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Sto caricando le informazioni... The Paying Guests (originale 2014; edizione 2015)di Sarah Waters (Autore)
Informazioni sull'operaGli ospiti paganti di Sarah Waters (2014)
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Iscriviti per consentire a LibraryThing di scoprire se ti piacerà questo libro. Attualmente non vi sono conversazioni su questo libro. Despite being overly long and drawn out, it is a great story beautifully written. The sheer joy and excitement of an unexpected and forbidden love. A desire constantly questioned emotionally as real or simply a humiliating delusion. Is this fragile love worth the price of total ruin. Exquisite! ( ) In 1922, a middle class woman and her widowed mother are hard up following the money mismanagement of her deceased father and the death of her two brothers in WWI, so take in a married couple as lodgers. On the face of it, this book appears to be usual Waters' territory, dealing with the burgeoning love affair between the married woman and the daughter of the house. However, there is a massive twist half way through after they consummate their lingering attraction, which I must admit I'd got rather bored with, and the book We are introduced to the main characters, a mother and daughter Frances down on their heels, barely able to maintain the stately London house, forced to bring in lodgers, a married couple, Lilian and Leonard. Frances is 28 and calls herself a spinster. She’s had one lesbian affair with an off-beat artist, Christina, that ended when she was unable to fully and openly commit. Having lost her only siblings during the war, she took the conservative road of staying with her elderly mother rather than with Christina. The lodgers are a class or three below that of the owners, and reading about the difficulties of the blending of two very different couples has its inevitable difficulties. Lilian appears to be unhappy with her husband, but puts on a happy face to the outside world. For a while nothing much happens. The daughter, Frances and the lodger Lilian embark on a secret lesbian relationship. But other than that, life goes on.There’s a Downton Abbey vibe to the blended household, with the mother bemoaning the impossibility of affording servants, and Frances spending evenings playing boring card games with her mother’s ancient friends. One evening, instead of playing cards with her mother and her elderly friends Frances “condescends” à la Austen and plays Snakes and Ladders with the lower class paying guests. The husband makes leering jokes about snakes and it is after that, that Frances and Lilly become friends and eventually lovers. Halfway through the novel the genre, though not the writing style changes. There is a crime, a few Mister Plods, a mystery and to say more would spoil the novel. Overall it’s a good read. Sarah Waters is such a skilled writer and narrator Juliet Stevenson does a wonderful job on the different London accents. I enjoyed this book, looked forward to reading it in any spare minute, thought the characters were interesting and the prose lovely, and probably won't be able to tell you the plot in two months (time will tell!). One of THOSE books. I liked it but did not LOVE it. I wasn't sure what to expect from this book as the jacket description was very intentionally vague and was quite surprised on a couple of fronts. In many ways it was a quiet and introspective little period piece (that I expected) but in other ways it was absolutely not. The exploration of gender roles and relationships in this time period was quite fascinating. And the urgency of the final phase of the story and the uncertainty as to the outcome was completely unexpected. If I could I'd give it 3.5 stars.
"Some novels are so good, so gripping or shattering that they leave you uncertain whether you should have ever started them. You open “The Paying Guests” and immediately surrender to the smooth assuredness of Sarah Waters’s silken prose. Nothing jars. You relax. You turn more pages. You start turning them faster. Before long, you resemble Coleridge’s Wedding-Guest: You cannot choose but read. The book has you in thrall. You will follow Waters and her story anywhere. Yet when that story ends, you find yourself emotionally sucked dry, as much stunned as exhilarated by the power of art." The superbly talented Sarah Waters — three times shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize — leads her readers into hidden worlds, worlds few of us knew existed. And so it is with The Paying Guests. ..Amid this heart-crushing drama, uncaring London grinds on, a cacophony of “hooves, voices, hurrying steps, the clash and grinding of iron wheels” that threatens to destroy the hopes of summer: an utterly engrossing tale. Novel tackles big themes but lacks bite...Yet the love story’s progression – to say more would give too much away – is not entirely convincing by the end..Characterisation has a hint of familiarity, as if characters have been derived from Waters’ bank of past creations, and they lose some of their gleam for it, though the story stays emotionally-charged... The Paying Guests, Sarah Waters' superb, bewitching new novel, is set in 1922 London...My only quibble with The Paying Guests is its length; the last hundred pages or so chronicle a court trial and feel padded, the first time I've ever had that reaction to a Sarah Waters novel. Otherwise, this is a magnificent creation, a book that doubles as a time machine, flinging us back not only to postwar London, but also to our own lost love affairs, the kind that left us breathless — and far too besotted to notice that we had somehow misplaced our moral compass. This fascinating domestic scenario might have made for an absorbing short novel;... Its pastiche propriety and faux-Edwardian prose (people are forever "colouring" and "crimsoning" and "putting themselves tidy") become irritants; and the novel's descent into melodrama as a murder is committed – and the inspector called – turns this engaging literary endeavour into a tiresome soap opera....Waters's unusual gift for drama and for social satire is squandered on the production of middlebrow entertainment:.. it would be good to see Waters produce something corrective and sharp, in which her authoritative and incisive dramatic style was permitted to be sufficient satisfaction on its own. Premi e riconoscimentiMenzioniElenchi di rilievo
It is 1922, and London is tense. Ex-servicemen are disillusioned, the out-of-work and the hungry are demanding change. And in South London, in a genteel Camberwell villa, a large silent house now bereft of brothers, husband and even servants, life is about to be transformed, as impoverished widow Mrs Wray and her spinster daughter, Frances, are obliged to take in lodgers. Non sono state trovate descrizioni di biblioteche |
Già recensito in anteprima su LibraryThingIl libro di Sarah Waters The Paying Guests è stato disponibile in LibraryThing Early Reviewers. Discussioni correntiNessunoCopertine popolari
Google Books — Sto caricando le informazioni... GeneriSistema Decimale Melvil (DDC)823.914Literature English English fiction Modern Period 1901-1999 1945-1999Classificazione LCVotoMedia:
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