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October 19, 2003
Review: Luck and tide
WHOEVER said Dickens was dead! He is reincarnated in the young and highly talented author, Sarah Waters. Fingersmith (slang for thieves and pick pockets in 19th century England) was short listed for the Booker prize 2002. It gives a chilling portrayal of the life led by thieves and lords in Victorian England and is unputdownable to boot. She has echoes of Dickens’ underworld, Bronte’s Jane Eyre and the genius of Margaret Atwood’s Alias Grace all rolled into one. In Fingersmith we are in the hands of a master storyteller who can take the oldest plot in the world — that of love and deception and embellish it with so much fraud, depravity, sexuality, pornography and suspense as to leave the reader addicted and asking for more.
The setting is London — 1862. Sue Trinder is seventeen years old and orphaned at birth. She is brought up by Mrs Sucksby who lives in a thieves’ den and deals in farming babies (note the name). Sue’s mother supposedly arrived pregnant, at the mercy of Mrs Sucksby, gave birth and was later arrested and hanged for murder. Sue even has a view of the hangman’s noose from her bedroom window in Lant Street, as there were public hangings in those days.
Life is cruising in Lant Street, until a frequent acquaintance named Richard Rivers (affectionately called “Gentleman”) comes up with a plan to train Sue into being a maid for a lady whom he wants to trick into marriage to swallow her money. He promises Sue a part of the gains after they have secured the girl and committed her into a mental asylum. Sue is game after Mrs Sucksby’s prompting and the plan is set. From here starts the journey which Sarah Waters is master of; building up characters and then crashing them before you until you feel sorry and come to terms with their circumstances and the reasons for their actions.
The second part of the novel is related from the perspective of Maud who is the niece of a rich gentleman and it is she who is to become the target of the frauds. She is sweet, innocent and unknowing — a frigid, white beauty. But what thoughts lurk behind the pristine exterior! Maud’s mother was supposedly mad and died in the mad house.
Maud is trained to read and write for her uncle but surely not the stuff little girls are made off. Both Sue and Maud are prisoners in a sense, of their homes and their keepers. But what awaits them in breaking free? Of being locked up in a mental asylum, we are told that, “If thoughts were hammers or pricks I should have been free, ten thousand times over. But my thoughts were more like poisons. I had so many, they made me sick.”
By the time the third part of the story is back with Sue, it becomes a bit difficult to figure out who is double crossing whom. But just when you have figured it out, another twist or turn leaves you aghast and gasping for more. No one is as they are made out to be.
The inner leanings of the thieves of the Borough in Lant street and the genteel house meet and have much in common.
“Luck is like the tide: it turns, then gets faster and can’t be stopped... You can’t cheat luck... the best you can do is try and outface it.” Such are the survival instincts of Sue.
Truth will triumph and just rewards will be reaped by criminals and innocents alike but the end of the novel leaves one quite unable to slot the two. There are neither clear villains nor martyrs in Fingersmith. All the character’s, like life itself, are not black or white but various shades of grey.
While being evil, they all have redeeming features; self-interest is constantly tempered with humaneness, but without sentimentality. This novel, filled with symbolism, secrecy and deception is a treat for the reader. It is truly the art of a master storyteller to construct a story, shatter it and then make the reader search for pieces of clues and connections. This is a Victorian novel with gothic undertones but all cast in the mould of an exciting thriller. I was deeply saddened to finish it and am envious of any one who would read it!
Fingersmith
By Sarah Waters
Virago
ISBN 1860498833
560pp. £12.99
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