Fingersmith

Title: Fingersmith
Author: Sarah Waters
Published: 2002 by Virago (this reprint from 2009)
Genre: Historical crime fiction
Pages: 548


Last summer I was reading The Paying Guests when Nowkku asked me what I was reading. I told her, and then went on to tell her how awesome an author Sarah Waters is, and that she should definitely check out some of the books, and that Fingersmith has been translated into Finnish! (Most of her books are, I think.) Then I kinda went on and on how good a book it is so much that I had to pick it up again. I read the first bit that summer, but when more books kept popping up, Fingersmith took a break on the shelf. And then I picked it up again a few weeks ago, and finished it.

Sue is a young thief in London, a fingersmith, who is talked and coached into a shady deal that will make them both rich by a con-man known as Gentleman. Their goal is to cheat the fortune out of a rich but simple girl, living out in the countryside with her eccentric, book-loving uncle. Sue goes along with it, dreaming of riches and the poor rich girl's fine dresses and jewels. What she ends up getting is a bit different.

Nowkku, you better read this. I really do wish I'd get to read it again for the first time, to arrive at each wild turn and go Woah! But there is some joy in knowing what's going to happen before the characters do.


   'There you have it!' says the doctor. 'Her uncle, an admirable gentleman I don't doubt. But the over-exposure of girls to literature-- The founding of women's colleges--' His brow is sleek with sweat. 'We are raising a nation of brain-cultured women. Your wife's distress, I'm afraid to say, is part of a wider malaise. I fear for the future of our race, Mr Rivers, I may tell you now. And her wedding-night, you say, the start of this most recent bout of insanity? Could that' --he drops his voice meaningfully, and exchanges a glance with the doctor who writes-- 'be planier?' He taps at his lip. 'I saw how she shrank from my touch, when I felt for the pulse at her wrist. I noted, too, that she wears no marriage ring.'


Oh wow, looks like this is post #300! Woo! Tonight we dine in... the kitchen! 'Coz that's where the food is!