, husband and even servants, life is about to be transformed, as impoverished widow Mrs Wray and her spinster daughter, Frances, are obliged to take in lodgers.įor with the arrival of Lilian and Leonard Barber, a modern young couple of the ‘clerk class’, the routines of the house will be shaken up in unexpected ways. Ex-servicemen are disillusioned, the out-of-work and the hungry are demanding change. This novel from the internationally bestselling author of The Little Stranger, is a brilliant ‘page-turning melodrama and a fascinating portrait of London of the verge of great change’ ( Guardian)
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