I will say this ahead of time….I tend to find Sarah Waters’s novels to be pretty good in general, if a little either overpromised or underwhelming. And this one is more or less the same. The setup is very good for a lot of reasons. The story is Dr Faraday, a country doctor who sees to a small community also stops in at the local estate, with which he shares a small history–his mother was once on the staff there. The family is left to […]
Great first introduction to a new (to me) author
Sometimes you finish a novel and get pissed off; sometimes you are sad to see it end; sometimes you feel cheated and sometimes you immediately miss the characters and wish to continue their story. Sarah Water’s Fingersmith—the first book by her I’ve read, although not the first she published—falls into the latter category. Set in Victorian-era London, the novel tells the story of Sue Trinder, an orphan who is being raised by a woman named Mrs. Sucksby, who happens to run a “baby farm” […]
“She was like milk – too pale, too pure, too simple. She was made to be spoiled.”
One of my goals for 2017 was to tackle some of the longer books on my TBR — ones I’ve maybe been avoiding in order to keep my count high in previous years! At almost 600 pages, Fingersmith definitely qualifies as long, but the writing hooks you in pretty quickly and it’s hard to put down. Unfortunately, I don’t think the novel as a whole quite held up to the magnificent plot twists — but damn, those twists were impressive. “I give myself up to darkness; and […]
It’s Not You, It’s Me
I came to this novel with a lot of good will from previous Sarah Waters’ novels—in particular The Night Watch, Fingersmith, and Tipping the Velvet. Waters is interested in how the “love that dare not speak its name” actually speaks its name quite loudly in the past—whether it’s during World War II, the 1890s or the 1860s. Her characters, often at the fringes of society, fall in love, double-cross each other, and challenge the norms of the worlds they live in, in all sorts of […]
I Ain’t Afraid Of No Ghost
Sarah Waters wrote a Stephen King book, you guys! Don’t be facetious? Oh, okay. Once again, Waters sets her novel in 1947, just after World War II, but in Warwickshire instead of London. Time-honored social hierarchies are beginning to break down, much to the bemusement of the genteel Ayres family. Their home, Hundreds Hall, was once a grand mansion but is now falling apart due to a lack of money. The family has been forced to sell its more valuable belongings and acres of the […]
We’re Gonna Go Back In Time
“Sometimes I sit through the films twice over. Sometimes I go in half-way through, and watch the second half first. I almost prefer them that way – people’s pasts, you know, being so much more interesting than their futures.” Sarah Waters takes an audacious approach to her fourth novel. The initial setting is 1947, when Great Britain is still recovering from the damage of World War II. We meet four unfulfilled Londoners: Kay, a former ambulance driver, wanders aimlessly around the city, unsure of what […]