“One of the year’s most suspenseful novels . . . a love affair, a shocking murder, and a flawless ending.”
—Entertainment Weekly (A)
“Brings to mind the dark and ominous atmosphere of Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca. . . . Waters’s skilful mastery of detail and atmosphere brings the suspenseful tale to life.”
—Winnipeg Free Press
“Perhaps Waters’s most impressive accomplishment is the authentic feel she achieves, . . . the story appears not merely to be about the novel’s time but to have been written by someone living in that time.” New York Times Book Review
“Sarah Waters is, quite simply, a marvellous writer. . . . [The Paying Guests] is beautifully imagined. . . . It speaks to history, to identity, and to the basic human desire to be seen not for what you appear to be, but for who you truly are. It is also a story of triumphant love . . .”
—Alison Pick, in the Globe and Mail
“Marvellous – warm and hot and tender and terrible. . . . Because the plot is so absorbing, and the turns so delicious, it only seeps in slowly how much attention each of [the characters] is paying to their desire and how these wants, as is their wont, reveal everything.”
—National Post
“Waters is so confident – and, line by line, her writing so beautiful, precise and polished – that she sweeps all before her. . . . [I was] helplessly pulled along by the magnetic storytelling. Twice in the last few pages I shouted aloud – though whether in joy or horror I will not tell you. Sarah Waters skilfully keeps you guessing to the end.”
—Tracy Chevalier, in The Guardian
“A triumph: spellbinding, profound and almost problematically addictive. . . . Morally complex, atmospheric, romantic and psychologically deep, The Paying Guests is an astonishing achievement. . . . A beautiful and brilliant work by a consummate storyteller. Sarah Waters is, quite simply, one of our greatest writers.”
—Daily Express (UK)
“Whether it’s Mrs Dalloway’s lost love or Thérèse Raquin’s burgeoning horror, 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. . . . The Paying Guests is the apotheosis of [Waters’] talent; at least for now. I have tried and failed to find a single negative thing to say about it. Her next will probably be even better. Until then, read it, Flaubert, Zola, and weep.”
—Charlotte Mendelson in Financial Times
“Waters’s page-turning prose conceals great subtlety. Acutely sensitive to social nuance, she keeps us constantly alert to the pain and passion churning under the “false, bright” surface of gentility. From a novelist who has been shortlisted for the Booker three times, this is a winner.”
—Intelligent Life magazine (The Economist)
“A masterpiece of social unease. . . . The temptation to finish the 500-odd pages of Waters’s novel at a sitting is powerful. . . . A virtuoso feat of storytelling.”
—Evening Standard (UK)
“Always superb at suspense, Waters draws you into a narrative that, while remaining agonisingly credible, is a master-feat of twists and shifts. . . . As in all her novels, ghosts of past fiction thicken the atmosphere, too. Fleeting references to Dickens recur [and] a nod towards Little Dorrit also seems perceptible in the book’s quiet ending amid the bustle and clamour of London. Unillusioned but tentatively hopeful, it is a beautifully gauged conclusion to a novel of ambitious reach and triumphant accomplishment.”
—Sunday Times (UK)
“Waters’s 20-20 vision perceives the interior world of her characters with rare acuity in a prose style so smooth it pours down the page in a book to be prized.”
—Scotland on Sunday (UK)
