The paying guests, by Sarah Waters

Short-listed for the Booker Prize, this modern Gothic novel is set in post-World War I London.  Mrs. Wray and her daughter Frances have fallen from the upper middle class upon the death of Mr. Wray.  They have discovered to their dismay that he invested unwisely and they have little to live on.  It’s 1922 and many others have not recovered from the devastation of the recent war – veterans are shell-shocked, disfigured, and often unemployed; women have lost their fiancés or are widowed.  The Wrays have not only dismissed all their servants – Frances now spends much of her time doing heavy housework – but have found in necessary to take in boarders, or “paying guests” as they genteelly call them, to make ends meet.   Frances is becoming resigned to spinsterhood after a stimulating life as a pacifist during the war years and a failed romance.   Mrs. Wray, living a bit in a fantasy world, querulously wonders why they can’t just have a housemaid.  The paying guests, Leonard and Lillian Barber, are young and gay, quite a contrast to the grim and quiet lives the Wrays are now living.  When Frances and Mrs. Barber develop an unlikely and increasingly intimate friendship, it sets in motion a series of events that will forever change the lives of a wide circle of people around them.  The novel is long, 566 pages, but compulsively readable.  Part social history, part mystery, part courtroom drama.  The author’s close observation of details and emotions make for a rich reading experience.     Recommended.  556 pp.