The Female Eunuch ~ Germaine Greer

http://emilydewsnap.wordpress.com/2010/12/31/321/

Until recently, The Female Eunuch wasn’t even lurking, War and Peace style, in my reading pipeline. Nobody had ever suggested that I read it, Amazon included, and it just never seemed to hone into view, so to speak, though I’ve always been a fan of Germaine Greer. It was actually a Guardian article, 40 Years of the Female Eunuch, that made my little grey cells prick up thoughtfully and, on a whim, I finished said article and instantly bought a second hand copy of the 1970 edition online. And once I started to cart the book around with me, I realised that it was no wonder it had never been recommended. Not because it is unrecommendable (far from it!), but rather because of the peculiar reactions it produced in people. I got sneers, raised eyebrows; ultimately looks of disgust with… what was that flickering… was that… it couldn’t be… could it? Yes, it could. It was fear! People were afraid of this book. What made it all the more bizarre is that I couldn’t find a single person who’d actually read it and when I asked any of the fearful what it was about they just said something along the lines of “man hating, feminist nonsense,” and the sentiment was almost certainly followed by “I can’t stand Germaine Greer.”

What I discovered in the first few pages of this book was life changing. Not in the sense that it opened my eyes to a new way of thinking, but that it corresponded, almost exactly, with what I’d spent my life being told was a weird perspective on life. I was wrapt. For once, someone other than my mother was in agreement and it felt like a homecoming. I was a feminist by default, not design, it would seem.

I haven’t felt this way about a book since Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook. Erudite, witty, insightful and delightful, this book should be every woman’s bible. The anger and force of a strong writer pervades throughout, but this is not merely about slating the male. In fact, Greer’s points are often as sympathetic to the man as to the woman, which is particularly pronounced in her denunciation of the way we are brought up to believe women the fairer sex; feeble creatures who should be treated like glass dolls to be looked after like possessions. As Greer rightly questions: what man wouldn’t be grateful to have the burden of being the protector lifted from his shoulders? In addition, when the question of female superiority is raised, Greer highly criticises women’s lib’ groups who attempt to elevate themselves above men, deeming them childish. These groups are, in her eyes, one of the reasons feminists have a bad reputation amongst the male population.

From burning witches to burning bras, The Female Eunuch is a history lesson on the lives of women, female liberation, the suffragette movement and the shortfall of western society. The inefficiency of our social order is Greer’s main bugbear, as it is mine. But, like anything that threatens to drastically change our way of life, it brings about a fear. Fear of disruption, fear of revolution, fear of change and the uprooting of the comfortable morals we lazily live by.

Of course, every person is different and not every point rang true for me. The unforeseen pooh-poohing of female ejaculation made me positively cross, since, without going into too much detail, I know for a fact that it is not a myth*. And, what with it being written some forty years ago, some sections are slightly outdated or irrelevant. It all added to the charm as I found myself comparing the life of the ‘70s woman to the woman in patriarchal society today and I put the book down and instantly wanted to know how Greer felt these days. Luckily for me, she has written another book: The Whole Woman.

Fiercely interesting from beginning to end, this book hit no lulls. Germaine Greer concisely presents the problem as she sees it, the history, the facts and the solution; a rational and shrewd theory of how society ought to be broken down and rebuilt on an equal footing.


FOOTNOTES:

* If you e-mail me nicely, I might explain


Recommended reading:

The Women’s Room ~ Marilyn French
The Golden Notebook ~ Doris Lessing

Clock Without Hands - Carson McCullers

http://emilydewsnap.wordpress.com/2010/11/18/clock-without-hands-carson-mccullers/

The year is 1953 and the USA is going through some changes. In the Deep South in a town called Milan, the abolition of slavery has brought about much confusion: a black man can go unnoticed in a white church, the price of keeping a servant has gone through the roof, mixed race children have started to populate the streets, employees are expected to pay income tax...

