The Paying Guests gave me an eerie feeling
that Sarah Waters had surreptitiously been on my Tumblr and somehow found this
short story I had posted a few years ago about the affair between a
landlady and her lodger. One of them was even called Lilian! How weird is
that. So weird.But also kind of
flattering.To think that me and Sarah Waters have had such similar ideas for a
story. The main difference is that she set out to write a proper novel about
it; I just wrote it for the smut.
So, for most of the book, I enjoyed reading
about “my” idea written beautifully and with more complex ideas than just
having the two characters shagging each other. I loved the tension between
them, the courting, the romance, everything. I loved Frances more than Lilian,
but then I liked Lilian because she liked Frances. It was always in the back of
my mind the idea that Frances could have done better than Lilian, but until
around THE THING happens, I could have lived with it. I could have lived with
many things. I didn’t expect this story to go well. We’re talking adultery
here. There must be some sort of drama at some point. I was expecting scandal,
regret, hurt, jealousy, disillusionment, even the end of the romance. What I
wasn’t prepared for was for the novel to turn into a legal case. To have a good
third of the book deal with a trial was not what I was looking forward to. I
find court cases in movies, TV shows and books extremely boring. But as it turned out, Sarah Waters loves all
that shit and she was actually INSPIRED by murder cases in the ‘20s so much so
that she wrote a novel about it.
If only I had read the author’s notes beforehand. But, of course, who does
that.
So, as you might have noticed,I didn’t warn
you about spoilers because I think people should be aware of what they’re
getting into. There will be a trial for murder, and it will go on until the
rest of the book. There, now you know. If you are into that, you’ll love it - because it’s still Sarah Waters writing, it’s not
like she handed it over to John Grisham. If you don’t, well, tough shit. You
had more than half of the book to enjoy without dealing with courts and
witnesses and body of evidences and verdicts that take ages to arrive. And even
if you didn’t get into the romance completely (it did wear thin after a while,
to be honest. Because Lilian), you still have the writing. The writing is
gorgeous, as usual.
1 comment:
I read the author's notes AS I read the book if she puts the notes at the bottom of the page. That's how it should be. If the author thinks notes are necessary, then they're important enough to put at the bottom of the page.
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