Fingersmith
by Sarah Waters
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Description
A Penguin Book Club Pick "Oliver Twist with a twist . . . Waters spins an absorbing tale that withholds as much as it discloses. A pulsating story."--The New York Times Book Review Sue Trinder is an orphan, left as an infant in the care of Mrs. Sucksby, a "baby farmer," who raised her with unusual tenderness, as if Sue were her own. Mrs. Sucksby's household, with its fussy babies calmed with doses of gin, also hosts a transient family of petty thieves--fingersmiths--for whom this house show more in the heart of a mean London slum is home. One day, the most beloved thief of all arrives--Gentleman, an elegant con man, who carries with him an enticing proposition for Sue: If she wins a position as the maid to Maud Lilly, a naïve gentlewoman, and aids Gentleman in her seduction, then they will all share in Maud's vast inheritance. Once the inheritance is secured, Maud will be disposed of--passed off as mad, and made to live out the rest of her days in a lunatic asylum. With dreams of paying back the kindness of her adopted family, Sue agrees to the plan. Once in, however, Sue begins to pity her helpless mark and care for Maud Lilly in unexpected ways. . . . But no one and nothing is as it seems in this Dickensian novel of thrills and reversals. show lessTags
Recommendations
Member Recommendations
teelgee Definitely see where Sarah Waters got her inspiration!
Also recommended by wonderlake
201
YossarianXeno Both rollicking reads covering the more seedy aspects of life in 19th Century London
Also recommended by starfishian, Booksloth
122
BookshelfMonstrosity These novels offer gothic suspense's classic creepy atmosphere, though with somewhat different story-lines. Fingersmith takes place in Victorian England while The Thirteenth Tale is contemporary, but both emphasize books, mysteries about birth and identity, insanity, and grand houses.
Also recommended by Alialibobali
72
charlie68 Also a series of stories of the anti-hero.
30
charlie68 Thematically similar.
themulhern Books set in an historical English and evoking the writers of that time.
22
charlie68 Similar look at the underclass of London in Victorian times, but better written.
22
Member Reviews
An atmospheric Dickensian tale of a family of crooks and schemers who set their sights on a noblewoman of fortune. Central to this plot is Susan, an orphaned pickpocket who will pose as a ladies maid to help John Rivers, posing as a gentleman, to woo and abscond with young heiress, Maud Lilly. Sue has been waiting her whole life for this moment when she will make her fortune and by extension, the fortune of her odd little family.
However, after spending a few weeks with her mark, Maud, Susan finds herself second guessing the plan. To her eyes, Maud is little more than a lonely prisoner in her Uncle's country estate. She has never travelled much and lives under the weight of her dead mother's madness. Although the plan is to have Rivers show more marry her and immediately commit her to a home for the insane, Sue cannot help but pity her. As time goes by, these feelings begin to transmute into ones she doesn't have words for. The secret touches she shares with Maud confuse her, and although the scheme she is putting in motion disgusts her, she finds herself incapable of stopping it.
After the marriage however, it is Susan who is committed to an asylum. The whole plot has been years in the making and both Maud and Sue find themselves imprisoned. They both discover that they have been lied to their entire lives. Now they will need all their wits and bravery if they are to escape and find each other again.
I love books like this where I can really spend time getting to know characters and their history. This book is immersive and hauntingly personal. Each character is fully developed and detailed. The twist mid book took me totally by surprise and left me reeling. Masterfully done. show less
However, after spending a few weeks with her mark, Maud, Susan finds herself second guessing the plan. To her eyes, Maud is little more than a lonely prisoner in her Uncle's country estate. She has never travelled much and lives under the weight of her dead mother's madness. Although the plan is to have Rivers show more marry her and immediately commit her to a home for the insane, Sue cannot help but pity her. As time goes by, these feelings begin to transmute into ones she doesn't have words for. The secret touches she shares with Maud confuse her, and although the scheme she is putting in motion disgusts her, she finds herself incapable of stopping it.
After the marriage however, it is Susan who is committed to an asylum. The whole plot has been years in the making and both Maud and Sue find themselves imprisoned. They both discover that they have been lied to their entire lives. Now they will need all their wits and bravery if they are to escape and find each other again.
