Fingersmith - Sarah Waters

This is one of those books that has enjoyed both critical acclaim (a Booker nomination) and popular appeal. I enjoyed Tipping The Velvet, an earlier example of Waters’ sapphic Victorian melodrama, so I came into this expecting an entertaining romp.

At first I was somewhat bemused. The set-up was neat and atmospheric but then everything appears to slow down catastrophically in an over-detailed sequence in a country house. Things began to drag.

And then, and then... round about p.150 Waters superbly executed a narrative switchback that literally took my breath away, and I was off. The reason for the earlier pedantry became clear, and the rest was pretty well pure pleasure.

Clever stuff.