In this progressive, ever shifting clime, J. T. Malone has just months to live. A wishy-washy, malleable, middle-aged pharmacist adhering to a routine that hasn’t changes in decades, he muses over his life and its shortcomings; resenting his wife for her success, he questions the fate brought about by his supposed leukaemia, while his good friend, the once charismatic Judge Fox Clane, vehemently opposes the diagnosis. But looming death can change a person and Malone slowly begins to question the Judge’s judgements. Meanwhile, Fox Clane is having problems of his own: his grandson, Jester, offspring of his late son, has become obsessed with his amanuensis, the blue-eyed “nigra,” Sherman, who is tolerated in such capacity for once saving Clane’s life.

From the moment Malone bumps into Sherman on the street, the undertone of the novella changes, although the reader cannot be sure why at such an early stage. In Sherman, Malone senses danger. In Sherman, Carson McCullers elegantly presents the core issue of the story: the inevitable meshing of black and white and the subsequent knee-jerk reactions. And Sherman is angry. An orphan found on a church pew, he can only assume that his black mother was raped by a white man and, too ashamed to admit it, left him to fend for himself. After running away from an abusive white family, he spends his life searching for the woman who may be his mother, even writing to a famous singer in the hope of being reunited with the source of his black roots. But things are not always as they seem and the novel provides one speculation after another as to the history of Sherman’s parentage, each time leading to a dead end.

That the judge and Sherman are linked in more ways than one is evident, but the prior association is only hinted at throughout as the story dips in and out of the psyche of each character. We know that the judge’s son committed suicide on Christmas day some years previous, which Clane passes off as a random brainstorm. We know that he did so because he couldn’t stand his father’s racist views with particular reference to Sherman’s mother. And it becomes plain that with the judge’s ingrained bigotry and Sherman’s volatility, this placid connection cannot end happily. The loose ends do finally come together in one emotional, violent culmination.

As in life, there is no black and white in this book – no “goodies” or “baddies” – which adds a roundness and depth. The Judge, his arrogance and prejudices aside, is nothing more than a weak old man in denial; forlorn after the death of his beloved wife, he finds himself in a constant state of remoteness, to which he refuses to admit even to himself. Sherman is damaged goods: abandoned and mistreated, he rails against society and the friendship so eagerly offered to him by Jester. And Jester, himself an orphan, sees in Sherman a wonderful escape from the lifestyle he is used to; he is fascinated by Sherman and senses also the enigmatic link to the dead father he knows nothing about. Each character’s loneliness is created by distinct situations and each is bonded to the next in hatred or in love.

It’s not often that I shed a tear at a book and it was only unfortunate that I was sitting at my desk at work with a mouthful of sushi when I reached the end. However, I do fail to see how anyone could read Clock Without Hands and not get emotional. In such a small volume, McCullers manages to engage the reader, telling a tale with equal elements of hope and despair.



ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Carson McCullers deserves a review of her own. She was a remarkable woman who suffered from stroke from an early age. At the age of 31 she had a stroke that left her almost paralysed. From that moment on, she was only able to type with one finger. She went on to publish several novels, living until her untimely death at the age of 50.



RECOMMENDED READING:

Ragtime ~ E. L. Doctorow
The Secret Life of Bees ~ Sue Monk Kidd
Beloved ~ Toni Morrison
To Kill a Mockingbird ~ Harper Lee

Poison for Teacher - Nancy Spain

http://emilydewsnap.wordpress.com/2010/10/10/poison-for-teacher-nancy-spain

There’s a rural girls’ school, an assortment of bizarre characters, a murdered teacher and, of course, a play. It can only be a Nancy Spain whodunit.

Miriam Birdseye is as poised as ever; this time she’s prepared to take on the role of Elocution tutor at Radcliff Hall, right down to the clothes that she wears and her part in the school play. Engaged by the mannish and eccentric Miss Lipscoombe as an unlikely body-guarding service, Birdseye &co. set out for Brunton on Sea disguised as teachers, where all sorts of tomfoolery is afoot.