I love books like this where I can really spend time getting to know characters and their history. This book is immersive and hauntingly personal. Each character is fully developed and detailed. The twist mid book took me totally by surprise and left me reeling. Masterfully done. show less
A friend knocked on my door one evening and I answered, looking disheveled and I think a bit frightened. She asked me what was wrong, if she had interrupted something. I said no, that I had just been reading Fingersmith and I was really stressed out because now I had to leave the house and didn't know what was going to happen next. And that is basically how this book took over my life (in a good way).
Sue is an orphan who lives in London in a house of petty thieves. A con man known as Gentleman convinces her to take a position as the maid of young wealthy heiress Maud Lilly, and in doing so, help him seduce and swindle her. The intimate nature of their relationship as well as the underlying plot allow the two girls to grow much closer show more than either anticipated, as each one has so much at stake.
I literally couldn't put this book down. When I had to leave the house I took it with me, hoping that I might get a moment to read a little further. There were so many plot twists, but the amazing thing was that it was actually smart and unpredictable.
I gasped out loud. I actually yelled, "No fucking way!!" on page 183 (only a third of the way into the novel). When I wasn't reading, I used up my brainpower guessing about what would happen next, how the heroines could get out of the situation. To put it bluntly, I was obsessed. Everyone I've talked to about this book has had the same experiences. So if you enjoy obsessing and agonizing over a novel that will overtake your life for at least a week and make you anxious and excited, then this is definitely the book for you. In fact, if you love fiction at all, you should read this book immediately. show less
Sue is an orphan who lives in London in a house of petty thieves. A con man known as Gentleman convinces her to take a position as the maid of young wealthy heiress Maud Lilly, and in doing so, help him seduce and swindle her. The intimate nature of their relationship as well as the underlying plot allow the two girls to grow much closer show more than either anticipated, as each one has so much at stake.
I literally couldn't put this book down. When I had to leave the house I took it with me, hoping that I might get a moment to read a little further. There were so many plot twists, but the amazing thing was that it was actually smart and unpredictable.
I gasped out loud. I actually yelled, "No fucking way!!" on page 183 (only a third of the way into the novel). When I wasn't reading, I used up my brainpower guessing about what would happen next, how the heroines could get out of the situation. To put it bluntly, I was obsessed. Everyone I've talked to about this book has had the same experiences. So if you enjoy obsessing and agonizing over a novel that will overtake your life for at least a week and make you anxious and excited, then this is definitely the book for you. In fact, if you love fiction at all, you should read this book immediately. show less
Melodramatic with unsuspecting plot twists separated by narratives from the 2 main female characters made this an engrossing read. The suspense, the manipulation and surprising histories behind the characters change the readers perspective multiple times, adding layers of delicious complexity in this tale. Uncovering the true nature beneath the surface images presented by many of the characters alternately enthralls and horrifies the reader. The echoes of lesbianism in this tale are cleverly hinted at before we are presented with the actual event.
It's hard to review this without giving everything away, but I will say that this is definitely a book worthy of being read without distractions.
It's hard to review this without giving everything away, but I will say that this is definitely a book worthy of being read without distractions.
The story of Fingersmith reminded me of a crazy car ride with no seat belts. Sarah Waters expertly led her readers through plot twists and turns, leaving you near-breathless as you wrapped your head around colorful characters and tricky plot advancements. When I was done reading Fingersmith, I had to pry my hands off the book.
It’s hard to summarize Fingersmith without revealing spoilers. Suffice it to say, this book is set in Victorian England and includes a drafty old house, a crazy uncle, a secluded lady, a pickpocket, an opportunistic bastard and sex. While it sounds like another formulaic Gothic novel, trust me when I say it’s not. Dickens could have created the characters but only Sarah Waters could have delivered them in such show more a fashion.
Fingersmith wasn’t without flaws and some believability issues, but who cares when you’re ensnarled in good Victorian fiction? I especially loved the exploration of female love and companionship during this time. Many scholars have speculated about how intimate Victorian girls were, who often hugged, kissed, held hands and shared beds for warmth. It’s nice to read how true this affection could be between girls from this era.
For fans of historical fiction, I would highly recommend Fingersmith to you. Fast and furious, I believe most readers will find this stout book to be a real gem. show less
It’s hard to summarize Fingersmith without revealing spoilers. Suffice it to say, this book is set in Victorian England and includes a drafty old house, a crazy uncle, a secluded lady, a pickpocket, an opportunistic bastard and sex. While it sounds like another formulaic Gothic novel, trust me when I say it’s not. Dickens could have created the characters but only Sarah Waters could have delivered them in such show more a fashion.
