Paying Guests Paperback – July 29, 2015

I'm a big E.F. Benson fan. I love the Mapp and Lucia series and I have it in book, video and audio form. I was very excited to find this book. It sounded like a chip off the old block. I enjoyed this story, but I have to say it did not compare to Mapp and Lucia. It's got all the ingredients but it lacks a lot of the easy charm and humor of that series.This is an enjoyable book and a probable "must" for fans of the author like me, but don't expect quite the same fun as the Mapp and Lucia series.

Great product. Been searching for this a long time. Vey fast receipt.

This slight book is typical of the author, but not as good as the Mapp & Lucia books. It takes place in an English boarding house located at a spa, with the usual collection of 'types': the retired colonel who spent his time in Indian; the water coloring spinster; the piano playing, sarcastic feminist; the brow-beaten daughter and her over-bearing, hypochondriac father; the local, self-centered 'Lady of the Manor'; and the widowed boarding house owner and her annoying sister, amongst others. It is funny, humane and deals with life's minor trails and tribulations. I enjoyed it, it's a quick read, it's funny and sarcastic, but it's not one of his more memorable efforts.

It is a great treat for any E F Benson enthusiast to come across another of his social comedies.The novel is a humorous portrait of the 'gentry' sojourning at a guest house in an English health spa. The novel does not have the finesse and polish of Benson's Mapp and Lucia novels, but is a delightful find for all E. F. Benson fans.

I like his sense of humor, but Lucia books are much, much better.

It's E.F. Benson. If that doesn't say READ THIS BOOK, I don't know what does.

Benson had a sharp eye for human foibles, especially self-deception, but he was never quite merciless. Born into one of the most talented (and strangest) families in England, he specialized in his own upper-middle class, usually leaving the aristocracy as the object of their social aspirations and the lower classes as background. This novel is set among a slightly less prosperous set, the solid middle class (as they were considered then) who don't need to work but still do need to keep an eye on their finances. However, they have the same pretensions, absurdities, and failings of their financial betters and Benson is at his best here.Some of the characters are types familiar from his other works, a devout Christian Scientist who tries to convince herself she is not experiencing any pain; a pompous retired military man; an over-bearing father who browbeats and emotionally abuses his seemingly submissive daughter; and two women who in today's contemporary and more forthright works would be immediately be recognized as lesbians. They are all staying at a guesthouse near a spa that treats gout and arthritis. Their personality clashes and scheming form the book, which starts primarily as a series of character sketches but then develops more of a plot as the two lonely young women become friends.Benson deftly skewers them all but with a certain affection; the only character who does not receive any sympathy is the domineering father.Highly recommended for those who enjoy comedies of manner, gentle satire, or what might happen if Ambrose Bierce, Dorothy Parker, and PG Wodehouse managed to travel in time and have a child.

Benson, the son of an Archbishop of Canterbury (who built the Cathedral in Truro, Cornwall), and the brother of some serious clerics, is unlike his brothers, a hoot. Everybody knows this from the Lucia series, but for anyone who's ever stayed at a B&B or rooming house, this may be funnier. Benson wrote almost a hundred books, including three or four biographies and memoirs; one tells of Queen Victoria's visit to their home. EFB will never be "taught" in colleges, and that raises questions about the whole enterprise of literature classes. He's too funny to be included, and he writes with too much ease. But surely Chaucer was funny, and wrote with ease. This delightful book we found during our three--and their twenty-seven-- days of fog on Deer Island, N.B., while paying guests. Those familiar with the Tilling (Rye, East Sussex) of Benson's Mapp and Lucia will not be surprised at the array of characters here: the butterfly-fingered pianist-painter Miss Howard with her "little place in Kent" that entices the bachelor exercise-fanatic Colonel Chase to propose while the virtuosa is entertaining a more welcome--and more modern--proposal from another quarter. For others from the Boston area, Mrs. Bliss, a mind healer, is a wonderful creation; and, more profound is the dutiful Florence, daughter and nurse to her unappreciative, valetudinarian father, Mr. Kemp. Oh, we read it all aloud, savoring, making it last over a month. This novel is a welcome, ironic antidote to all the pharmaceutical hype on TV. It's about "paying guests" who are there for the Cure; and by all that's sacred in Tilling, this book IS the cure.

Originally published in 1929, this tale of events at a well-run boarding house in a fictional spa town has recognisable English types: the ex-Indian army Colonel; the hypochondriac father with the much put upon daughter; the piano-playing, water-colourist spinster who acts girlishly and over-eggs the truth of her “little Tunbridge Wells place”; a lady who is only taking the cure to oblige her husband because there is really no suffering when one is attuned to “Mind”. Most readers don’t rate it quite as highly as his Mapp and Lucia books but the gentle skewering of pretensions is the same and there are some standout comic lines. Books like these have anthropological interest: it’s interesting to reflect on the manners and mores of the time and compare them with our own. Still hugely enjoyable.

E.F. Benson describes a typical English establishment with an amusing bunch of guests. There is much humour in his story and the book is very well written.

I've not read it yet but have no doubt I'll enjoy it, as I like all E.F. Benson books. However, the book is not nice to handle or read; it feels like a 'self-published' edition with too small and compacted a typeface and too much print on each page.

cheaply printed, with little spacing . had to buy disposable glasses to read it .but I've not been able to find this E.F Benson book before.Well worth the struggle for fans .

A likeable story set largely within a genteel boarding house with characters you could warm to; and surprisingly without the acidity or waspishness of EF Benson's previous inventions Mapp and Lucia. I found myself ridiculously pleased that everyone had a happy ending.There were no vicious 'parries and thrusts' by the paying guests of the title, and none needed. Phrases from the Mapp and Lucia books have been used within 'Paying Guests': namely 'au revoir' and 'how you do work me so'; but neither were used extensively, although they made me smile and feel as though I had recognised a hidden allusion to previous works. I'm pleased I bought this book, and it has encouraged me to read even more of the author's works.