Friday, November 17, 2017

Class & Gender: The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters




Sarah Waters novel, The Paying Guests, showcases this author’s distinct ability to take a momentary emotion, a fleeting feeling fed by a glance, a touch, a smell, and then shape her words into a multilayered and dense examination of our emotional lives.  

Waters has this touch, and more; she manages to create the world of 1922 England which we expect, but seldom to never does she rest on cliche or stereotype.  This novel is about gender and class in a typically English way, but Waters brings a fresh edge to these well-worn topics.

Perhaps the novel goes on for too long.  Toward the end, events grow belabored as the novel takes a sudden and dramatic turn.  This blemish is forgivable given the first three fourths of the book.

No comments:

Post a Comment