Fingersmith wasn’t without flaws and some believability issues, but who cares when you’re ensnarled in good Victorian fiction? I especially loved the exploration of female love and companionship during this time. Many scholars have speculated about how intimate Victorian girls were, who often hugged, kissed, held hands and shared beds for warmth. It’s nice to read how true this affection could be between girls from this era.
For fans of historical fiction, I would highly recommend Fingersmith to you. Fast and furious, I believe most readers will find this stout book to be a real gem. show less
3.5* rounded up to 4*
"We were thinking of secrets. Real secrets, and snide. Too many to count. When I try now to sort out who knew what and who knew nothing, who knew everything and who was a fraud, I have to stop and give it up, it makes my head spin."
It was with some trepidation that I started on Fingersmith. This was said to be the book that was most resembling a Dickensian story. I don't rate Dickens highly. I don't mind him, but I was afraid that people loved Fingersmith because they love the Dickensian element which inevitably would not impress me much.
To my delight, the Dickensian setting was well suited to book but did not distract from the story, the layers, the characters, and best of all the writing.
There is not much to show more say about Fingersmith that has not been said already, and providing a summary of the plot will spoil the book. However, one of the main features that I enjoyed with this one was the language: the melodic, almost poetic, composition of some of the parts - which really need to be read aloud. For example, this part describes a train journey, and by reading aloud you can just about catch the rhythm of the train rolling on the tracks:
"Soon the train gives a hiss, and gathers its bulk, and shudders back into terrible life. We leave the streets of Maidenhead. We pass through trees. Beyond the trees there are open parklands, and houses - some as great as my uncle's, some greater. Here and there are cottages with pens of pigs, with gardens set with broken sticks or climbing beans, and hung with lines of laundry. Where the lines are full there is laundry hung from windows, from trees, on bushes, on chairs, between the shafts of broken carts - laundry everywhere, drooping and yellow." show less
"We were thinking of secrets. Real secrets, and snide. Too many to count. When I try now to sort out who knew what and who knew nothing, who knew everything and who was a fraud, I have to stop and give it up, it makes my head spin."
It was with some trepidation that I started on Fingersmith. This was said to be the book that was most resembling a Dickensian story. I don't rate Dickens highly. I don't mind him, but I was afraid that people loved Fingersmith because they love the Dickensian element which inevitably would not impress me much.
To my delight, the Dickensian setting was well suited to book but did not distract from the story, the layers, the characters, and best of all the writing.
There is not much to show more say about Fingersmith that has not been said already, and providing a summary of the plot will spoil the book. However, one of the main features that I enjoyed with this one was the language: the melodic, almost poetic, composition of some of the parts - which really need to be read aloud. For example, this part describes a train journey, and by reading aloud you can just about catch the rhythm of the train rolling on the tracks:
"Soon the train gives a hiss, and gathers its bulk, and shudders back into terrible life. We leave the streets of Maidenhead. We pass through trees. Beyond the trees there are open parklands, and houses - some as great as my uncle's, some greater. Here and there are cottages with pens of pigs, with gardens set with broken sticks or climbing beans, and hung with lines of laundry. Where the lines are full there is laundry hung from windows, from trees, on bushes, on chairs, between the shafts of broken carts - laundry everywhere, drooping and yellow." show less
maybe this should be 5 stars. 4.75 for sure. i don't know that i'd feel this way if i reread it someday (i can be hot and cold with sarah waters), but in this reading, i was blown away. by the writing, the story, the plotting, the pacing. all of it. she is such an incredible writer, and sets the tone and place so perfectly.
to say anything at all about this book spoils it so i'll just say that she does such an excellent job writing in susan and maud's voice, and that i actually gasped out loud at the first twist in the story.
i loved this.
"She holds herself above me. I feel the rapid beating of a heart, and suppose it my own. But it is hers. Her breath comes, fast. She has begun, very lightly, to tremble.
Then I catch the excitement of show more her, the amazement of her.
'Do you feel it?' she says. Her voice sounds strangely in the absolute darkness. 'Do you feel it?'
I do. I feel it as a falling, a dropping, a trickling, like sand from a bulb of glass. Then I move; and I am not dry, like sand. I am wet. I am running, like water, like ink." show less
i loved this.
"She holds herself above me. I feel the rapid beating of a heart, and suppose it my own. But it is hers. Her breath comes, fast. She has begun, very lightly, to tremble.
