Fingersmith | 
 enlarge | Author: Sarah Waters
Publisher: Riverhead Trade
Category: Book
List Price: $15.00
Buy Used: $2.25
You Save: $12.75 (85%)
New (34) Used (63) from $2.25
Avg. Customer Rating:  154 reviews
Sales Rank: 10202
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1st
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 582
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 5.1 x 1.3
ISBN: 1573229725
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.914
EAN: 9781573229722
ASIN: 1573229725
Publication Date: October 1, 2002
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Condition: HEAVY CREASING & edge wear to cover & spine
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Amazon.com
Fingersmith is the third slice of engrossing lesbian Victoriana from Sarah Waters. Although lighter and more melodramatic in tone than its predecessor, Affinity, this hypnotic suspense novel is awash with all manner of gloomy Dickensian leitmotifs: pickpockets, orphans, grim prisons, lunatic asylums, "laughing villains," and, of course, "stolen fortunes and girls made out to be mad." Divided into three parts, the tale is narrated by two orphaned girls whose lives are inextricably linked. Waters's 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 mesmerizing. 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, Amazon.co.uk
Product Description
In Victorian England, an orphan girl is sent to a country estate to work for-and ultimately woo-its young heiress, on behalf of a mysterious benefactor known as Gentleman.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 149 more reviews...
 Thumbs Down September 5, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I don't like writing negative reviews. Really, I don't. ----Except, that is, for books such as this one which fully deserve it. Fingersmith is, to be brief, a sump of slipshod writing, contrived plotting, bogus atmospherics and two dimensional characters. If we are at the point where this can be considered as anything approaching Dickens or The Brontes, as so many of the professional reviewers do on the back cover and the opening pages, then we have reached a low point indeed in literary valuation. ----As a test, pick any page from Charlotte Bronte's masterwork, Villette, concerning its heroine Lucy Snow, and compare it to any of the pages here concerning Maud or Sue, and you shall behold the clear difference. You may still prefer Maud and Sue and Fingersmith, but that is rather a judgment on you than on Bronte. My guess, though, is that most reviewers here haven't even read Bronte unless they were forced to do so by an English teacher.
Outraged readers will no doubt want to know what I mean by slipshod writing since they, to my disbelief, refer to it as "wonderful," "beautiful," "skillful" and other such superlatives. Let's take Sue's character, shall we? The girl was brought up in an environment wherein she didn't even learn to write her own name, and yet, she mouths utterances such as, "I was, not to put too fine a point on it, properly funked." P.423 This is, not to put too fine a point on it, the voice of an educated person like Sarah Waters with a slangy flair to it, not Sue, or Susan, or whatever name you want to call her by the end. Sue also mentions Helen of Troy as if she has read The Iliad and many other incongruous things besides that beggar belief.
My real problem with the book though is that it is so unchallenging as well as unentertaining. To plough through this book is to be exposed, time and again, to man's inhumanity to man, man's inhumanity to woman, woman's inhumanity to woman - especially in the madhouse, and so on. My only feeling after finishing it was a relief at not having to read any more about comic book characters about whom I couldn't care two shillings put through a Victorian meat grinder, which is no less brutal than the Twenty-First Century version of it.
My final exhortation to the prospective reader: Read the Brontes, read Dickens (particularly Bleak House), read George Eliot, read Thomas Hardy (esp. Jude the Obscure), read, in short, the real thing rather than this, sadly, uninspired and uninspiring literary throwback that, as Sarah Waters has said, arose out of her doctoral studies on Victorian pornography.
 Wonderful August 7, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I'm not sure how to describe this story, I don't really want to tell you anymore than I knew before I started reading it. It's so much better to be surprised by the twists and turns, I will tell you there are many.
Sue Trinder is a thief from London who has set out to assist one of her compatriots, known as Gentleman, into tricking Maud Lilly into marrying him, in an effort to get his hands on her fortune.
I loved and hated the characters that Sarah Waters brought to life. Her descriptions were so vivid, the details many, the mystery exciting...I loved it!
If only they could all be so good!
Sarah Waters is a wonderful writer and story teller.
I will be looking for more of her work.
Melodrama at its best August 3, 2008
This is melodrama, but intelligent, entertaining and well-written. It kept me guessing, and it kept me turning the pages throughout its not inconsiderable length. Its period Victorian color is well-done; its romance, eroticism and violence are all tastefully rendered.Highly recommended.
A master novelist - not just for lesbians July 27, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Sarah Waters has produced yet another Victorian adventure in creating "Fingersmith".
Any explanation of the plot would betray some of the plot points and twists. I will stay away from spoiling the fun of reading through this exceptional novel.
Sarah Waters has a talent for portraying many aspects of women in a way that brings them alive in her novels. Her characters are more than mere stereotypes. Some might describe them as "flawed." Compared to T.V. heroines, perhaps they are flawed, however, a better way to describe her central characters is to say that they are multi-dimensional and believable. Many of the characters develope from backgrounds and circumstances to which all of us can relate and appreciate.
After a few plot twists, Sarah Waters' heroine finds herself to be a talented "fingersmith". A fingersmith is a Victorian term for a "pick-pocket" or thief.
From these common beginnings, much in the way of her first heroine in Tipping the Velvet: A Novel her "everywoman" heroine in "Fingersmith" encounters one adventure after another to find herself in a plot twist of intrigue involving another woman. Although this is not as as sensual as her first novel: Tipping the Velvet, "Fingersmith" provides a rich ambience of romance and tenderness between the women.
The writing is superb, with concise but fluid descriptions of 19th. Century England, and, the personalities we've come to savor from Ms. Waters.
DO see the BBC production of this engaging novel!Fingersmith
One of the best books I have ever read July 22, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
The format of this book was amazing, along with many other aspects (detailed descriptions, character development and the overall plot line). Chapter one was told by one character's point of view and the exact same story was told by another character's point of view. Even some of the lines were the same, making the stories line up so perfectly and deliciously and so shockingly different.
The overall story was just amazing. I am surprised this concept hasn't been made into a movie.
I would not consider this anywhere near as racy as Waters' other book I have read, Tipping the Velvet which is just fine with me.
This book is marvelous.
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