How long does it take to read The Paying Guests?
The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters takes about 10 hours 28 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 10 hours 28 minutes
A week or two of reading
First published 2014. 571 pages, about 157,025 words.
21 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 17 hours 27 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 10 hours 28 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 6 hours 33 minutes |
The page count is the median across 7 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
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.
Subjects: Fiction, Hospitality, Widows, Guests, Boardinghouses, LGBTQ historical fiction
