- Fiction, Hospitality, Widows, Guests
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. For with the arrival of Lilian and Leonard Barber, a modern young couple of the ‘clerk class’, the routines of the house will be shaken up in unexpected ways. And as passions mount and frustration gathers, no one can foresee just how far-reaching, and how devastating, the disturbances will be. This is vintage Sarah Waters: beautifully described with excruciating tension, real tenderness, believable characters, and surprises. It is above all a wonderful, compelling story.
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Character
Classical in form, grave, earnest and intimate.
- classical in formformally daring
- gravecomic
- earnestironic
- intimateepic
- rawmeticulous
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About the book
- Author
- Sarah Waters
- First published
- 2014
- Pages
- 571
- Publisher
- Riverhead Books, Anagrama, Wheeler Publishing, A part of Gale, Cengage Learning
- Editions
- 7
- Language
- English
- ISBN
- 9780349004600
Where to read
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On Open Library, 8 have read it and 46 want to.
Sarah Ann Waters ((born 21 July 1966) is a Welsh novelist. She is best known for her novels set in Victorian society and featuring lesbian protagonists, such as *Tipping the Velvet and Fingersmith*. **Source**: [Sarah Waters](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Waters) on Wikipedia.
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