readingwithhippos's review against another edition
5.0
I can't watch Breaking Bad. I've tried—I watched the first season and maybe a few episodes of the second, but I had to stop. It's not that I'm particularly squeamish about violence or language; like most people these days, I think I'm fairly desensitized to all that. I mean, I've seen SVU, you know?
What I can't handle about Breaking Bad is watching Walter White, a regular middle-aged white guy, an almost comically ordinary person, sink by inches into a life of horrifying crime. At first he's just trying to make a few extra bucks to support his family—we've all been there—but then, events take a turn and suddenly he's strangling a virtual stranger in a basement.
After that scene, I was done with the show. It wasn't the murder itself that bothered me, though it certainly wasn't pleasant viewing; it was how deeply I empathized with and related to Walt. He was a normal person, just like me. Until he wasn't. Watching a character with whom you relate go down a path of utter darkness, well, it starts to make you wonder things about yourself. Walt didn't set out to become a heinous criminal, but it happened. Witnessing his downward slide made me queasy, and queasy is one thing I'm decidedly not looking for in a television show.
Sarah Waters's latest book gave me a Walter White feeling in my gut. She too imagines characters that at the outset seem painfully ordinary. Frances and her elderly mother are cash-strapped following the first World War and the death of Frances's father, and decide to take on boarders (whom they genteelly refer to as “paying guests”) in order to make ends meet. Frances is already spinsterish in her mid-twenties, seeming resigned to a life of housekeeping for her mother.
But then the Barbers arrive, and hell very slowly breaks loose. I'll avoid spoilers here because the momentum of the novel depends on a few surprises, but I will say that things get far out of Frances's control. Young married couple Leonard and Lilian Barber are good lodgers, paying rent on time and trying not to disturb their landladies, but before long their lives are so shockingly tangled up with Frances's own it seems they'll never get free of each other. I'm not saying Frances finds herself dealing crystal meth, but her life does change dramatically, to the point that the Frances we know at book's end is hardly recognizable as the same one who was scrubbing floor tiles at the beginning.
Waters's prose is lovely, paced just right despite the book's length (around 550 pages). You'll want to read fast to keep unspooling the story, but the beauty of the writing demands deliberation. Frances and her renters are drawn with uncomfortably intimate clarity, and their tragedy, though deeply personal, feels epic in scope.
Like Breaking Bad, this is a story of regular people who suddenly aren't anymore. It's difficult and uncomfortable. But I absolutely loved reading it anyway.
More book recommendations by me at www.readingwithhippos.com
What I can't handle about Breaking Bad is watching Walter White, a regular middle-aged white guy, an almost comically ordinary person, sink by inches into a life of horrifying crime. At first he's just trying to make a few extra bucks to support his family—we've all been there—but then, events take a turn and suddenly he's strangling a virtual stranger in a basement.
After that scene, I was done with the show. It wasn't the murder itself that bothered me, though it certainly wasn't pleasant viewing; it was how deeply I empathized with and related to Walt. He was a normal person, just like me. Until he wasn't. Watching a character with whom you relate go down a path of utter darkness, well, it starts to make you wonder things about yourself. Walt didn't set out to become a heinous criminal, but it happened. Witnessing his downward slide made me queasy, and queasy is one thing I'm decidedly not looking for in a television show.
Sarah Waters's latest book gave me a Walter White feeling in my gut. She too imagines characters that at the outset seem painfully ordinary. Frances and her elderly mother are cash-strapped following the first World War and the death of Frances's father, and decide to take on boarders (whom they genteelly refer to as “paying guests”) in order to make ends meet. Frances is already spinsterish in her mid-twenties, seeming resigned to a life of housekeeping for her mother.
But then the Barbers arrive, and hell very slowly breaks loose. I'll avoid spoilers here because the momentum of the novel depends on a few surprises, but I will say that things get far out of Frances's control. Young married couple Leonard and Lilian Barber are good lodgers, paying rent on time and trying not to disturb their landladies, but before long their lives are so shockingly tangled up with Frances's own it seems they'll never get free of each other. I'm not saying Frances finds herself dealing crystal meth, but her life does change dramatically, to the point that the Frances we know at book's end is hardly recognizable as the same one who was scrubbing floor tiles at the beginning.
