Fingersmith (Paperback)

Divided into three parts, the tale is narrated by two orphaned girls whose lives are inextricably linked. It begins in a grimy thieves kitchen in Borough, South London with 17-year-old orphan Susan Trinder. She has been raised by Mrs Sucksby, a cockney Ma Baker, in a household of fingersmiths (pickpockets), coiners and burglars. One evening Richard "Gentleman" Rivers, a handsome confidence man, arrives. He has an elaborate scheme to defraud Maud Lilly, a wealthy heiress. If Sue will help him she'll get a share of the "shine". Duly installed in the Lillys' country house as Maud's maid, Sue finds that her mistress is virtually a prisoner. Maud's eccentric Uncle Christopher, an obsessive collector of erotica (loosely modelled on Henry Spenser Ashbee) controls every aspect of her life. Slowly a curious intimacy develops between the two girls and as Gentleman's plans take shape, Sue begins to have doubts. The scheme is finally hatched but as Maud commences her narrative it suddenly becomes more than a tad difficult to tell quite who has double-crossed who. Waters' penchant for Byzantine plotting can get a bit exhausting but even at its densest moments--and remember this is smoggy London circa 1862--it remains mesmerising. A damning critique of Victorian moral and sexual hypocrisy, a gripping melodrama and a love story to boot, this book ingeniously reworks some truly classic themes.--Travis Elborough --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review
The prize-winning author of Tipping the Velvet and Affinity has produced a new novel full of dark secrets as well as insanity and erotic love. Sue Trinder, orphaned at birth and brought up by fingersmiths (petty thieves) becomes part of a complex scam to obtain a fortune when she is 17. It involves her in becoming a lady's maid - these are Dickensian times - and it is not long before things start to go very wrong. She becomes involved with another orphan growing up in a gloomy country mansion. It is an extraordinarily vivid story which conjures up a brilliant picture of the period.

This novel, whose narrative centres around the difference between faked and genuine wooing, is itself irresistibly seductive. It is 1862 and Susan, a teenage 'fingersmith' brought up in a Southwark thieves' kitchen, describes how she is recruited by a gentlemanly rogue to take part in a plot involving a young heiress living a nightmarish existence in a big country-house. The heiress, Maud, is being exploited and ill-treated by her uncle. (The true nature of that exploitation is revealed only much later in one of the novel's ingenious surprises.) The plan is that Susan will become Maud's maid and help the rogue to seduce her, elope with and marry her, get his hands on her fortune, and then disembarrass himself of her. Light-heartedly the girl plunges into her role in this nefarious undertaking, overcoming her scruples for a share of the fortune. All is not as it seems, however, and there is a stunning surprise in store for her and the reader. But the novel is concerned with more than just plot twists. For in spite of the adversarial roles they are playing and across the barriers of birth, education, and wealth, the two girls find they are powerfully drawn to each other. As the novel unfolds, those barriers will turn out to be illusory in various ways as the power of love - maternal as well as sexual - shows itself able to defy convention, to defeat conspiracies, to forgive wrongs and even to make possible the ultimate sacrifice. With a melodramatic situation as a metaphor for a psychological and moral conundrum and with a liberal sprinkling of plots, impersonations, madhouses, heiresses, and dramatic revelations, we are clearly in Wilkie Collins territory. That aspect of the novel is done extremely well and the narrative tension is maintained with only a slight faltering towards the end. But the author takes advantage of modern freedom to explore aspects of sexuality that a Victorian novelist could barely hint at and in doing so intriguingly illuminates a historical reality which the fiction of that period largely ignores. This is a gripping and a thought-provoking novel. Review by Charles Palliser (Kirkus UK) --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Product Description