Affinity
by Sarah Waters
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Book Summary Information
Author: Sarah WatersEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2002-01-08
ISBN: 1573228737
Number of pages: 368
Publisher: Riverhead Trade
Book Reviews of Affinity
Book Review: A well written, darkly intense novel - Unputdownable!!
Summary: 5 Stars
"Affinity" is a well written, darkly intense novel about an extremely complex woman, Margaret Prior, and her singular love affair. It is also a tale of psychological suspense - a literary mystery with an ending that certainly caught me off guard. Author Sarah Waters paints a vivid picture of upper middle class life in Victorian London, as well as the period's grim women's penal system. She also writes with passion and sensitivity about "the "love that dare not speak its name." The novel delves into Victorian spiritualism as well, and is actually a gothic ghost story of sorts.
Ms. Prior is a not-so-young woman rapidly approaching spinsterhood. In 1874 London an unmarried female nearing the age of 30 is considered a spinster with the definite connotation of "old maid." To be truthful, until about 40 years ago the same could have been said about an American women of the same age! However, a single American woman of the 1950's and 60's would have had infinitely more personal freedom than her cloistered, over-protected Victorian sister. Margaret is recuperating from a nervous collapse which resulted in her attempted suicide by overdosing on laudanum. Her family, with their typical Victorian morality, accustomed to repressing and denying unsuitable feelings and actions, thinks that Margaret's illness is the result of the sudden death of her beloved father. His demise has caused her pain, but not as much as her broken heart over a fickle lover. Her former love is now her sister-in-law, Helen, who married Margaret's brother, (of all people). Ashamed of the lesbian affair Helen impulsively decided to conform and lead the socially accepted life of a married woman. To do otherwise would have meant being totally ostracized by her peers. Her constant proximity as a new family member has made Margaret desperate to get out of the house and away from everything that reminds her of her loneliness, loss and betrayal.
Thus, Margaret is induced to visit the women at the local prison on a regular basis as a form of therapy - to involve herself in the wider world. She becomes a "Lady Visitor" at one of London's grimmest prisons, Millbank, where "murderers, poisoners and common thieves" spend seemingly endless days and nights alongside convicted debtors and beggars. It is a harsh and terribly sad existence which offers no hope to the inmates. Millbrook Prison epitomizes the Gothic edifice, with numerous towers, labyrinthine tunnels, endless corridors laid out in geometric patterns leading to dank, dark cells where most prisoners spend each day in isolation. Long after I finished the book I was left with the image of the huge building looming over the Victorian landscape, offering meager shelter to those who dwelled within its claustrophobic confines. Ms. Waters creates an atmosphere that is downright creepy.
Selina Dawes is an inmate at Millbank. A well-known spiritualist and medium in the increasingly popular subculture of the pseudo-sciences, she has been imprisoned for assault and fraud after a séance she was conducting went horribly wrong. It resulted in the death of her benefactor and an adolescent girl's nervous breakdown. Ms. Dawes, a seemingly gentle young woman, is filled with despair at her situation and honestly blames all that has gone awry on a ghost. Margaret finds herself drawn to the apparently innocent and enigmatic inmate, although she is initially quite skeptical of her story. Through a series of mysterious occurrences Margaret finds herself believing more and more in the shadowy world of the supernatural. As the secret relationship between the two women develops in intensity, Selina tells Margaret that she is her "affinity"- that together they are two halves of one whole. There must be a way for them to be together.
From her three-dimensional characters, the clear depiction of bourgeois Victorian life to the Dickensian misery in London gaols and the thriving spiritualist movement of the period, Sarah Waters has created a compelling, powerful novel. I really cared about the intelligent, sensitive Margaret. Her isolation and stress at repressing her most intense feelings are palpable, as is her longing to love and be loved. Margaret's narrative, through journal entries initially undertaken to record her progress as a Lady Visitor, is juxtaposed with Selina's pre-prison story. An excellent read! Absolutely unputdownable!
JANA
Summary of Affinity
An upper-class woman recovering from a suicide attempt, Margaret Prior has begun visiting the women?s ward of Millbank prison, Victorian London?s grimmest jail, as part of her rehabilitative charity work. Amongst Millbank?s murderers and common thieves, Margaret finds herself increasingly fascinated by on apparently innocent inmate, the enigmatic spiritualist Selina Dawes. Selina was imprisoned after a séance she was conducting went horribly awry, leaving an elderly matron dead and a young woman deeply disturbed. Although initially skeptical of Selina?s gifts, Margaret is soon drawn into a twilight world of ghosts and shadows, unruly spirits and unseemly passions, until she is at last driven to concoct a desperate plot to secure Selina?s freedom, and her own.
As in her noteworthy deput, Tipping the Velvet, Sarah Waters brilliantly evokes the sights and smells of a moody and beguiling nineteenth-century London, and proves herself yet again a storyteller, in the words of the New York Times Book Review, of "startling power." A tale that will leave readers "transfixed with horror and excitement" (Daily Mail, London) Affinity, in its accomplishment and sophistication, leaves no doubt as to this writer's considerable gifts.
Affinity is a tale of power and possession that Henry James himself might admire. In her first novel, Tipping the Velvet, Sarah Waters explored secrets and longing--capping off this lesbian romp with a utopian-socialist vision. Her intricate follow-up is just as sensual but infinitely darker, its moral more difficult to descry. Its stylistic and psychological rewards, however, are visible at every turn, the author's persuasive imagination matched by her gift for storytelling.
In late September 1874, Margaret Prior makes her way through the pentagons of London's Millbank Prison, a place of fearful symmetry and endless corridors. This plain woman on the verge of 30 has come to comfort those behind bars, several of whom Waters brings to instant, sad life. And our Lady Visitor plans to take her role dead seriously, having recovered from two years of nervous indolence in her family's Chelsea house. One person, however, makes her job a passion. Opening an inspection slit (or "eye" as these devices are known), Margaret hears "a perfect sigh, like a sigh in a story." Peering inward, she's confronted by the most erotic of visions--a woman turned toward the sun, caressing her cheek with a forbidden violet: "As I watched, she put the flower to her lips, and breathed upon it, and the purple of the petals gave a quiver and seemed to glow..."
Selina Dawes may indeed have the face of a Crivelli angel, but this medium is in for fraud and assault, her last session having gone very badly indeed. Suffice it to say that the first full encounter between these two very different women is enthralling. "You think spiritualism a kind of fancy," Selina riddles. "Doesn't it seem to you, now you are here, that anything might be real, since Millbank is?" And soon enough Margaret receives several viable signs of the supernatural: a locket disappears from her room, flowers mysteriously appear, and her dazzling friend knows everything about her. Strangest of all, Selina seems to love her.
As Margaret records her weekly prison forays, her own past comes into focus, notably her plans to travel to Italy with her first love (who is now her sister-in-law). But her current journal, she convinces herself, is to be very different from her last one, which "took as long to burn as human hearts, they say, do take." Meanwhile, Waters offers a narrative two-for-one, placing Margaret's diary cheek by jowl with Selina's chronicle of her pre-Millbank existence. This dispassionate, staccato record initially suggests that we can separate truth from desire. Or can we? What Waters's haunting creation leaves us with is a more painful reality--that knowledge and belief are entirely different things. --Kerry Fried
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