Radcliff Hall is an old-fashioned girls’ grammar in the county of Sussex. Recently deserted by the enterprising Miss bbirch, the school has turned to bedlam at the hands of one very bored traitor, and it is Birdseye &co’s responsibility to sniff this conspirator out. But it is only during a rehearsal of the school play, Quality Street, that the mischief turns sinister and the prankster finds herself the prankstee. Ex-actress and contemporary private detective, Miriam Birdseye (along with her partner in anticrime, Russian ex-ballerina, Natasha Du Vivian*), is the perfect candidate for investigating the murder of Radcliff Hall’s French teacher, the spiteful Miss Devaloys. But will she expose the murderer before s/he strikes again?

Poison for Teacher would never win the Booker, but, whether you catch on or not, between its sheets, Spain has raised a staunch eyebrow at the society in which she lived. Let’s take one reference from many; the most obvious: Radcliff Hall… otherwise known asRadclyffe Hall, one of the literary world’s most well-known lesbian writers. Not overtly sexual in tone, the underlying themes of homosexuality surface in Pukey, the bumbling Classics teacher, and her too-close interest in Gwylan Fork-Thomas, the elegant Chemistry mistress. It is also latent in the schoolgirls and their adolescent crushes on their tutors, and even in the relationship between Miriam and her partner, the recently separated “Darling Natasha”, who has no wish to be found by her dashing and brilliant husband, no matter how hard he searches.

The question of bigotry hangs over this novel and prevented its republication prior to its being picked up by Lesbian Landmarks in 1979. As well as Spain’s not so complementary portrayal of the only overtly gay character in the book, Roger Partick-Thistle**, there is the "woolly-haired", "dusky-skinned" and butch Miss Lesarium and the small-boned, “oriental” Jew. It would be easy to get on a high horse about these references, but only if they were to be taken out of context. Spain, being a lesbian and one that openly cohabited with a figure as public as herself, Joan Werner Laurie***, could only be attempting to create a story as a wry outsider inside a society that had pressured her to feign a public relationship with Gilbert Harding. Spain was writing as a writer who would be accepted and published, whilst still imparting a nod to the minorities. Radcliff Hall clearly represents Roedean, Spain’s own girls’ school from the same coastline; and the characters’ bigoted opinions, that of Roedean’s inhabitants.

Poison for Teacher is light-hearted entertainment. With a writing style somewhere between Wodehouse and Christie and not dissimilar to Pamela Branch, Spain delivers homicide with as much humour as she would farce. Witty, satirical and regrettably forgettable, this book would never be hailed for its literary content; however, I put it down feeling cheered and slightly mischievous with not a grisly thought in my head. Tongue-in-cheek and gentle, this novel of murder most horrid, is a surefire pick-me-up that will leave you feeling warm and fuzzy, but ultimately unmoved.

FOOTNOTES

* nee Nevkorina

** You’ll recognise him as the screaming queen

*** The creator of SHE Magazine

The Golden Notebook, Doris Lessing

This was not love at first sight. My immediate first thought: “Christ, it’s going to take me the rest of the year to read that!” First impression: “Seemingly ok story, charmingly kitsch, writing ok, but not as good as I was expecting from the exceptional pen of Doris Lessing…”

No, this was not love at first sight. But then true love rarely is. Having finished it I feel lost, abandoned, heartbroken. Like being in a love affair that’s reached its inevitable yet bitter end. I can’t even look at another book at the minute. Not in any serious light, anyway. I’m reading a Terry Pratchett, but it doesn't mean anything, it’s just for fun…

I don’t know when it happened. One moment it was just my latest read, the next I was cornering people at parties and spouting about politics and women and love and relationships and many more of the topics covered in this novel. No, Lessing was not aiming at too many elements when she refused to pick a definite theme, because people deal with all of these emotions all the time, over and over and all at once; they don’t separate one out and create the story of their lives with just that one. Although Lessing’s main character tries:

Writer of the bestselling novel, Frontiers of War, Anna swears she’ll never write again. A single mother from a failed marriage, she lives off the royalties from her book and volunteers at the CP office while life passes her by. This life she records in four different books: the black notebook, a report of her earlier years in Africa; the red notebook, an account of her communist views, her association with the reds and finally her doubts; in the yellow notebook she writes fiction: a short story about a character called Ella, who’s life is so similar to her own, it’s hard, at times, to differentiate between the two, and a list of short story ideas; and in the blue notebook she writes a diary of sorts, an account of her psychoanalysis sessions and of her musings on life. Finally, losing her grip on sanity, she attempts to bring the hub of each together in one golden notebook.

