An Oliver Twist-like story of deceit, secrets, crooks and an English scenery, Sarah Waters’s Fingersmith is a wonderful novel that kept me hooked as it unfolds its mysteries page after page. Waters clearly shows her debt to Dickens in the first page when her protagonist talks of going with her friend to beg at a play: the play being Oliver Twist of course.
The story is about a girl called, in those days, Susan Trinder. Susan grows up with other crooks in the house of Mrs Sucksby who makes a living ‘farming’ infants. When Susan turns 17, she helps Gentleman, later known as Richard Rivers, in convincing Maud Lilly, a young heiress, to marry him so that he can have her money by putting her in a madhouse and later splitting that money with Susan. The story is intriguing for its many twists of plot, the most important of which happens midway through the 548 page novel. It is a very elaborate scheme that includes crooks, demented gentry, mad women (always a favorite theme of mine), in a web that connects London to the country side, presenting London as the locus of thieves and crooks out to ruin a young women in the Briar. But twist after twist in the plot makes this more than just a simple story of Susan deceiving Maud.
Waters's style of writing makes this a smooth and quick read. Her rich narrative makes it a book hard to put down. This is a good novel to read. Very entertaining.
