The Fingersmith

I don’t think I’m too much of a fan of historical fiction.  It’s not like the murder mystery genre where there has to be is an intriguing corpse and I’ll be content, any amount of sub-par writing aside.  If I’m going to venture into the past, the book has to have enough of a plot to make the setting incidental.  My scathing comments about authors like Peter Ackroyd and Peter Carey because they turn the past into a character, forever sticking its nose into events and ruining any plot.  Sarah Waters doesn’t do this.  The Fingersmith has a plot which is only occasionally reliant on the gimmick of a different time period and only ever in a way which moves the story forward.

The story itself is one of a con with more twists than an episode of Hustle.  Susan Trinder (posing as Susan Smith) plays maid to Maud Lilly with the intent of encouraging her to marry Richard Rivers, have her committed to an asylum and pocket a cool three grand.  Naturally, things are far far more complex than that, but any further plot points would be straying into spoiler territory and it’s the kind of book that would be no fun to read I you didn’t have the rug pulled out from under your feet at least once.   It is by far not a believable story, but it’s exciting.  None of the characters are particularly smart, at least not the ones you root for and so throughout you do have the feeling that it could all go wrong- something so important with criminal dramas and something that improves the book no end.

The only point, I found, where The Fingersmith falls down it the romance.  While embroiled in the con Susan and Maud fall in love.  First of all, I’m sceptical of this love because they’re both seventeen.  I remember love when I was seventeen.  It wasn’t enduring and Maud and Susan’s love has so much to endure.  Their relationship is based in lies and the pair spend literally no time together when they are not manipulating one another.  Both acknowledge that they could save themselves a whole lot of grief by telling the truth but choose to remain silent and go for the money.  No amount of pining makes it seem like anything other than an ill-advised teen romance that Waters tacked on after the main story was all figured out.  I don’t see it ending well.

Teen drama aside, I think one of the reasons I did enjoy this book is because it is filled with strong women.  It’s told from the points of view of both Maud and Susan.  And surrogate mother Mrs Sucksby is a brilliant mixture of child rearing and cunning.  She is not limited or defined by the children she looks after- this is just one facet of her personality.  She isn’t the female lead, but she has depth.  It’s wonderful.  In fact, most of the men are pretty much cool with the women taking charge.  There’s only one point of ridiculous sexism in the book and it is so incongruous that it stands out like a sore thumb.  Two doctors blame madness on, “the over-exposure of girls to literature-  The founding of women’s colleges…  raising a nation of brain cultured women.”  Ironically, as a woman well exposed to literature, such views do make me mad.

The Fingersmith is a fun book to read.  Strange as it is to be reading about dank Victorian hovels while the summer’s starting to show, I enjoyed it.  It’s the kind of book that seems so simple when it begins but I’m betting that on re-reading much more would be revealed.  There are whole chunks of the book that, with the knowledge of what comes next, would undoubtedly seem completely different upon a re-visit and that’s a nice feeling, knowing that even though the story’s finished, there’s still potential for so much more to come.

Next time is final Ian McEwan book, The Cement Garden.