Each of the notebooks is essential to both reader and character. Each one adds depth to Anna, explains who she is and why. The red notebook gives a foundation for her opinions. The black notebook shows her history, the blue its effects on her present life. The yellow notebook shows what she thinks of herself: Ella is Anna, but weaker, less vital, more foolish, everything that Anna considers herself, fictionalised and emphasised. The story of Anna and the story of Ella are deeply entwined, but only in terms of reality versus the story, and not within her own diary and the story.

When the story of Ella “finishes”, Anna continues writing in the yellow notebook; noting story ideas, which give us, as readers, a stark insight into what is going through her mind and what is happening in her life. As a writer, this device fascinated me: I have a notebook for ideas and jottings myself and it never occurred to me that a stranger could find anything out about me through reading it and yet it is more revealing than any diary. And I found that the whole book had this way of making me review myself over and over, like holding up a mirror.

I could wax lyrical for pages and pages about how each thought I’ve ever had is right there in that book and how I didn’t just read it, I lived it, and am still living it; how Lessing seems to touch something. That’s all I can say, really; that above all else, this book touches the v.core of female semantic thought.

It is books like this that make me suspect that I’ve been a little too generous when giving out stars in the past so this to me remains as starless as it is priceless!

The Historian, Elizabeth Kostova

Kostova seemed to be eminating a classic gothic novel...

This book started out full of promise. Due to my lifelong obsession with the undead of the fangy persuasion, brought about by none other than Mr Stoker himself, I was totally hooked from the very first page. I found myself passing on nights out in favour of going to bed early with my book, hot chocolate and the kind of excited feeling rarely felt by the over 13s. Delicious and unashamedly gothic in true ghost story stylee, it took me to a reality where vampires were a possibility. Dark, threatening shadows lurked in dank, dusty corners, insinuating, but never explicitly jumping out and saying "boo". Sadly, it was too good to last.

The unnamed narrator is a young, charmingly naive girl, growing up in Holland. While scouring her father's library for reading material, she happens across an old handwritten manuscript with the salutation: "My dear and unfortunate successor…" On discovering his daughter’s find, the narrator’s father begins suddenly to act quite strangely and confiscates the manuscript. Rather than desisting, however, our narrator’s curiosity is stirred. Drawn into an ever thickening plot of history and family ties, she finds herself learning the scandalous truth about her heritage and her missing mother (previously thought dead) and all the while following her father around the world on one v.dangerous and unlikely mission.

Disappointment set in when the initial excitement I felt inevitably wore thin and I started to notice the mediocrity of the writing. No-one one "was" or "did" everyone "seemed". Even when it was a direct statement eg: "she seemed to be looking straight at me," and once this had come to my attention, I couldn't help but pick up on it every single time*. To add salt to the wound, the writing was v.Americanised. I found spellings such as "ax," words like "gotten" and references to the "morgue" detracted from the gothic Olde English feel.

Because the writing lacked staying power, I soon became bogged down in the convoluted plot and was relieved when the story changed from being narrated through letters to the "present day" story it had started out as. In fact, the novel would have been very dry had Kostova not managed to dredge it back from the recesses time and again with this same writing device, meaning that at some point, each of the main characters takes the lead through letters. Still, there were points where one narrator banged on a little too long and I found myself skimming large chunks. In addition, the length of these sections rendered the letters-written-on-the-fly motif totally implausible. I also found that the characters left a lot to be desired: despite each having their turn at storytelling, they remain 2D plot carriers throughout, rather than well rounded people. That said, the way the stoylines interchange and weave together is quite magical, although their perfect collaboration only adds to the implausibility.

