Fingersmith and Affinity (1999). Yet Waters' concern is more pointedly with those historically disenfranchised, particularly lesbians. Tipping the Velvet uncovers lesbian communities in music-halls, where 'Toms […] make a – a career – out of kissing girls', on the streets which form a shop window for the 'gay world' of prostitution, amidst the upper classes who entertain 'odd and secret tastes' at lavish clubs, and in public houses and Socialist meetings. Waters' early popularity was due in part to this (still) risqué subject matter, combined with the thrilling menace of her historical settings. Also set in the 1940s, The Little Stranger also differs from Waters' previous novels. It is her first with no overtly lesbian characters. Initially, Waters set out to write a book about the economic changes brought by socialism in postwar Britain, and reviewers note the connection with Evelyn Waugh. [22] During the novel's construction, it turned into a ghost story, focusing on a family of gentry who own a large country house they can no longer afford to maintain. Margaret withdraws a large amount of money that her father left her in his will. She then convinces the family to go on vacation without her so the house will be empty. Everything is prepared for them to flee the country together, but on the appointed night, Selina never comes. One of the most widely-read novelists of her generation, Waters has helped make densely-realised evocations of the British past into a respectable staple of contemporary fiction. Sarah Waters was born in Neyland, Pembrokeshire, Wales in 1966. She later moved to Middlesbrough, England, when she was eight years old. She grew up in a family that included her father Ron, mother Mary, and a "much older" sister. [2] Her mother was a housewife and her father an engineer who worked on oil refineries. [3] She describes her family as "pretty idyllic, very safe and nurturing". Her father, "a fantastically creative person", encouraged her to build and invent. [4]

Margaret Prior, the protagonist. Margaret is from an upper-class family that resides in Chelsea, London, and begins to visit Millbank some months after attempting suicide following her father's death.Royal Society of Literature All Fellows". Royal Society of Literature. Archived from the original on 5 March 2010 . Retrieved 10 August 2010. My fourth Sarah Waters book, probably her least popular, and also probably my favorite. This one replaces the goofy melodrama and teenage self-discovery of Fingersmith and Tipping the Velvet with a dark, claustrophobic tale of deception and constraint. It’s not comforting reading, but it’s well-written, intense and feels authentic in the psychology of its characters and the details of its Victorian setting. Fingersmith was made into a serial for BBC One in 2005, starring Sally Hawkins, Elaine Cassidy and Imelda Staunton. Waters approved of the adaptation, calling it "a really good quality show", and said it was "very faithful to the book. It was spookily faithful to the book at times, which was exciting." [14] The novel was later adapted again by South Korean director Park Chan-wook into the 2016 film The Handmaiden, which set the story in Japanese-occupied Korea in the 1930s. A friend gave me a copy of The Little Stranger. So that’s the next one I’ll read based on her recommendation. I think it has more of a horror or supernatural element, which wasn’t quite there in Affinity.

Affinity - a feeling of closeness and understanding that someone has for another person because of their similar qualities, ideas, or interests.Waters had a “very ordinary”, very happy childhood, in what she calls a lower-middle-class family in 70s Pembrokeshire (she was “a horrible swot” and die-hard Doctor Who fan). But she describes herself as a nervous, anxious child, to the extent that she was given to bed-time rituals, “a bit of a tyranny that went on for years”. A friend recently told her you could guess that she suffers from anxiety from her work, but in person she appears the least neurotic of writers (as well as the most unassuming). “That really intrigues me, the fact that we can pass through the world seeming very calm and sorted and then go home and close the door and be in bits.” I honestly do not typically care for the paranormal stories, but under the guidance of Waters, a pretty great read. With the unexpected ending, I admit I did not like it, but then again, I guess it was good, in that way only great writers can have me appreciating an otherwise unacceptable 180. In my opinion, the author better have a damn good reason as well as some damn good transitioning with foreshadowing for these endings. It is a world that is made of love. Did you think there is only the kind of love your sister knows for her husband? Did you think there must be here, a man with whiskers, and over here, a lady in a gown? Haven't I said, there are no whiskers and gowns where spirits are? And what will your sister do if her husband should die, and she should take another? Who will she fly to then, when she has crossed the spheres? For she will fly to someone, we will all fly to someone, we will all return to that piece of shining matter from which our souls were torn with another, two halves of the same. It may be that the husband your sister has now has that other soul, that has the affinity with her soul—I hope it is. But it may be the next man she takes, or it may be neither. It may be someone she would never think to look to on the earth, someone kept from her by some false boundary...” Gothic tale, psychological study, puzzle narrative…superbly suspenseful…This is gripping, astute fiction that feeds the mind and senses.” Her next novel The Paying Guests (2014), set in the inter-war years, more than made up for it. “I wanted it to be the big lesbian love story,” she says. “I wanted to throw everything at it. In the end I put way too much sex in, so I had to take some out.”

