and this is her at her very best.įor me, the best aspect of the victorian is the marginalized, the liminal members of society and what they do to get by. and then i felt that gutsick christmas midafternoon void where you look around and whimper hopefully - 'more?'. Sarah waters is an author i always break my 'save one book' vow with - her last two books, i had to buy the very day they came in, i slapped a 'do not disturb' sign on my head and i just plowed through them in a matter of hours. but be honest, i had you at lesbian dickens. it is almost 600 pages of puppy-shuddering bliss. not a detective-y whodunnit mystery, but more traditionally dickens/collins family mystery with elements of mamet's house of games. there is also a kickass 'mystery' plot in here. sarah waters has some amazing strengths - she creates well-developed, complicated characters, she is a master at pacing, she can construct very tight, multi-layered narratives where the next move is always surprising, and she recreates the victorian setting better than anyone else that i have read. So, now that i have a little breathing room, i will do my best. dana has been bugging me to write a review of this for the longest time, and now that she is on vacation and out of my path for ten minutes (seriously - the girl moved to my town just so she could stand under my window all night calling 'hey!! heyyy!! write a review for fingersmith! come on, you know you want to!!') Once in, however, Sue begins to pity her helpless mark and care for Maud Lilly in unexpected ways.But no one and nothing is as it seems in this Dickensian novel of thrills and reversals. With dreams of paying back the kindness of her adopted family, Sue agrees to the plan.

Once the inheritance is secured, Maud will be disposed of-passed off as mad, and made to live out the rest of her days in a lunatic asylum.

One day, the most beloved thief of all arrives-Gentleman, an elegant con man, who carries with him an enticing proposition for Sue: If she wins a position as the maid to Maud Lilly, a naïve gentlewoman, and aids Gentleman in her seduction, then they will all share in Maud’s vast inheritance. Sucksby’s household, with its fussy babies calmed with doses of gin, also hosts a transient family of petty thieves-fingersmiths-for whom this house in the heart of a mean London slum is home. Sucksby, a 'baby farmer,' who raised her with unusual tenderness, as if Sue were her own. Sue Trinder is an orphan, left as an infant in the care of Mrs.

The fingersmith