It's an unrealistic book, to say the least, and difficult to enjoy without suspending belief to accommodate wild coincidence wholeheartedly. Because of this, it reads v.much like a children's book and I would probably have found it far more enjoyable had I read it as a teenager. Nonetheless, it is a decidedly chilling tale written in an exciting, fast paced style, not dissimilar to The Da Vinci Code. In fact Kostova manages to bring in a conspiracy theory of her v.own creation. And much like The Da Vinci Code, it's an easy read with some interesting facts and talking points: I instantly started scouring Wikipaedia for more information about Vlad Ţepes (aka The Impaler) and there were problems to ponder, like how to enter Communist Hungary, even though the point in question was eventually discarded with a v.unimaginative someone-magic-and-unexplainable-sorted-it-out-somehow wave of the hand.

Despite its setbacks, I did enjoy this novel for what it was. Kostova has managed to recapture some of the thrill of a good ghost story, rarely seen in this day and age, and despite myself, even towards the bitter end, the book still managed to make the hairs stand up on the backs of my arms.

Not a thumping good read, but a bold attempt at rehashing Stoker's classic.

* Average seemed to be 5 a page

Automated Alice, Jeff Noon

“In the last years of his life, the fantasist, Lewis Carroll, wrote a third Alice book. This mysterious work was never published or even shown to anybody. It has only recently been discovered. Now, at last, the world can read of Automated Alice and her fabulous adventures in the future. That's not quite true. "Automated Alice" was in reality written by Zenith O'Clock, the writer of wrongs. In the book, he sends Alice through a clock's workings. She travels through time, tumbling from the Victorian age to land in 1998, in Manchester, a small town in the North of England. Oh dear, that's not at all right. This trequel to "Alice in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking Glass" was actually written by Jeff Noon. Zenith O'Clock is only a character invented by Jeff Noon and any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely accidental. What Alice encounters in the automated future is mostly accidental too...a series of misadventures, even weirder than your dreams."

It’s sounds bizarre… and it is. Alice Liddle of Alice in Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking Glass is back. Whether you choose to believe Lewis Carroll was a reputedly paedophilic pervert or not, you can’t deny that his literature for children is original, vivid, some may say unsurpassed. Or is it? Jeff Noon’s giving him a run for his money, that much I know. Only this time Alice finds herself in a world of automated horses and whacky technology.

It’s the future, 1996 to be precise*, and Alice finds herself trapped in a termite mound after chasing a parrot into a grandfather clock. Sounding familiar? She soon finds herself in a psychedelic Manchester that isn’t quite like the one she left behind. She has until two o’clock to get back to 18— for her writing lesson; but first she must catch Aunt Ermintrude’s pesky parrot and find all of her missing jigsaw pieces, which isn’t easy when she’s the prime suspect in a string of grizzly murders that seem to crop up wherever she goes. On top of which there are speeding horseless carriages stampeding along every road, she hasn’t done her homework and she has no idea which direction Dewsbury is in. Luckily her doll, Celia, is on hand to give her a leg up.

Noon effortlessly captures Carroll’s style in this quirky trequal to the original classics. Unlike Carroll, however, Noon takes a slightly more menacing approach to recreating Alice’s tale of adventure: the encounter with a doped-up snail can easily be associated with the caterpillar in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland; however unlike the hookah smoking caterpillar this snail invites Alice to pop a “wurm”, which takes her on a trip she’ll certainly never forget. It is a tongue-in-cheek, absurdist romp, sometimes slipping from wry wit to sheer silliness in the form of completely pointless and juvenile toilet humour, which knocked it right down in my estimations. These lapses diminished the poignancy of the more satirical moments, of which there are plenty, and devalue the sheer aptitude of the puns, riddles and rhymes.