Affinity was Waters' second novel, and in many ways, it feels almost like a trial run for her third, Fingersmith, which explores some of the same themes, settings, and also (repeatedly) pulls the rug out from under the reader's feet. That's not to say that Affinity pales in comparison, or no longer stands well on its own, but I will say that while I did like it well enough while reading, it was definitely the clever, unexpected ending that fully sold it to me—the pay-off comes at the end. We are the same, you and I. We have seen cut, two halves, from the same piece of shining matter. Oh, I could say, I love you—that is a simple thing to say . . . But my spirit does not love yours—it is entwined with it. Our flesh does not love: our flesh is the same . . ." Mary Ann Cook, a fellow prisoner on Selina's ward. Her name may have been inspired by the serial killer Mary Ann Cotton. I don’t know if I thought about it much, really. I know that, for a long time, I wanted to be an archaeologist – like lots of kids. And I think I knew I was headed for university, even though no one else in my family had been. I really enjoyed learning. I remember my mother telling me that I might one day go to university and write a thesis, and explaining what a thesis was; and it seemed a very exciting prospect. I was clearly a bit of a nerd. [4]Her debut work was the Victorian picaresque Tipping the Velvet, published by Virago Press in 1998. The novel took 18 months to write. [17] The book takes its title from Victorian slang for cunnilingus. [8] Waters describes the novel as a "very upbeat [...] kind of a romp". [17] And what will your sister do if her husband should die, and she should take another? Who will she fly to then, when she has crossed the spheres? For she will fly to someone, we will all fly to someone, we will all return to that piece of shining matter from which our souls are torn with another, two halves of the same. It may be that the husband your sister has now has that other soul, that has affinity with her soul--I hope it is. But it maybe the next man she takes, or it may be neither. It may be someone she would never think to look to on the earth, someone kept from her by some false boundary... Affinity won the Stonewall Book Award and Somerset Maugham Award. Andrew Davies wrote a screenplay adapting Affinity and the resulting feature film premiered 19 June 2008 at the opening night of Frameline the San Francisco LGBT Film Festival at the Castro Theater. Oh wow, that was so good! I haven’t read Sarah Waters before and I will definitely be reading more. Set in the early 1870s in London, Margaret Prior, recovering from a suicide attempt after the death of her father, starts visiting the female prisoners in Milbank prison and becomes obsessed with one, Selina Dawes. Selina is a young spirit medium given a four year sentence after a seance went wrong, leaving her patron, Mrs Brink, dead.

However, Waters' writing detailing delicious descriptions of life in a Victorian women's prison was awesome. So awesome in fact that I felt like I was there in the bleak and rigid clasp of fear and despair - haunted (haha) by the question if the supernatural could be real. In fact, having read most of the book at night now that the darkness has gripped us up here in the North, made Affinity the perfect read in the run up to Halloween.This novel unfolds very, very, very slowly. It's way shorter than the other book I have read by Sarah Waters, Fingersmith, but it doesn't contain as many plot twists as that one does. Affinity feels a lot slower. I didn't mind that much, because I happen to love the historical period, and I can easily be entertained by the gloomy mood. Still, after a while I started to wish for the end, because about ninety percent of this novel is build-up. Margaret's stark despair and misery really got to me. My heart was breaking for her all throughout. Sarah Waters has an incredible ability to make you care so much for the characters that they almost become real people to you.