The Paying Guest

A respectable house takes a lodger because it must. Gissing's Paying Guest is money in the parlour, a writer's charm, and a woman whose chances are smaller than her mind. Victorian love under the meter: class, duty, the bill on the hall table. Louise as the guest who is not quite family. Respectability stretched to the landing. Gissing hears every creak of a house that needs the money and resents the need. Louise at the piano, the household counting every creak. Read in English, unabridged.