Fingersmith

by Sarah Waters

Book Overview

"Oliver Twist with a twist...Waters spins an absorbing tale that withholds as much as it discloses. A pulsating story."--The New York Times Book Review

The Handmaiden, a film adaptation of Fingersmith, directed by Park Chan-wook and starring Kim Tae-Ri, is now available.

Sue Trinder is an orphan, left as an infant in the care of Mrs. Sucksby, a "baby farmer," who raised her with unusual tenderness, as...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1573229725
• ISBN13: 9781573229722
• Release Date: October 2002
• Publisher: Riverhead Books
• Length: 600 Pages
• Weight: 1.09 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 5.2" x 8.0"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

Suspenseful and Erotic

Absolutely delicious with thrills and betrayal and the world is expertly crafted. Love this author.

Gripping Story!!!

I was on the edge of my seat the whole time, it's difficult to find excellent historical fiction especially if the story told is spun so elegantly. It's twist after twist after twist and it all works out! It's my new favorite book!!

The only question is...why didn't it win the Booker???

"Fingersmith" is the first Sarah Water's book I've delved into, partly because I've been scarred by terrible Victorian fiction in the past, and partly because I was afraid how her novel's would treat their overtly lesbian material. I was overjoyed to find it subtle and touching, without any signs of being tainted by public perceptions of lesbian relationships. "Fingersmith" is a multitude of things. It is a mystery, a thriller, a horror and a love story. It is also a superbly detailed and well crafted historical novel. I'm gushing I know, but the truth is that I couldn't put it down. The story is that of Sue and Maud, the love they bear one another and the tangled web that lies, deceit and family machinations weave around them. Add some intriguing plot elements (a bibliography of indecent literature and a madhouse) and stir with a truly delicious, but layered, villain, and "Fingersmith" comes out ripe and lush. There are some ingenius twists and turns, and true gut clenching moments when disbelief mingles with pure enjoyment. I'll step back a moment to attempt an objective evaluation of the craft and style. Sarah Waters does not write in the slickest of prose, and many people may feel compelled to turn back after the first chapter. It is true that the first person narrative lends itself to a disjointed and clumsy beginning, but it won't take long for your palette to adjust. For those coming to the novel fresh from forays into other Booker material (and particularly this year's winner "The Life of Pi"), the dichotomy will seem clear and apparent. Miss Waters is the author of plot driven novels, she is not a post-modern contemporary author driven by allegory and oxymoron similes. She follows hard on the footsteps of Dickens (although far more compelling) and inherits the voice of an Elizabeth Gaskell modernised for the 21st century. Don't allow this relative simplicity of style to put you off, the effect if by no means shallow or transparent. I promise you a truly gripping read if you perservere - the kind you remember from childhood when books were about turning the page and staying up all night to reach the end, not churning over the existentialist questions of existence.

Pure storytelling of the highest order !

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.

Pickpocketing the Pages of History

Sarah Waters' third novel begins simply enough. Sue Trinder is a teenage orphan who lives amongst a group of confidence men, thieves, baby farmers and fingersmiths (a 19th-century term for a pickpockets). An unscrupulous man commonly and ironically known as Gentleman compels Sue to join in his plot to win the heart of an elderly bookish man's niece named Maud. Maud is heiress to a fortune, but she can only claim it if she marries. The plan is: win the lady, ditch the wife in an insane asylum and split the fortune. Sue becomes Maud's maid and when the plot is reaching its timely conclusion is the exact point where it is fractured and split like a forest path into numerous twisting paths revealing long held secrets and hidden strife. Sue and Maud are made to endure separate trials in their journey including the incarceration in a mad house, the subjection of reading and transcribing appalling pornography to a perverted old man and a dangerous journey through treacherous London in search of a friend in order for them to discover what their true pasts consist of and what predestined traits may tweak their futures.It is fitting that at the beginning of this novel a reference is made to Dickens' Oliver Twist. Fingersmith is a novel descended from Dickens voluminous library as well as much 19th century sensualist fiction. Waters skilled use of language to evoke characters and a sense of place through physical detail and psychological mapping of experience is a distinct characteristic of this descent. She also has a tremendous ability to use fabulous names such as (Mrs Sucksby and Miss Bacon) as Dickens did to mark poignant traits of her characters. Where Waters veers from Dickens is in her conjuring of robust female characters who can dominate the novel, not through the circumstances of their plight and their representation of certain social injustice, but through the powerful voice they use to assert their individual positions. Of course the great descriptions and plotting Waters uses to conjure this tale of a 19th century English plot to capture a family fortune makes a great many statements about the ways in which women were marginalised and the bizarre social positions they were forced to inhabit. However, the great strength of her brilliant protagonists Sue and Maud is in the way their actions are guided more by their impulsive desire to survive rather than to spur the trim, thrilling plot or subscribe to any societal roles presented to them. Their struggles led by these natures produces a longing for a happy resolution built not out of sentimentally contrived conventions, but a deserved reward for revealing to us their faulty human natures.Sue and Maud are not angels. They both deceive and betray each other, but they discover in this Darwinian world a rare affection for each other and a chance to share confidence when one's closest family is apt to betray you. The curious mirroring effect Waters uses with them, mixing pasts and characteristics of

The sublime Sarah Waters is god

This third book of hers clinches it. Sarah Waters is god. There is nothing she can't do. Tipping the Velvet was great; Affinity was beyond great; Fingersmith is sublime. Reading it took over my life. Okay, that's happened once in a while before with a really fine book. But I don't recall this ever happening before: being so engulfed by a book that it made me dizzy, feverish, downright sickened--and hey, if you don't get that these are good things then you're not a serious reader--in sum, it rendered me virtually incapable of going about my daily life, my head and heart were spinning so over Sue and Maud and their story.Waters has singlehandedly reinvented--no, no, she transcends--lesbian fiction, a genre that up to now has consisted almost exclusively of embarrassing, dim, dismal, dumbed-down dreck. Her writing is literary, her plots are engrossing, her feel for time and place is flawless, and sheesh, she even pulls off incredibly sexy sex scenes that are beautiful, believable, move the story forward and leave the reader's heart pounding.Fingersmith is breathtaking. Waters is an awesome talent. Goddamn. She does us lesbians proud.