About this title: Susan Trinder is an orphaned adolescent who is taken in by Grace Sucksby and her band of pickpockets (fingersmiths) in this Dickensian novel. A scheme to wrest away by fraud the fortunes of an old book-collector turns into something else entirely when Susan and the innocent girl who is meant to be her dupe become rather more than friends. A New ...
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Description: Good. Purchasing this book supports the King County Library System Foundation. Thriftbooks and KCLSF have partnered to help raise additional funds for the library system. Ex-Library book-will contain library markings. Light shelf wear and minimal interior marks. Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More. read more
Description: Very good. Book has appearance of light use with no easily noticeable wear. Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More. read more
Description: Good. Former Library book. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Description: Good. No dust jacket as issued. Glued binding. Paper over boards. With dust jacket. 352 p. Audience: General/trade. Tight and clean. Some edgewear and rubbing. ARC. read more
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: Riverhead Books
Date Published: 2002
ISBN-13:9781573229722ISBN:1573229725
Description: Very good. No dust jacket as issued. Cover shows light wear along edges, spine uncreased, lightly tanned margins, pages appear unmarked. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Riverhead Books, New York, New York, U.S.A.
Date Published: 2002
ISBN-13:9781573222037ISBN:1573222038
Description: Good. No Jacket. This book has moderate shelf wear with some small staining and a few bent pages. Otherwise this book is clean and tight. There is a marker line on the bottom of outside edge of pages. read more
Binding: Softcover
Publisher: Riverhead Books
Date Published: 2002
ISBN-13:9781573229722ISBN:1573229725
Description: Very Good. No Jacket. Size: 8vo-over 7¾"-9¾" tall; Very Good Softcover w/minor shelfwear. Minor edge/spine wear/chips. Text free of notes, binding good. Spine rolls a bit. Confirmation on all Domestic Orders! read more
Binding: Trade Paperback
Publisher: Virago Press
Date Published: 2004
ISBN-13:9781860498831ISBN:1860498833
Description: Very Good. A few pages in book are curling, spine is slightly cocked, spine is creased, small tear to bottom of spine, book is overall lightly to moderately worn but pages are clean and in good readable condition. read more
"This is the first story featuring a lesbian heroine (or in the case of this book, two of them) that I felt was worth reading, intersting, and well written and that I could identify to some extent with the main character.
Two young women are actively participating in sepparate plots to gain their fortunes set in the turn of the 20th century England. One was raised to be a stolen-goods fencer, and the other was the powerless, but learned heiress to a fortune available to her use only upon mairage. The plots are wound about each other, and the two main characters go from not knowing one another to liking to love to hate to understanding to love agian.
Sarah Waters does a great job describing the settings and keeping a sense of the times and manerisms of the day. The dialogue was easy to follow, despit it being in the antique style. When obsolete words were used, they were in context such that you knew what they meant without having to search in a dictionary. I really appreciated this; I like learning new words.
So, despite it being the story of a young woman falling in love with another (and the betrayal of both by the other) I found it easy to enjoy their love story. Each feeling that the characters felt was so well described and the characters so fully developed that you could clearly see what was going on with the character's emotions ... except of course when the author was preparing to throw you for a loop-de-loop with yet another plot twist. The love story was not explicit, i.e. no graphic sex which probably makes this story more accessible to a wider audience. I enjoy reading about characters who do not represent me; in this way I can widen my point of view of 'the way the world works.'
So,I think this is a great book...almost a classic."
"Fingersmith is a Victorian adventure by the "lesbian fiction writer", Sarah Waters. I say "lesbian fiction writer" with inverted commas, because in my limited opinion (I have only now read Fingersmith and her first novel venture, Tipping the Velvet) the focus isn't on the fact that the main female characters tend to have their best sexual experiences with other women, its that the books are rollickingly good reads. To be honest, I haven't read a book that's had me engrossed and just generally reading for pure enjoyment like I have with Fingersmith, for, well, I don't care to remember! Plus its 500+ pages, so to keep me interested for that long is no mean feat.