Waters's prose is lovely, paced just right despite the book's length (around 550 pages). You'll want to read fast to keep unspooling the story, but the beauty of the writing demands deliberation. Frances and her renters are drawn with uncomfortably intimate clarity, and their tragedy, though deeply personal, feels epic in scope.
Like Breaking Bad, this is a story of regular people who suddenly aren't anymore. It's difficult and uncomfortable. But I absolutely loved reading it anyway.
More book recommendations by me at www.readingwithhippos.com
mnemognose's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Diverse cast of characters? No
4.25
afox98's review against another edition
2.0
Giving up. I’m 35% of the way through and don’t love the characters, find it to be repetitive, and dread the rest of the book. Moving on.
rebbemcc's review against another edition
2.0
Skimmed here and there. Way too overwrought for my tastes. So much handwringing. Some nice dialogue. Honestly, I don't understand why this book was on so many "Best of 2014" lists.
mert64's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
4.0
gracieliza1's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.5
elliemcc11's review
4.0
Really enjoyed this novel, my first by Sarah Waters. I shall definitely read more of her novels.
Set in 1920s post-WW1 London, this is a tale of forbidden love (there are some not very graphic lesbian sex scenes which some readers might feel uncomfortable reading) and the extremes people go for the sake of love. Things take a nasty turn and the last third of the book is dedicated to court scenes, which I have to admit I was less enamoured with compared to the rest of the novel.
Overall it was well written and kept my attention throughout.
Set in 1920s post-WW1 London, this is a tale of forbidden love (there are some not very graphic lesbian sex scenes which some readers might feel uncomfortable reading) and the extremes people go for the sake of love. Things take a nasty turn and the last third of the book is dedicated to court scenes, which I have to admit I was less enamoured with compared to the rest of the novel.
Overall it was well written and kept my attention throughout.
keb3's review against another edition
dark
sad
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Not as good as some of the other Sarah Waters books I’ve read - probably 3 stars for plot and pace, but it gets another star for how lovely her writing is.
bookchew's review against another edition
3.0
4 stars for the first half of the novel (an engrossing new twist on the "domestic novel"), 3 stars for the second half (which devolves into a rather humdrum crime novel).
Sarah Waters is a master of making tiny, mundane moments feel palpable and sensual. Thus, the simple act of dusting a banister or rolling a cigarette is written in a way that is so pure and so absorbing, you feel, for the first half of the novel, as if you yourself are inhabiting the creaky, dusty, deteriorating house on Champion Hill. For the second half of the novel, however, this tedious attention to process moves outside of the Wray house, and into various institutions (the police station, court, taxis, etc.). Here, the gripping sensuality is lost to tedious inquests, court hearings, and a repetition of anxieties that ultimately amount to nothing.
I was at turns touched, surprised, and intrigued by this novel. However, I am left with a middling reaction; the novel is overlong by about 100 pages, and closes with a gratuitous ending that seems a bit too light-handed to adequately round off the morally complex themes that came before it. Still, this is quite unlike any novel I've read before, and was enough to convince me to add more Sarah Waters to my reading queue.
Sarah Waters is a master of making tiny, mundane moments feel palpable and sensual. Thus, the simple act of dusting a banister or rolling a cigarette is written in a way that is so pure and so absorbing, you feel, for the first half of the novel, as if you yourself are inhabiting the creaky, dusty, deteriorating house on Champion Hill. For the second half of the novel, however, this tedious attention to process moves outside of the Wray house, and into various institutions (the police station, court, taxis, etc.). Here, the gripping sensuality is lost to tedious inquests, court hearings, and a repetition of anxieties that ultimately amount to nothing.
I was at turns touched, surprised, and intrigued by this novel. However, I am left with a middling reaction; the novel is overlong by about 100 pages, and closes with a gratuitous ending that seems a bit too light-handed to adequately round off the morally complex themes that came before it. Still, this is quite unlike any novel I've read before, and was enough to convince me to add more Sarah Waters to my reading queue.