Rating: 
Summary: Dickens meets Gilbert & Sullivan
Review: Entertaining as a picaresque adventure, melodramatic and unexpected, this is at heart a love story between two people raised at opposite ends of British society with every reason to hate each other, yet able to see in the other the best of herself.
Rating:
Summary: Breathtaking!
Review: Sarah Waters takes her readers on an engrossing journey set in 19th century London. A tale of love and betrayal written for the heart who has known both. Romantic, dark, brutal and triumphant...a joy to read.
Rating:
Summary: Totally Hooked!
Review: I have become a great fan of Ms. Water's work. _Tipping the Velvet_ remains my all-time favorite, but this almost tops it -- Great fiction, no matter what your lifestyle. A richly detailed story of love and betrayal set in 1860's England.The two heroines, Sue and Maud, live nearly parallel lives except for their social class. Sue grows up on the mean streets of London slums, Maud in the gilded cage of the English countryside. Both are confined by their circumstances, both seek a way out. When the opportunity presents itself in the form of a con man named Gentleman, they leap at the chance. Little do they now what his plan has in store for them. Fingersmith is full of twists, each more surprising than the other. I got this on Mother's Day and finished it the following Thursday. I couldn't get enough!
Rating:
Summary: Magnificent!
Review: This book left me breathless with admiration and enjoyment. I can think of no novelist writing today so accomplished on multiple levels as is Sarah Waters. Fingersmith is first a great story. The plot grabs the reader's attention from the beginning and remains compelling to the last word. Yes, it's a page-turner! But so much more.... The literary depth is extraordinary; the writing is flawless; the characters are perfectly drawn; the scholarship remarkable. Superlatives cannot adequately describe how interesting, intelligent, rich, wise, and just plain good this book is. Bravo!
Rating:
Summary: Excellent suspense
Review: Sarah Waters's third offering, Fingersmith, is one of those books that manages to sustain its pacing and interest throughout, despite any number of Dickensian twists and turns in the truly byzantine plot. The tone is dark and melancholy (although lighter than Affinity's), but there's always a glimmer of hope to keep you reading. Waters's pacing, setting, and characterization are among the most remarkable I've encountered. The one thing that bothers me most about Waters's books is the public's and critics' tendency to lump them in with "lesbian fiction." What the heck is that? I'm not a lesbian, and I still find her books thoroughly engaging, interesting, riveting, and, frankly, fantastic. I'll read anything she writes, no matter what the sexuality of the characters....Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Awesome!
Review: This is an incredible book. She takes you through so many twist and turns that it is impossible to put the book down. Wonderful writer!
Rating: 
Summary: Innocents, villains, scoundrels and greed
Review: Young Sue Trinder, a denizen of back-alley 1860's London, considers herself most fortunate, raised by the likes of Mrs. Sucksby, a "baby farmer" who oversees a dilapidated house of "fingersmiths" (pickpockets) and assorted petty criminals. After all, hasn't Mrs. Sucksby raised Sue as if she were her own daughter? So when Gentleman, a dapper con-artist, appears in the damp and murky kitchen of the house on Lant Street requesting Sue's assistance in a swindle with great potential, who can refuse? Mrs. Sucksby appreciates this opportunity for Sue to make her fortune (half of which will go to Mrs. Sucksby) and seventeen-year-old Sue agrees with a heavy heart, reluctant to leave the only security she's ever known. After rigorous practice as a "lady's maid", Sue leaves London with Gentleman bound for the quiet countryside, well-rehearsed for her entry into polite society. Her assignment is to please Gentleman's "mark", the heiress Miss Maud Lilly, and gain her confidence. As with Water's previous novel, AFFINITY, the reader settles willingly upon a spider web as skillful and innovative as any this author has written. Everything seems obvious on the surface, and yet nothing is ever as it first appears. With a firm grip, Waters draws her readers into unimaginable situations, through frightful experiences and harrowing ordeals, only to surface inside-out at the turn of a page. The original shock is delivered at the beginning of the second half of the novel, but from then on, beware. Peopled with villainous "gentlemen", cruel servants and warped intentions, this is a dangerous world, to be navigated with utmost caution, ready to scream bloody murder. And only Sarah Waters can deliver you safely.
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Summary: BOLD AND POWERFUL
Review: Perspicacious and powerful, English writer Sarah Water's third offering is as lavish as her bold debut, Tipping The Velvet (1999). Once again the author returns to the period and places she so perfectly limns, while filling her complexly plotted tale with dissolute characters bent on nefarious doings. It is 19th century London, Lant Street, a dark thoroughfare home to fingersmiths (thieves), most notably Mrs. Sucksby, a double-dealing Dickensian matron, if there ever was one. She traffics in castoff babies, whom she doses with a spot of gin when they wail, and is landlady to an assortment of petty criminals. There is Mr. Ibbs who keeps his locksmith's brazier going so he can melt down pilfered coins, and Sue Trinder, a 17-year-old orphan, who receives unusually tender care from Mrs. Sucksby. An engaging charlatan, Richard Rivers known as Gentleman, suggests a fanciful plot that will make them all wealthy. He intends to scam elderly Mr. Lilly, a collector of rare books, by marrying Lilly's niece, Maud, described as "fey, an innocent, a natural." Once the pair are wed and she has received her inheritance, Maud will be consigned to a madhouse, and the plotters will divide their booty. In order to ensure the success of his plan, Gentleman seeks the assistance of Sue. He asks her to pretend to be Susan Smith and gain employment as lady's maid to Maud so that she can help convince Maud of Gentleman's love for her. Sue agrees, and after instructions on how to behave leaves the only home she has ever known for Briar which she finds to be "a muddle of yards and out-houses and porches, and more dark walls and shuttered windows and the sound of barking dogs." Her reward for being an acceptable lady's maid? She will be allowed to keep "the pieces of soap that Miss Maud leaves in her wash-stand." As chary as she is of being in this strange place, Sue finds herself drawn to the hapless Maud. The two women become unexpectedly close. Then, in a sudden amazing twist, we find that things are not as they seem and people are not who we believed them to be. When the events that led up to this time are recounted through another's eyes we discover secrets long hidden and the shocking truth about Mr. Lilly's collection. Maud, too, has a story to tell. Circumstances force the two women to respond in differing ways which leads to a horrifying crime before a completely unexpected denouement. "Fingersmith" is an epic gothic novel rich in detail and ripe with suspense. Sarah Waters is an author both cerebral and cunning; she is a virtuoso wielding a powerful pen.
- Gail Cooke
Rating:
Summary: Wonderfully ambitious exploration of inner space
Review: Reminiscent of THE DRESS LODGER and SLAMMERKIN. Waters's knowledge of Victorian attitudes toward women, sexuality and pornography impeccable and brilliantly woven with two women's inner lives. Is the fabric of life a product of nature or nuture? A Victorian would have said "Class Will Out" -- being born to a class dictates the character of a person, but what if the child is removed and raised in the streets of London? Is the child born of a murderer born to hang? Staggering and engrossing. Brilliant.
Rating:
Summary: A Must Read
Review: I just couldn't put this book down! After having read Tipping the Velvet, and Affinity, I waited (somewhat impatiently) for the publication of Fingersmith.... it was worth the wait. The characters are well developed, well written, and with the plot twists and turns, it was just a terrific read. I highly recommend this book!
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