RaveThe Financial TimesEven those of us who know Watersland well, its slyness and darkness, its palpable seams, may at first mistake this sixth novel, The Paying Guests, for something quieter, smaller, more easily reviewed. There may be hints – the glint of sex, the creak of danger – but so absorbing is her storytelling, so vivid her characters, that one can temporarily forget that this is not an exhumed relic, or a modern pastiche, where passion is unvoiced and the worst that can happen is loneliness and despair. That is, until one suddenly emerges, blinking, remembering into whose hands you have fallen – those of one of the greatest modern novelists, whose work is full of deceit and stomach-lurching slips into chaos, lives changed utterly by weakness or delay … The nested coincidences like Russian dolls, the misunderstandings on which our lives can tilt, the infinitely regrettable moments: Waters makes us ache for every one.
