The Paying Guests Audiobook

Quotes

• “[A] pulse-pounder of a novel that feels…personal and raw…even while it delivers the genre goods…Waters remains a master of her genre, the historical novel rewritten as a dissection of the individual conscience…undeniably fascinating.”

  — Chicago Tribune

• “Begin The Paying Guests and you’ll immediately surrender to the smooth assuredness of Sarah Waters’s silken prose…A novel that initially seems as if it might have been written by E. M. Forster darkens into something more akin to the works of Dostoevsky or Patricia Highsmith. In The Paying Guests, Waters has produced a beautifully delineated love story and a darkly suspenseful psychological tale.”

  — Washington Post

• “Waters excels at presenting the raw interiority of a quietly heroic woman, slightly too ahead of her time…a poignant love story which symbolically sees, in the death of the old order, the death of the old-fashioned husband and maybe the birth of an era of love without secrets.”

  — Independent (London)

• “One of the greatest modern novelists… As in every Waters novel you will be hooked within a page…The Paying Guests reminds us of every great novel we’ve gasped or winced at, or loudly urged the protagonists through, and it does not relent…Read it, Flaubert, Zola, and weep.”

  — Financial Times (UK)

• “Stevenson, a familiar face to British TV and film audiences, is the go-to narrator for nineteenth-century novels told from a female perspective, which makes her very well suited to Waters’ richly plotted fiction…Social class is always a key theme in Waters’ fiction, and Stevenson uses the various characters’ accents to delineate all its subtle permutations.”

  — Salon

• “Morally complex, atmospheric, romantic, and psychologically deep, The Paying Guests is an astonishing achievement…a beautiful and brilliant work by a consummate storyteller.”

  — Sunday Express (London)

• “With two brothers killed in WWI and a debt-ridden father who followed them to the grave soon afterward, twenty-seven-year-old spinster Frances Wray knows that she and her mother must take in lodgers (euphemistically described as ‘paying guests’) to maintain their large house in a genteel section of London…Waters’s restrained, beautiful depiction of lesbian love furnishes the story with emotional depth, as does the suspense that develops during the tautly written murder investigation and ensuing trial.”

  — Publishers Weekly (starred review)

• “An exquisitely tuned exploration of class in post-Edwardian Britain—with really hot sex…Waters keeps getting better, if that’s even possible after the sheer perfection of her earlier novels.”

  — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

• “Frances Wray is a woman of limited opportunities stuck in genteel poverty in an England that has not quite recovered from World War I. When she and her mother begin renting out half of their house to the Barbers, the change is disruptive…Waters keeps you guessing until the very end.”

  — Library Journal

• “In a remarkable combination, Juliet Stevenson enlivens Sarah Waters’ rich, intimate character study set in 1920s London…Using a variety of British accents, Stevenson makes class and regional distinctions clear, bringing depth to the many characters and what divides them…Flawless are the passages of confrontation between characters, as Stevenson never hesitates to modulate her tone, adjust her pace, or employ a deliberate pause to bring the listener in closer. An authentic, stirring performance. Winner of the AudioFile Earphones Award.”

  — AudioFile

• “Waters’ striking portrayal of Edwardian Britain and its class conflicts adds a rich layer to this emotionally fraught and deeply affecting story…Fans of Sarah Waters’ previous novels know that she is a gifted storyteller with a way of bringing historical eras to life. She is sensitive to the telling details of character and class…With the swiftly shifting mores of postwar British society as a backdrop, Waters once again provides a singular novel of psychological tension, emotional depth and historical detail.”

  — BookPage

• “Will keep you turning the page to see just how tense things can get.”

  — LibraryReads