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!

Death of the Little Match Girl, take 2

Title: Death of the Little Match Girl
Original title: Smrt djevojčice sa žigicama
Author: Zoran Ferić
Published: 2002
Genre: Murder mystery
Pages: 193



I said I'd re-read it soon(ish)! I was seriously thinking of re-reading Death of the Little Match Girl ever since last summer (like, it was in the back of my mind, not like, Have to read it NOW!) and picked it up one morning while reading Fingersmith, as that one's a big book and takes up a lot of space in my bag. Love it, though.

As I loved this one, more than last time. I remember being a bit suspicious for the first 100 pages or so last time, but now I just dove straight into the strangeness. You can read in the link what the book is about. I'm just gonna add to that, that it was really worth the reading, and the re-reading, and further re-readings. Yay! Unfortunately it doesn't really look like any other books by Ferić have been translated to English. Boo.


I made an unforeseen visit to the island to mourn an unexpected death and attend a child's funeral. I even bought a wreath--a futile effort to frame the emptiness with flowers--and with it like a cross on my shoulder, I climbed the stone path to the cemetery atop the hill. My friend's daughter had died. Her coffin was small and white, no bigger than a kitchen water heater box, and on that little white coffin was a wreath of white roses with a white sash and gold letters: TO MIRNA FROM MUMMY AND DADDY. The white lace, in which the six-year-old had been wrapped as if at baptism, was sticking out of the coffin. God loves irony. All this white was not accidental. Her father was a Hajduk fan. 

The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents

Title: The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents
Author: Terry Pratchett
Published: 2001
Genre: Humour Fantasy for Kids
Pages: 288




Rats! Rats and cats! It's the 28th Discworld book, based on things such as the well-known story of the Pied Piper of Hamelin (what? I thought it was Hameln. All my life, a lie...). Aimed at kids, or more accurately, appropriate for kids as well as adults.


Maurice is a cat who one day realised he could think, and talk. Same happened to a bunch of rats, who happened to eat something odd near a certain University. The cat and the rats threw their lots together, and set out to look for an island where the rats could live in peace, and be rats. But to get there they need money. So they picked up this stupid-looking kid who could play the pipe, and set out to con some money out of towns.



   It was a good routine, even Maurice had to admit. Some towns had advertised for a rat piper the very first time he'd done it. People could tolerate rats in the cream, and rats in the roof, and rats in the teapot, but they drew the line at tapdancing.


They have gathered a lot of money already, and Maurice talks the rats into conning one more town before quitting. Just one more town. Unfortunately they pick a town where all is not as it seems. There's something... evil going on.  

Amazin Maurice is aimed at kids, but it's also great fun for adults. Pratchett doesn't talk down to his readers, never mind what their age is, and I completely forgot that I was reading a kids' book. Even when the main characters were talking rats and a mischievous cat.