Fingersmith

Set in Victorian era London the novel is a wickedly fabulous pastiche of the overly melodramatic literary style of the period and includes one of the best plot twists I have read in ages. Waters has created a varied cast of Dickensian characters, none of whom I would trust as far as I could throw them, and I also loved her scene-setting. The faded glamour of Briar House, the dingy terrace of Lant Street, and the terrors of the asylum all became very real as I kept reading. My favourite part of Fingersmith was the dual viewpoint. Seeing scenes that we thought we already knew, but now through a completely different lens provided great tension and I appreciated how each character had a distinctive voice so it was easy to follow their take on the story. Occasionally Fingersmith did feel a tad overlong, but generally the writing kept to a good pace and I was always keen to find out what would next befall our heroines.

At 10% read, I thought I might DNF this one. The first 10% is trash and unnecessary. Even though all the same characters come back later, we didn't need them in the beginning. Or a lot less of them would have been sufficient.

I feel like this author read too much Virginia Woolf and embodies all the writing style of both Woolf and Atwood that I cannot stand. I really hate the writing style. I hate all the characters. The main storyteller for Part 1 only shoed some actual character after took 10% of the book. The language drive me up a wall and while I get that the language is trying to be accurate to the time, though I'm not sure what specific time this is, just in the past long enough for maids to be needed. But the language is too much of a stretch. Maybe it's because it was written in 2002 and did not in any way consider its own language. Maybe this author just wanted to use words with the meanings of whatever time it was supposed to be and not the current day meanings. Maybe she is using both. It's way too much for me.

I read this book as it came highly recommended. I think they recommended it without giving an accurate idea of the book.

It took me nine days to get through 50% of this book. It also took me a whole day to get through the last 10% that should have taken about an hour to read. At my recent read rate, that is terrible and speaks to how slow this book is. I got through the first twist and thought it interesting. I hoped the story would pick up. The character view change didn't bother me as it seems to bother others. However, partially into that view I realized the reading of it seemed like the author couldn't decide whether she wanted to tell Sue's story or Maud's story, so did both. At that point, the repeated portions of the story begin to feel like filler. I'd rather wished she'd just told Maud's story because Sue was so one-dimensional through most of her own story in part 1.

I found the amount of not-eating Maud does to be unbelievable. Every meal she refuses, I wondered how she didn't starve to death already. This may seem like nit-picking but it kept kicking me out of what little I could get into the story.

In addition, this book was recommended for its lack of male gaze, when in fact, the entire first half of the story is all about the male gaze and the jokes cracked are down by men and seem exactly to be full of the male gaze. Even throughout until part 3 the male gaze is heavily focused.

I could barely stand any of Maud's story set in London. And then the second and third twists came, which were honestly not as interesting or surprising as the first twist. In fact, the third twist was pretty much obvious from the early chapters of the book before we even knew Maud.

I was almost relieved to return to Sue in part 3, except again the story dragged and dragged. Sue is just not a good narrative focus. I appreciate seeing her where she was, but it felt like much of that was an emphasis on how poorly women were treated as a bit of a history lesson. I don't read my fiction for that. I can read historical books or even current events news for that.

Certain parts of this book remind me of Lord of the Flies, which is a book I absolutely despise. I felt like the setting was also used as a way to write terrible dialogue. It seems like they never say anything but "Oh! Oh!" and what little else they do say really makes no sense. The best part of this book is that I finished it.