Fingersmith by Sarah Waters
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Book Reviews of Fingersmith
Book Review: Pure storytelling of the highest order !
Summary: 5 Stars
Sarah Waters' third novel "Fingersmith" is both a critical and popular favourite. It has been shortlisted for several book awards including the Booker Prize. Waters herself has attracted much attention from literary circles since the publication of her first two novels "Tipping The Velvet" and "Affinity", both of which have won her many accolades. The former has even been made into a TV movie by the BBC. So what's the fuss about ? I'd say it's down to the fact that Waters has created a niche for herself writing fiction the way the old masters used to. Her style cannot be further away from the rabid excesses of many contemporary writers who try to pass off bad for inventive writing. Waters' eloquent and long flowing sentences recall the style of classical writers like Charles Dickens. Her craft lies in pure storytelling - about petty criminals, thiefs, pickpockets, damsels in distress, etc all in a Victorian setting - but with a strong dash of the new feminist sensibility that brings her story bang up-to-date.....and it works !"Fingersmith" at more than 500 pages long may be overwritten but it is superbly crafted and a truly compelling read. Sure, there's drama, mystery, suspense and great characterisation but it isn't the fearsome mindbender the blurbs make it out to be. After you have recovered from the jaw dropping shock that Waters has laid in store for you at the close of the first segment, the other twists and turns that ensue aren't that difficult to follow. In fact, they're fairly predictable but that's a compliment, not a criticism, because it shows Waters cares more about her story's integrity than delivering cheap shocks. By the time you get to the end of it, our heroines, Sue and Maud, must seem like two peas in a pod or spiritual twins from opposite sides of the track. While Waters has been labelled a lesbian fiction writer, she's careful to keep her touch light in order not to alienate the general reading public.
"Fingersmith" is one of the best novels this season. It deserves and is destined for the widest readership possible. Highly recommended.
Book Review: An awesome read
Summary: 5 Stars
Wow! What a fantastic book! I don't usually like "Victorian Murder Mysteries" (my Mom tends to pass them along to me) and I'm not really sure why I decided to start reading Fingersmith (given to me by a friend). I guess it was sitting on my nightstand when I needed a new book. However, Fingersmith is NOT a Victorian murder mystery, though there is a murder late in the book. In fact, it's a really difficult book to classify. It's set in Victorian England, but it's not anything you'd expect it to be. It's a crime novel/love story if anything. In the beginning of the book we meet a "family" of thieves. A friend of the "family" ("Gentleman" or Richard, depending on who is talking about him) concocts a scheme to bilk an heiress (Maude) out of her fortune (which she receives upon her marriage) and one of the main characters, Susan, goes to the country to serve as Maude's lady's maid in order to accomplish this goal. The plan is for Maude to fall in love with "Gentleman", he will marry her, then he will have her committed to a madhouse and take her money. Susan, of course, will get a cut for her role in the scheme. It all seems pretty straight forward (as long as it works), but the plot twists and turns like a roller coaster (including the upside down multiple loops!). I don't want to give ANY of the twists away, so it's hard to get more detailed or to go further into the story.
The book is divided into three parts. The first part is from Susan's point of view through the commitment (so the scheme does work - or seems to). The second part is from Maude's point of view through the commitment. The final part is the story of what happens to both Susan and Maude from that point forward.
To sum it up, while I don't feel like I can go into a lot of detail without giving too much away, I stayed up far to late reading this book for several nights. I've recommended it to both the book clubs I belong to. I'm planning to purchase and read Sarah Waters' first two novels after reading this one. I think it's a great book.
