A book review of ‘Fingersmith’ by Sarah Waters

Sue Trinder, a Victorian orphan girl living in a thieves’ den, is approached with a unique, dangerous, and potentially profitable opportunity. A man who her and her friends call ‘Gentleman’ plans to seduce and marry naïve heiress Maud Lilly, then have her thrown in a madhouse and steal her fortune. Sue agrees, and what follows is a Man Booker Prize shortlisted tale of lies, passion, and betrayal that refuses to be put down. 

Released in 2002, Fingersmith was the third novel by Welsh author Sarah Waters, and her third set in Victorian England. It also continued her focus on lesbian romance and sexuality, which the setting is an important tool in exploring.

“The deeply patriarchal and heteronormative society of Victorian England provides the perfect landscape for Waters to explore the repression of queer and female sexuality, as well as attempts to break this repression”

The deeply patriarchal and heteronormative society of Victorian England provides the perfect landscape for Waters to explore the repression of queer and female sexuality, as well as attempts to break this repression. Class is also a huge theme of the book, and again the class obsessed and economically unequal Victorian England becomes a perfect basis to explore this theme. Class has a large impact on the way characters are perceived, and the desire of wealth and to move up the class system serve as a key motivations for multiple characters. 

These characters are also used as powerful vehicles for these themes, but excel past being mere vehicles and become layered, engaging and often incredibly endearing characters.

“As a reader, you become embroiled in the struggles and desires of these characters, loving and hating several of them often simultaneously.”

As a reader, you become embroiled in the struggles and desires of these characters, loving and hating several of them often simultaneously. Many of them remain elusive and mysterious, their true histories and intentions revealing themselves gradually throughout.  

The strongest of the novel’s characters are, as you’d expect, its two main ones: Sue Trinder and Maud Lilly. Their interactions and relationship are what drive much of the book, forming the heart of the story that keeps you coming back. Their radically different and yet subtly similar personalities, coupled with Sue’s constant deception of Maud as to her true identity and intention, creates a constantly engaging and tense dynamic as the two begin to grow closer.   

Sue’s personality in particular provides a gripping and unique voice to the novel. It’s told from her first-person perspective, and is somewhat conversational and casual in tone, giving the reader a sense of intimacy with the protagonist from the very first page. Her manner of speaking and telling the story has an infectious liveliness, which help to keep the at times meticulous details of Waters’ novel consistently interesting, making the relatively long thirty-page chapters an easy read. We come to see the world through Sue’s unique eyes as an orphan child raised in the criminal shadows of Victorian London. This lens becomes especially interesting as the novel develops, due to the things Sue fails to see and recognise, since a first-person perspective is of course far more limited than a third-person one.  

I hesitate to say too much, but the story is filled to the brim with twists and turns that often completely blind-side the reader. These fulfil not only the shock value of their initial revelation but succeed in entirely recontextualising events we previously believed we fully understood.

“A novel that initially has the potential to fall into predictability becomes one that changes your whole view of the story every other chapter”

A novel that initially has the potential to fall into predictability becomes one that changes your whole view of the story every other chapter. As soon as you think you understand the novel and where it’s planning to go, another curveball is thrown and you desperately turn the page to discover the consequences. At times there’s a slight risk of the plot becoming overwhelmingly convoluted, and for some readers the story may cross that line. For me, Waters knows just when to pull back to prevent unnecessary over-complication, and each twist serves the story and its themes rather than becoming twists for the sake of twists.  

The result is that by the novel’s concluding chapters you’re flipping the pages with a rapid impatience. Waters gets you fully invested in the desires and emotion of her characters, and this is combined with a sense of genuine jeopardy which make the final few chapters a pulse racing and almost stressful experience as you worry and speculate over the fates of these characters.  

5/5