Fingersmith

I’m kicking off with a novel that isn’t a conventional crime story, in that there’s no detective, but there are several heinous crimes, all of which are resolved by the end.

It’s not an exaggeration to say I envy anyone who hasn’t yet read Fingersmith. Unashamedly drawing on the sensation fiction of Wilkie Collins, it has a twist that saw me actually yelping out loud in surprise. But the book is so much more than that.

Starting in London, 1862, we are introduced to Sue Trinder, a young woman entrenched in the criminal underworld. When she agrees to join… show more.

This 19th-century story is all the things, with a saucy illicit undertow it explores identity, love, deception, and heredity.

It’s written in two halves, two voices of the women whose lives are intertwined and ultimately who fall in love. It challenges hetero-patriarchal norms of Victorian England and yes, it is another feminist novel but it’s also erotic, eminently readable, and with a totally satisfying and brilliantly crafted ending.

Fingersmith is an archaic term for a petty thief, but given the content of the story, it is evidently a double entendre. Waters is so clever it makes you want to clap.… show more.

When I first read Fingersmith, I was so impressed that a contemporary author had written a book so rooted in the aesthetics of the Victorian time period that I wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that Waters had been transported from Victorian England to the present via a time machine. Everything about the book feels authentic, from the language and writing style that seems to be ripped straight from the pages of a book published in the 1800s, to the characters themselves who come across as darker, more mature versions of characters from Dickens’ novels. Fingersmith is worldbuilding at… show more.

Ok, I know this book wasn’t written in the Victorian period, but I realized my Victorian book picks were all written by men. I’ve relied on a lot of women writers when writing my books, but they seem to all be from the present day, Kate Summerscale, Sarah Waters, and Judith Flanders, just to name a few. This novel by Sarah Waters is a richly-described story about baby farmers. As well as terrific historical detail, the writing and plot are absolute joys. It gave me a sense of what could be done.

I’ve chosen Sarah Waters’ darker reimagining of Victoriana because it has the most satisfying plot of any work of historical fiction I have come across—and possibly of any other kind bar one (the exception is Great Expectations—the book I could wish to forget completely, in order to discover it again). But good books are far more than plot. The best of them convince, through sense of time and place and above all through character, and completely take us in, so that plot revelations, however momentous, can shock and surprise us yet not seem contrived. This Fingersmith does, deftly alluring,… show more.

Sure, Dickens wrote some great books about London, but the female characters almost always play second fiddle to the males. Enter Sarah Waters, swinging open the door on a dark and powerful city where the women’s stories are every bit as knotty and heart-rending as those of Dickens’ boys. 

Sue Trinder, Fingersmith’s heroine, is a perfect product of underground London, daughter of a criminal hanged at Horsemonger Gaol, bred in a baby farm, ducker, and diver of back alleys, pickpocket in a loving, ramshackle family. Without giving too much away about this wonderful book – I will never forget… show more.

Those in the know (i.e., those who have read other Sarah Waters novels) will undoubtedly anticipate the lesbian themes that slowly surface in this subtle, suspenseful Victorian (practically Dickensian) exploration of identity, class, exploitation, and betrayal. But prior knowledge of Waters’ signature focus will not detract from the pleasure of the plot’s breath-taking twists and turns. Filled with deliciously provocative details about the squalid conditions prevailing both within and beyond the walls of a late nineteenth-century English manor—as well as memorable examples of the rewards of resourcefulness and pluck — Fingersmith presents the ingeniously intertwined story of two young women… show more.

Sarah Waters is a master storyteller, and you can’t go wrong with any of her books, but this is among my favorites. Little orphan Susan Trinder is shuttled off to a Mrs. Sucksby, who is something of a mother figure and commands a household of wee fingersmiths and thieves. I was rooting for Susan to break free of her life of crime and find respectability, but she just may have chosen the wrong person to pave the way—the legendary thief who goes by the moniker Gentleman. Susan and Gentleman develop a scheme to swindle an innocent woman out of her… show more.

I’m a big fan of historical novels, especially ones set in the Victorian era. Waters does a bang-up job of immersing the reader in the era, but where she really shines is in creating believable, relatable characters who, even though they’re flawed, elicit your sympathy. She’s no slouch at plotting, either; the book provides possibly the most shocking turn of events I’ve ever encountered, one of those rare revelations that makes you gasp, “Whoa! I didn’t see that coming!”