Fingersmith

[sawyl]

Given my notorious passion for gothic novels, it's something of an embarrassment to have to confess that I've only just read Sarah Waters' excellent Fingersmith.

The story, set in the 1860s, tells the tale of a pair of orphans of similar age. Susan Trinder is a theif and a cracksmith, raised in London by a baby farmer called Mrs Sucksby, while Maud Lilly is an heiress living at Briar, her family's decaying country pile. Their paths cross courtesy of Mr Richard Rivers, a shady gentleman with a plan: to marry an heiress only to have her committed to a lunatic asylum. Needing a young woman to act as a lady's maid and sing his praises, he selects Susan. Needing an heiress, he selects Maud.

Although the plan starts off well, matters are slightly complicated when Maud and Susan fall in love, but despite this, Rivers still manages to marry his way in to the Lilly fortune. But when the time comes for the committal, there is a sudden switch: Sue ends up in the asylum; Maud ends up at Mrs Sucksby's. Each woman, finding herself in circumstances rather less than convivial, starts to come up with a scheme to escape, to get back what she believes to be rightly hers and to take revenge on her betrayers.

As is probably pretty obvious, Fingersmith is very much an homage to Victorian gothic in general and Wilkie Collins in particular. There are useless uncles, malign husbands, maids who show loyalty to the wrong person, numerous moments of mistaken identity and coincidences of parentage, escapes from lunatic asylums, cunning plans formulated by clever female brains and cliffhanger after cliffhanger.

In fact, the only Collinsian element missing from the book is the conquering hero to sweep the heroine off her feet. Fortunately, this is no longer even remotely necessary. Now it seems quite reasonable for the two heroines to get it together and walk off into the happily ever after. Which is how I've always rather wanted The Woman in White — I'm sure Marion and Laura would make a much better couple than the threesome they eventually form with Walter...