To be added to the pile of TBR's...

Finally picked this one out of the box to read, took me a while. Strange but kept me in it until the end. Couldn't wait to finish it though. Wouldn't read another of this authors books. Now releasing for someone else...

WILD RELEASE NOTES:

In the OBCZ box in the kitchen...

This looked interesting
Set in a den of thieves in 1860's London, this novel focuses on Susan, a pickpocket, who is persuaded by her cohorts to pose as a lady's maid and infiltrate the household of Maud, a young heiress in possession of a large inheritance. Divided into three parts, the tale is narrated by two orphaned girls whose lives are inextricably linked. It begins in a grimy thieves kitchen in Borough, South London with 17-year-old orphan Susan Trinder. She has been raised by Mrs Sucksby, a cockney Ma Baker, in a household of fingersmiths (pickpockets), coiners and burglars. One evening Richard "Gentleman" Rivers, a handsome confidence man, arrives. He has an elaborate scheme to defraud Maud Lilly, a wealthy heiress. If Sue will help him she'll get a share of the "shine". Duly installed in the Lillys' country house as Maud's maid, Sue finds that her mistress is virtually a prisoner. Maud's eccentric Uncle Christopher, an obsessive collector of erotica (loosely modelled on Henry Spenser Ashbee) controls every aspect of her life. Slowly a curious intimacy develops between the two girls and as Gentleman's plans take shape, Sue begins to have doubts. The scheme is finally hatched but as Maud commences her narrative it suddenly becomes more than a tad difficult to tell quite who has double-crossed who. Waters' penchant for Byzantine plotting can get a bit exhausting but even at its densest moments--and remember this is smoggy London circa 1862--it remains mesmerising. A damning critique of Victorian moral and sexual hypocrisy, a gripping melodrama and a love story to boot, this book ingeniously reworks some truly classic themes.

I agree with the previous reader and will pass it on now.
It's not exactly a conventional plot, or a romantic period bodice-ripper as might have been expected - or rather it is quite conventional, but it's just the twist that the female protagonist couldn't care less about the handsome rougue of a male suitor but is attracted to her maid instead, that makes "Fingersmith" a little bit different. From the reviews I have read of her other books, this will no doubt please fans of Sarah Waters. It is well-written, an enjoyable Victorian adventure, a page-turner with a ludicrously convoluted and, frankly, unbelievable plot that twists and turns just when you think you know where it's going and keeps you hanging in there for the resolution to the terrible predicaments that both main characters find themselves in.

CONTROLLED RELEASE NOTES:

for Nisaba000's wishlist on Monday

I've been looking for this book and another by the same author for quite some time - I was beginning to think I'd have to do the whole getting-a-bookshop-to-order-it-in-for-me-thing. What a horrifying thought. Instead, AnonymousFriend kindly took time out of her busy life to hand-deliver it to me, and I'm very, very grateful. I'm halfway through a book that another bookish friend of mine (not a bookcrosser) gave me which I want to do justice to, so I'll probably get to start reading this one in a week or so. I loved the film adaptation - I have high hopes of the book.

Well! That was a roller-coaster of a read! A thick volume set in the horrors of Victorian England (aren't I glad I wasn't alive then and there!), it is dark and Dickensian in its documentation of how to survive in a hard society without a social security safety-net, of violence and sexual abuse, of the horrible way in which the insane and simple-minded were treated. the section documenting Susan's confinement in an insane asylum reminded me strongly, in that way, of http://www.bookcrossing.com/journal/4776274, which looked at an American woman facing mental health issues at around the same time.

Even the "Happy Ending", which is there to please readers, isn't really: Susan gets to find a girl she loved and gets to be told she is rich and the house is hers; but that will be just the start of her problems as she deals with accessing the wealth that is just so many words so far and has no reality in cold hard cash or legal documents.

I have previously seen a television adaptation of this book, and having finally read the book I have immense admiration for the adaptors: while they couldn't find a way to get the Maud Point of View in, they followed Susan's story very faithfully and made sense of it all, without doing a disservice to the book or changing the plot around to make it more commercial.

I'll hang onto this for a future re-reading down the track before releasing it.