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The Paying Guests

A Novel

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The Paying Guests

Written by: Sarah Waters
Narrated by: Juliet Stevenson
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About this listen

A truly extraordinary, masterful novel of brilliant storytelling, sensuality, and psychological suspense set in post-WWI London, from the internationally best-selling author of The Little Stranger. Three-time Booker Prize finalist Sarah Waters is at the height of her powers.

A psychological and dramatic tour de force from beloved international best-seller Sarah Waters. The year is 1922, and London is tense. Ex-servicemen are disillusioned, the out-of-work and the hungry are demanding change. In South London, in a large silent house now bereft of brothers, husband, and even servants, life is about to be transformed, as Mrs Wray and her daughter Frances are obliged to take in lodgers.

With the arrival of Lilian and Leonard Barber, the routines of the house and the lives of its inhabitants will be shaken up in unexpected ways. And as passions mount and frustration gathers, no one can foresee just how far, and how devastatingly, the disturbances will reach.

Waters proves once again that her eye for the telling details of class and character that draw people together as well as tear them apart is second to none in this masterpiece of psychological tension and emotional depth.

©2014 Sarah Waters (P)2021 McClelland & Stewart Historical Fiction Literary Fiction Literature & Fiction Fiction England
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What the critics say

"Marvellous - warm and hot and tender and terrible." (National Post)

"Waters is so confident - and, line by line, her writing so beautiful, precise and polished - that she sweeps all before her.... [I was] helplessly pulled along by the magnetic storytelling. Twice in the last few pages I shouted aloud - though whether in joy or horror I will not tell you. Sarah Waters skilfully keeps you guessing to the end." (The Guardian)

"One of the year's most suspenseful novels...a love affair, a shocking murder, and a flawless ending." (Entertainment Weekly)

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Not what I expected

Selected this mainly because of the narrator. The plot based around a love affair between two women after the First World War was unexpected and did not interest me. I only completed it because of the brilliant narration.

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