The Paying Guests (Sarah Waters)

Like the Energizer Bunny, Sarah Waters's The Paying Guests just keeps going and going and going. I usually enjoy this author's books a lot, and that was especially true of The Little Stranger and the mindboggling Fingersmith. Unfortunately, The Paying Guests is just not on the same level.

Frances and her mother are living in London in 1922 after the war. Financial difficulties cause them to have to take in two lodgers, Leonard and Lillian Barber. Frances soon finds herself deeply caught up in this couple's troubles, with tragic consequences she never saw coming.

The Paying Guests should work on paper. It has all the elements that make a story page-turning: beautiful writing (what Waters is known for), interesting characters, a love affair or two, a serious crime, and deception. However, if I'm going to commit to 564 pages, I need some sort of payoff at the end. I didn't feel any sense of satisfaction when I finished this one; what I felt was that the author left me hanging.

MY RATING - 2.5

Fingersmith (Sarah Waters)

It's been a long time since I read anything by Sarah Waters -- 2009 in fact when I reviewed The Little Stranger. I've been meaning to pick up her other novels, but there is always something new that comes up.  I was reading a magazine a few months ago, and a celebrity whose name escapes me now mentioned that the twist in Fingersmith left her gasping for air. I realized right then and there that I needed to take a break from my other selections and finally devour another Sarah Waters book.

It is absolutely impossible to do justice to Fingersmith's synopsis by trying to put it into words. It is often compared to Dickens's Oliver Twist, but with twist after twist (no pun intended) thrown in. Each of the separate parts is narrated by one of the two leads: Susan is the daughter of a hanged murderess living in a house filled with thieves (fingersmiths). She is talked into becoming the maid for Maud Lilly, a naive heiress who really has no idea how to be one. Susan is tasked by one of the thieves to take part in his trickery of Maud, but do not believe anything because nothing is as it seems.

This is the best I can do with a synopsis. Just read it -- no, devour it. Waters has a gift of making her readers hang on to her every word, then when the rug is eventually pulled out from under us, we have only ourselves to blame. This is a rare 5 rating for 1776books.

MY RATING - 5