We meet teenage Sue Trinder in the slums of London, living amongst thieves (fingersmiths) and other motley types. As fate would have it, Sue, feeling indebted to the woman who took her in as an orphan baby, signs a pact with a devil of sorts in the form of a seedy man ironically referred to as 'Gentleman'. The plan promises riches beyond belief for Sue and her makeshift family, but in order to attain this money Sue must swindle and trick the innocent. Get ready for a ride so full of twists and turns and secrets that even when you get dizzy you'll keep holding on for dear life to see what happens next.
Fingersmith has everything a Dickens fan could want (grizzly orphans, grimy thieves, treasure, asylums, horrid uncles and rundown mansions all tied up with a romantic, if somewhat grimy, red ribbon). But Ms Waters writes with popular flair rather than Dickens' heavy hand. I adored the characters (yes, even the evil ones) - they were so warm it felt like I could reach out and touch their grimy souls right in front of me. I'm not a lesbian but damn it Sarah can turn me so with her gorgeous and tasteful love scenes and agonising thoughts.
This book deserves a 6 for being so darn entertaining, but alas, a 5 star rating will have to do."
The books that I am picking at the moment are hiuge and taking a long time to get through. The quality is high though, but it looks like I am slacking on my reading.
This is clever fiction by someone who you think is genuinely entertaining herself as she writes, as well as entertaining you by sucking you into a different age.
The story plunges you into the heart of Lant Street in the borough (somewhere to check out, it exists) into a the warm and loving family home run by thieves and a matriach called mrs sucksby. She takes in babies and one, Susan Trinder - a 17 year old daughter of a thief and murderess who was hanged over the road, plot a plan to get hold of an inheritance through a shady character called the Gentleman.
They plan to marry the daughter of a rich recluse in Marlow to get her inheritance by getting her submitted as mad. Susan is to be her maid.
There is a great contrast between the rich family - cold, unloving with an old man who is collecting victorian porn and the loving family of the lower classes.
All moves on until there is a beautiful twist and Susan has been tricked by the gentleman. Through in a burgoning lesbian romance between the two ladies and you have quite a story.
The next part of the book doesnt work so well, simply as it is the same story told from the perspective of the rich lady, Muad Lilly. There are a good couple of hundred pages dedicated to the same events from the different view point which makes the story a touch repetitive at this point.
And throw into this the twists that I still dont really understand and you get bogged down in the middle section.
The action picks up as Susan plots her escape and the love of london is evident in her return to the streets of the borough to claim her revenges.
We then get explanations of the twist - again a tocuh unsatisifactory in my opinion and a nice happy ever ending between the lovers.
All in all - a cracking read, attention to detail, a sense of fun what I can only imaging as a dickensian book for the 21st century. Two books I have read by Sarah Water and loved them both."
"An engaging historical read for historical fictions buffs, this tightly plotted novel brings the criminal classes of 1860s London to life. Susan Trinder grows up in a black market orphanage. She is the favored child of a matron who sells infants and a quasi king of thieves who will buy anything brought to the back door, ranging from shorn locks to stolen silver. A criminal, known as Gentleman, shows up with an offer to good for her guardians to refuse: he wants to use Susan as a maid, to plant her on a rich estate to convince a potentially rich woman to marry him. As Susan says, "I might, I supposed, take a regular job, at a dairy, a dyer's, a furrier's -- The very thought of it, however, made me want to be sick. Everybody in my world knew that regular work was only another name for being robbed and dying of boredom." Once Maud is married, she will have access to her fortune -- and Gentleman and Susan will share her fortune, once Maud is deposited in the madhouse. Thus begins the first of many devious twists, each trickier than the last.
Spanning nearly six hundred pages, this novel could have used some trimming. The description was a bit dull at moments, causing me to skim ahead to the more interesting since sentences (of which there was not a shortage). Sometimes the sentence-by-sentence rhythm had a plodding, list-y feel.
But, these moments were, in general, far and few between. Gems of description abound. For example, Susan describes where Maud keeps her clothes this way: "Beyond it was a small, old-fashioned press, that was carved all over with flowers and grapes, quite black with polish, and here and there split. I should say that ladies wore nothing but leaves in the day in was built, for it had six or several slight gowns laid carefully in it now, that made the shelves groan, and a crinoline cage, against which the doors could not be fastened."
The plot is excellent and keeps the reader engagingly surprised through the last pages."
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