Book Review: A worthy winner of the Ellis Peters Historical Dagger Award
Summary: 5 Stars
Sue Trinder is a seventeen year old girl who lives among theives in London of the mid-1800s. She is the daughter of a murderess who was hanged a short distance from her flat. Sue lives with Mrs. Sucksby, a foster mother who raised Sue from an infant. She also lives with some petty theives called fingersmiths or pickpockets. Into this mix wanders Gentleman, another criminal who is currently employed by an eccentric book collector in the countryside to help catalogue the works. This book collector's niece, Maud Lilly, is a naive young girl who will fall into a fortune after she gets married. Gentleman wants to seduce her and marry her. He comes to elicit the aide of Sue who he wants to become the personal maid of Maud to convince her that marriage to gentleman would be in her best interest. However, many surprises are about to befall both Sue and Maud as they get much, much more than they bargained for.Sarah Waters has written one of the most compelling mysteries I have read in years. It is epic in length, yet, the story is quite simple, always suspenseful, and, hence reads like a much shorter work. The leisurely pacing facilitating the use of strong realistic characterizations, as well as, the year the story takes place will conjure up the inevitable comparisons to Dickens. However, this is probably not fair. Few writers have ever been able to create so many well known and beloved characters as Dickens. Ms. Waters concentrates her efforts on the plot with serviceable characters. She writes from a time almost one hundred and fifty years after the time her story takes place and what is remarkable is the fact that she has the ability to completely immerse the reader into that time period. With the extreme length, however, the story does lose its focus intermittently. However, overall, this is an excellent work and a worthy winner of the Ellis Peters Award for historical mysteries of the CWA.
Book Review: Expect the unexpected...
Summary: 5 Stars
Are you a Dickens fan? Did you read The Woman in White (Barnes & Noble Classics) by Wilkie Collins? Have you enjoyed Michel Faber's The Crimson Petal and the White? If so -- this is the book for you!
Set in Victorian London and outlying areas circa 1862, the novel is the gloomy, grim, yet enthralling story of two very different girls whose meeting results in circumstances that change both in cataclysmic fashion. Sue Trinder, a fingersmith (pickpocket) lives among con men and thieves with an adoptive mother who takes in infants. Maud Lilly, heiress, lives a protected existence on a country estate with her bookish uncle and finds herself in need of a maid. The two are brought together by Gentleman, a scoundrel and rogue, in a dastardly plot to gain him Maud's inheritance.
The novel is divided into three parts giving you the perspective of each of the girls. The third section is the conclusion, full of surprising twists and turns. The characters in London, the ones on the estate, and those in the lunatic asylum, are interesting and their plights are compelling -- some you will love and others you will hate. Or will you change your mind, once you understand their motivations and secrets?
I really enjoyed this novel because of its setting and I liked the plot -- including the many times that I discovered that what I had thought was not what happened or when a foregone conclusion proved false! I would highly recommend this to anyone looking for a complex and entertaining read with many layers. I have not read any of Sarah Waters' previous books, but will certainly rectify that now.
PS -- The BBC adaptation (2005) of this novel was excellent!
Book Review: Enjoyable Crime Novel with Multiple Perspectives
Summary: 5 Stars
I won't give any spoilers in what follows. If you read any reviews of this, be careful since part of the enjoyment of this book are its delicious details.
Do NOT see the movie first if you are thinking of reading this. While there are details left out of the movie, it will ruin much of the enjoyment of this book. (I waited until I had finished the book before watching the movie - which is good and has Sally Hawkins and Elaine Cassidy in it.)
This is a novel where almost everyone is a villain, but you are rooting for the ones that have a heart. With overt allusions to Oliver Twist, the novel begins with part one told from first-person perspective of one character, then in part two some of the same ground is gone over as told through another character's eyes, and the final part is told with the first character's voice again.
I enjoy this device. In these developments, the characters know more later of course but reveal what they thought and felt in real time as the story progresses, and each tale covers earlier ground from a different perspective and then advances the story. (This is a bit different than when Dickens used a woman as an alternating first-person narrative together with the all-knowing authorial voice in Bleak House -- he purposely makes you understand that the first person is and will be unreliably naive and so the reader is constantly reading between the lines of her descriptions of events when she narrates.)
This was my first Sarah Waters book. Her style is excellent - her characters' speech takes over and is quite believable, and the author fades into the background. The plot twists are excellent and surprise every reader (I would imagine), but are well within the believability of its setting.
I have purchased another of her novels (The Little Stranger).