The Paying Guests - Sarah Waters

The Paying Guests

By: Sarah Waters

Paperback | 9 June 2015 | Edition Number 1

At a Glance

Paperback


$33.75

or 4 interest-free payments of $8.44 with

 or 

Aims to ship in 15 to 25 business days

When will this arrive by?
Enter delivery postcode to estimate

SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE

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)

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.

This is vintage Sarah Waters: beautifully described with excruciating tension, real tenderness, believable characters, and surprises. It is above all a wonderful, compelling story.

'You will be hooked within a page . . . 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. But The Paying Guests is the apotheosis of her talent; at least for now. I have tried and failed to find a single negative thing to say about it. Her next will probably be even better. Until then, read it, Flaubert, Zola, and weep' -Charlotte Mendelson, Financial Times
Industry Reviews
A page-turning melodrama and a fascinating portrait of London on the verge of great change - Guardian

You will be hooked within a page . . . 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. But The Paying Guests is the apotheosis of her talent; at least for now. I have tried and failed to find a single negative thing to say about it. Her next will probably be even better. Until then, read it, Flaubert, Zola, and weep - Financial Times

A masterpiece of social unease . . . It isn't so much the plot that makes you read on - the novel's armature is a comparatively uncomplicated suspense narrative but barnacled to it is an astonishing accretion of detail . . . A virtuoso feet of storytelling - Evening Standard

Booker Prize Winners

Prophet Song : Winner of the Booker Prize 2023 - Paul Lynch
Life Of Pi : CANONS - Yann Martel

$24.99

The Goldfinch : Winner of Pulitzer Prize For Fiction 2014 - Donna Tartt
Schindler's Ark : Winner of the 1982 Man Booker Prize - Thomas Keneally
Wolf Hall : Winner of the Man Booker Prize 2009 - Hilary Mantel
The Promise : WINNER OF THE BOOKER PRIZE 2021 - Damon Galgut
Girl, Woman, Other : WINNER OF THE BOOKER PRIZE 2019 - Bernardine Evaristo
Oscar and Lucinda - Peter Carey

RRP $22.99

$21.90

Possession : Vintage Classic : Winner of the 1990 Man Booker Prize - A S Byatt
True History of the Kelly Gang - Peter Carey

RRP $22.99

$21.90

Prophet Song : Winner the Booker Prize 2023 - Paul Lynch
The Sellout : WINNER OF THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2016 - Paul Beatty
Amsterdam : Winner of the 1998 Man Booker Prize - Ian McEwan
The Gathering : Winner of the 2007 Man Booker Prize - Anne Enright
Saville - David Storey

Paperback

$38.75