That said, it’s an easy, fun read, intelligently devised and with authentic pictures in true Alice in Wonderland stylee, often with discreet references to Noon’s other books tucked away in the milieu. A worth while venture for Carroll and Noon fans alike.

* OK, it’s the future for a Victorian character

The Kiter Runner, Khaled Hosseini

Having watched the film, I was reluctant to read The Kite Runner when it was nominated in my last reading group. It was an average film, in my humble opinion; far too much crammed into the allotted time and yet still too long. Nontheless, the book had been bought for me as a present and I am never one to turn up my nose simply because “I just didn’t fancy it”. After all, you can miss some real gems this way.

Amir and Hassan are a young pair of scallywags in Afghanistan in the early 1970s. They have a seemingly unbreakable bond until one day Amir is faced with the opportunity to show his loyalty to Hassan in one bold, brave swoop. He fails miserably and as such the friendship breaks down. What follows is the break down of the country as the Russians invade and the power is passed into the trigger-happy hands of the Taliban. What also follows is the break down of the storyline, which suddenly goes from a beautiful in-depth study of friendship, parental love and romance to a plot-driven action thriller, complete with cunning disguises and unlikely coincidence.

With the invasion of the Russians, Amir and his father are granted asylum in America and so they flee. It is here that Amir meets his wife. They have a happy marriage, but one thing is missing: a child. One day, after years of not conceiving, Amir receives a phonecall and is offered the chance to atone for his cowardice of years ago. It seems Amir can still help Hassan, even if it involves plunging back into the lion’s den that Afghanistan has become; even if it plunges the remainder of the book into a pit of bizarre twists of fate that all eventually curve back round and tie off neatly at the end of the book, in a way life just doesn’t.

This is a lovely book of friendship; simple to read and gripping in equal measures. The first half of the book is full of atmospheric imagery: mouthwatering descriptions of lamb kebab, days spent treating kite string with powdered glass, bitterly cold winters, reading under the pomegranate tree. The characters are complex and beautifully written. It is the second half of the book that lets it down, when Hosseini appears to have had enough of the soppy stuff and decides to go down the action route to liven things up a bit. Except that it really doesn’t. The delicacy of the bonds he creates in the first half are pushed aside to make way for twists in the plot; some of which you can spot a mile off, others which wouldn’t even have crossed your mind, because no writer would make the rooky mistake of stooping to that level of total unrealism, would they?

Make no mistake, I enjoyed this book hugely. Especially the descriptions of Kabul in the 1970s; particularly fascinating as a subject I know next to nothing about. The characterisations are strong and the relationships between Amir and his “Baba” and Amir and Hassan are infinitely intricate. I would definitely recommend it for this alone, despite later setbacks. Definitely worth a trip to the library!

The Wooden Overcoat, Pamela Branch

Who says girls aren't funny?

When I unwrapped Pamela Branch's The Wooden Overcoat on my birthday last year, I was more than a little confused; the format was odd, the blurb sounded naff, I'd never heard of it and there was a quote from the queen on the back - as if I have the same sense of humour as that old trout! Nevertheless, a few months later, curiosity got the better of me and I plunged into Chapter One. Imagine my surprise when the very first line made me laugh out loud. And I don't mean I gave a wry smile, I guffawed so loudly the wine I'd been about to swallow shot out of my nose.

It's obvious from the off that Branch's style is far from austere. She has an easy, P. G. Wodehouse-esque way of turning the serious into the comical; except that Wodehouse only ever went as far as the stealing of pearl necklaces and getting engaged to the wrong girl. The Wooden Overcoat, however, takes on a far more macabre tack; the body count could rival that of a horror film, and that's not including the "rets". Perhaps it's the unlikely contrast between the grim and the farcical, but for some reason the two work together with hilarious consequences.

