The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters

Sarah Waters is a well known writer, perhaps particularly so after the dramatisations of her novels 'Fingersmith' and 'Tipping the Velvet'. This is her sixth novel published in 2014 which sympathetically describes the growing relationship between Frances and Lillian , two women thrown together in an ordinary household in 1922 post-war England. Frances and her mother have struggled to maintain the appearance of genteel middle class after the death of her two brothers in WWI and then her father who has left them in a financial mess. To make ends meet they decided to let some of the upstairs rooms to a young couple Leonard and Lillian Barber. The novel begins as the Barbers arrive and move in with their belongings, and the lives of Frances and her mother have to be reshaped to accommodate the guests. Their daily lives are described in detail, the grinding tasks that are undertaken by Frances after they can no longer afford a maid and the inconvenience of having a privy out in the back yard.
Gradually the reader learns of a previous relationship that Frances had with a young woman, Christina, which did not work out. As time goes on the relationship between Frances and Lillian becomes more than a friendship and their lives are transformed. The story takes an inevitable turn whilst the themes of courage and boldness, hypocrisy and the enclosed nature of marriage at that time are explored. The novel then moves onto a different level as the relationships and feelings break out. The quality of writing and description are very good if the plot is, ultimately, a little unlikely.