Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Five stars -- and I don't usually like historical fiction
I looked forward eagerly to the publication of "Fingersmith," and Waters didn't let me down. I don't usually read historical fiction, because it so often is heavy-handed and trite. But Waters captures the Victorian tone & sensibility so skillfully, while keeping her writing fresh, surprising, and original. Her novels contain familiar elements of Victorian fiction--teeming London slums, forbidding country manors, mysterious young women prone to fainting--while also giving voice to realms of female experience that Dickens never dreamed of. The plot was convoluted at times, but I still couldn't put the book down. Like Waters' previous books, Fingersmith has a deep-rooted feminist sensibility and lesbian subtext (well--not that "sub," actually!). But, unlike so much lesbian fiction, the characters have real depth and subtlety; they do not think, speak, or behave anachronistically; and the emotions are complex. Waters has a real appreciation of the way class, power, and gender dynamics get caught up in sexual desire, even desire between women. Amazingly, she also tells a great story.
Rating: - The sublime Sarah Waters is god
This third book of hers clinches it. Sarah Waters is god. There is nothing she can't do. Tipping the Velvet was great; Affinity was beyond great; Fingersmith is sublime. Reading it took over my life. Okay, that's happened once in a while before with a really fine book. But I don't recall this ever happening before: being so engulfed by a book that it made me dizzy, feverish, downright sickened--and hey, if you don't get that these are good things then you're not a serious reader--in sum, it rendered me virtually incapable of going about my daily life, my head and heart were spinning so over Sue and Maud and their story.Waters has singlehandedly reinvented--no, no, she transcends--lesbian fiction, a genre that up to now has consisted almost exclusively of embarrassing, dim, dismal, dumbed-down dreck. Her writing is literary, her plots are engrossing, her feel for time and place is flawless, and sheesh, she even pulls off incredibly sexy sex scenes that are beautiful, believable, move the story forward and leave the reader's heart pounding. Fingersmith is breathtaking. Waters is an awesome talent. Goddamn. She does us lesbians proud.
Rating: - Simply incredible
Fingersmith is, quite simply, one of the best books I have read in a long time. Sarah Waters is the newest British author to capture my attention. Fingersmith, her newest book, is set very evocatively in a den of pickpockets and thieves in Victorian London.Reading Fingersmith is like taking a journey. In the same way that Dickens, Wilkie Collins or Charles Palliser could transform a reader, Waters is a magician. Her characters are believable and real; her setting is breathtaking (you can practically smell the stench of London); the plot is complex, but accessible. All and all, Fingersmith is virtually perfect. The main character, Sue, is filled with a combination of wide-eyed wonder and worldliness. Her story is one of love, betrayal and struggle; but this is no historical romance. Sarah Waters writes in a very literary style and new readers are sure to recognize her talents.
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