Then I catch the excitement of show more her, the amazement of her.
'Do you feel it?' she says. Her voice sounds strangely in the absolute darkness. 'Do you feel it?'
I do. I feel it as a falling, a dropping, a trickling, like sand from a bulb of glass. Then I move; and I am not dry, like sand. I am wet. I am running, like water, like ink." show less
I was amazed to the extent to which this felt like an actual Victorian novel-- it was straight out of Wilkie Collins. Multiple first-person narrators, a convoluted will, double identities, triple identities, amazing twists. I was utterly engrossed throughout. A lot has been made of the homosexual relationship, and it is indeed beautiful, but I was also very intrigued by how the female asylum, that perennial "off-stage" threat in Victorian fiction, was brought right into the center of the narrative here. Chilling, harrowing, gorgeous.
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Queen Victoria, while accepting homosexuality in men, is said not to have been able to believe lesbians existed.
Sarah Waters sets out once again to prove Her Majesty wrong in her latest novel, Fingersmith, set - as her other two novels, Tipping the Velvet and Affinity - in Victorian London.
This is hardly niche writing - or even erotic fiction, although the few love scenes are tenderly show more drawn.
It is instead a tremendous read that draws the reader swiftly into the teeming life that thrived underneath the various repressions of the Victorian era. show less
Sarah Waters sets out once again to prove Her Majesty wrong in her latest novel, Fingersmith, set - as her other two novels, Tipping the Velvet and Affinity - in Victorian London.
This is hardly niche writing - or even erotic fiction, although the few love scenes are tenderly show more drawn.
It is instead a tremendous read that draws the reader swiftly into the teeming life that thrived underneath the various repressions of the Victorian era. show less
added by Ariane65
let's just say that Dickens, the great performer of his own work, would surely have blushed to read it.
added by Ariane65
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Author Information
8+ Works 31,644 Members
Sarah Waters was born in Wales in 1966. She has a Ph.D. in English. She is the author of several books including Tipping the Velvet, Affinity, The Night Watch, and The Paying Guests. Fingersmith won the CWA Ellis Peters Dagger Award for Historical Crime Fiction and the South Bank Show Award for Literature. She has won a Betty Trask Award and the show more Somerset Maugham Award. In 2003, she was chosen as one of Granta's Best of Young British Novelists and was named Author of the Year by the British Book Awards, The Booksellers' Association and Waterstone's Booksellers. Several of her novels have been adapted for television. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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Common Knowledge
- Canonical title*
- Du bout des doigts
- Original title
- Fingersmith
- Original publication date
- 2002-02-04
- People/Characters
- Maud Lilly; Susan Trinder; Sue Trinder; Mrs. Sucksby; Richard "Gentleman" Rivers; Mr Ibbs (show all 13); Mrs Stiles; Mr Way; Mr Lilly; Dr Christie; Charles; John Vroom; Dainty
- Important places
- London, England, UK; Briar
- Related movies
- Fingersmith (2005 | IMDb); Ah-ga-ssi (2016 | IMDb)
- Epigraph*
- Een zinderende liefdesthriller.
- Dedication
- To Sally O-J
- First words
- My name, in those days, was Susan Trinder.
- Quotations
- "You've heard, perhaps, of my Index? ... Has there ever been its like? A universal bibliography, and on such a theme? They say the science is a dead one amongst Englishmen. ... Fantastic, when one knows the degrees of obscuri... (show all)ty in which my subject is shrouded. ... the authors of the texts I collect must cloak their identity in deception and anonymity. The texts themselves are stamped with every kind of false and misleading detail as to place and date of publication and impress. They are burdened with obscure titles. They must pass darkly, via secret channels, or on the wings of rumour and supposition. Consider those checks to the bibliographer's progress. Then speak to me, sir, of fantastic labour!" ... "And the Index is organized --?" "By title, by name, by date when we have it; and, mark this, sir; by species of pleasure. We have them tabled, most precisely."
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)She put the lamp upon the floor, spread the paper flat; and began to show me the words she had written, one by one.
- Publisher's editor
- Jean-Claude Zylberstein
- Original language
- English
- Canonical DDC/MDS
- 823.914
- Canonical LCC
- PR6073.A828
- Disambiguation notice
- Please do not combine Fingersmith, the novel, with Fingersmith, the 2005 TV mini series.
*Some information comes from Common Knowledge in other languages. Click "Edit" for more information.
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