The Asterisk Club is an exclusive and clandestine boarding house for wrongly aquitted murderers, as Benji Cann has just discovered. A dangerous combination of people under usual circumstances, but the club has very strict rules that prohibit the bumbing off of fellow guests. So when the seemingly unsuspecting neighbours in the adjacent house begin carting around dead bodies in an amateurish fashion, the members of the Asterisk club are most confused; except of course the most recent addition, Benji, who is the first to fall victim. They vow to keep a close eye on these clumsy part-timers who are wavering dangerously close to their turf. Meanwhile, the inhabitants next door, each in a bid to protect their respective other halves (while secretly suspecting them) are finding their first shot at disposing of dead bodies less successful than they might have hoped. This combined with the fact that a large family of rats has taken the opportunity to infest the skirting boards is stretching tempers somewhat and the rat-man will insist on going into minute detail about his very own hush-hush methods for disposing of "rets".

The improbability of this premise does absolutely nothing to deter; once I started reading, I just couldn't stop. I found myself absolutely crying with laughter while in the most inopportune of places: on the bus, at work, at the train station, in the waiting room at the doctors' surgery, anywhere other people are generally found, actually. And it carried on long after I'd put the book down. On more than one occasion I caught myself chortling as a few lines popped into my head whilst walking down the road or waiting in the queue for a cashpoint. And I think my work colleagues will clearly remember the day I shook and snorted with repressed laughter for, at the very least, an hour after my lunch break, muttering "...tide's out". I shall leave that one with you to find out for yourself.

The one thing that displeases me is that every single one of P. G. Wodehouse's books has been reprinted over and over, and rightly so, but when it comes to something as good as Pamela Branch's masterpiece, why so long? True, it was written in the early fifties and clearly relates to that era; but as such I find the almost naïve narrative rather refreshing. With believable characters, each sporting their own eccentricities, and an effortlessly deft writing style, Pamela Branch has written the unforgettable and I firmly believe that this book should never have gone out of print.

The Wooden Overcoat was reprinted by the Rue Morgue Press in 2006, on luxuriously thick, shiny paper, and since then the other three Pamela Branch novels have followed suit. They sit on my shelves, patiently waiting to brighten a gloomy Sunday.

Fingersmith, Sarah Waters

“A Giant roller-coaster of a novel in 400 sizzling chapters. A searing indictment of domestic servitude in the eighteenth century with some hot gypsies thrown in” ~ Edmund Blackadder

So maybe it’s not 400 chapters long, but Sarah Waters’ Fingersmith is most certainly a roller-coaster ride; portraying a believable, well-researched account of eighteenth century Britain with some stormy lesbian action to boot.

From the moment I picked up this book I was captivated. It was by sheer accident that it came to be in my possession; being categorised as “Lesbian Fiction” I naturally assumed it would be some sort of Mills and Boon drivel with twice the boobs. I couldn’t have been more wrong:

Susan Tinder has been brought up a pickpocket (a fingersmith, if you will) in South London. Life seems an unchanging constant until one day a family friend, known only as Gentleman, shows up on the doorstep with a daring plan; a plan that, if successful, will make Susan a very rich woman. He whisks her off to the country where she is to serve as a maid to a rich lady named Maud Lilly. It all seems straight forward enough; her only task is to serve and observe and paint a picture of Maud that will render her insane. But as the plot thickens, it becomes clear that there is more to this scheme than meets the eye.

There are many unexpected twists and turns in every direction and, at times, it is difficult to tell who is conning who. Which contrary to being convoluted and off-putting actually compels the reader to read on and unfold the intricate plot. This is a novel cram-packed with action of Dickensian motif, with a far less arduous style: lunatic asylums, evil villains, grim prison cells, lost and stolen fortunes and, most importantly, murder most foul. As the story sinks deeper into the scam, so the tone becomes more cloying and claustrophobic until finally reaching a huge and almost exhilarating climax.

In plot and theme, this book reminds me very much of Wilkie Collins' The Woman in White, though the classic plot has been reworked to create something far more immediately accessible and carnal. This is a thumping good read, if ever a read I thumped; beautifully written with bodice ripping passion, con artists and a love story. This is melodrama at its very best.