Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I have been a long-time fan of the author--since Fingersmith, in fact. I have liked some of her books better than others, with Fingersmith remaining my favorite. So The Paying Guests comes as a deep disappointment. It is overwrought and lugubrious, with central characters it is very hard to care about. Ironically, I found the secondary characters more alive, more viable than Frances and Lilian, the primaries. Leonard, the husband, and Lilian's family, all breathe deeply, bubbling with energy, and step off the pages. But Frances and Lilian are a tiresome duo and 560 pages of their few ups and many, many downs make for difficult reading. The Paying Guests are at Frances's home because there is a great need for the income they bring to her and her widowed mother. But aside from an early mention of what that cash represents, and given that the money is so badly needed, it seems a most serious omission to go close to 500 pages before it is mentioned again. Frances's endless internal anguishing becomes hard to take. This is a woman who lacks very little degree of lightness or humor. She just can't get outside of her own head. And Lilian is something of a cipher. The view of her character seems to change depending on Frances's whims and moods. There are moments when things jolt to life, most notably the confrontation scene between Lilian, her husband Len, and Frances. There is great tension in this encounter but it is soon overwhelmed by the massive weight of pages and pages of interior description. Having looked at the other reviews, I'm kind of amazed to see this book referred to as a "thriller," and as possessed of the makings of a Masterpiece Mystery. We can't have read the same 560-odd pages. This novel would have been better served by more stringent editing, cutting away some of the endless tours through Frances's mental maundering so that the narrative drive was stronger and sharper. As it stands, this book is slow-going--truly a slog to get to the end.