Shortlisted for the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction 2015.
London 1922. Frances and her mother lost all their male relatives in the war and are left struggling with a big house in Camberwell. They take in lodgers, a young married couple. The author is well known for her tales of gay relationships so it is no surprise when Frances and the young lodger’s wife, Lily, have an affair. But it is a surprise to them. Their passion escalates resulting in a tragedy. When an innocent boy is charged with murder the girls have hard decisions to face. This is a fascinating tale of class, sex and the consequences of a passionate affair. It is tense with an unexpected ending, certainly a page-turner with the backdrop of a dreary London so vividly described; Sarah Waters at her best.
| Primary Genre | Modern and Contemporary Fiction |
| Other Genres: | |
| Recommendations: |
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Closing date: 04/07/2026
'There came the splash of water and the rub of heels as Mrs Barber stepped into the tub. After that there was a silence, broken only by the occasional echoey plink of drips from the tap...'Frances had been picturing her lodgers in purely mercenary terms - as something like two great waddling shillings. But this, she thought, was what it really meant to have paying guests: this odd, unintimate proximity, this rather peeled-back moment, where the only thing between herself and a naked Mrs Barber was a few feet of kitchen and a thin scullery door. An image sprang into her head: that round flesh, crimsoning in the heat.' It is 1922, and London is tense. Ex-servicemen are disillusioned, the out-of-work and the hungry are demanding change. 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. For 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. And as passions mount and frustration gathers, no one can foresee just how far-reaching, and how devastating, the disturbances will be.
The Paying Guests features in the following genres: Modern and Contemporary Fiction, Historical Fiction, eBooks of the Month, General Fiction, Fiction, Recommendations
The Paying Guests is available in Paperback
The Paying Guests was written by Sarah Waters and published by Virago Press Ltd an imprint of Little, Brown Book Group
The Paying Guests has 599 pages
£9.89
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