Fiction: Hysteria consistently supplies the abiding dynamic that fuels this slaphappy, melodramatic romp for more than 500 pages of contrived story telling. It is impossible to believe a word it, and worse still, it really doesn't matter. Eileen Battersby reviews Fingersmith by Sarah Waters
Among the many problems with Fingersmith is the gleeful authorial disregard for detail, logic, basic credibility, the needs of language itself, the intelligence, never mind the patience, of the reader.
Having previously penned Tipping the Velvet, viewed as a "lesbian Moll Flanders", it seems fair to ask why Waters has produced another variation of Defoe's heroine - if not exactly a variation of either Defoe's or her own previous novel - although this time she also apes Dickens.
But that she has chosen to write a period novel at all is odd indeed. As, unlike most writers who attempt historical narratives, she appears to have neglected to undertake even token research. It is as if random misfits from the present day have merely been dispatched to the 1860s. Aside from the fact this yarn is told by two of the most unconvincing characters ever recruited for the task of sharing a narrative, Waters, who clearly has no difficulty with taking risks (the more outlandish the better), has no interest in aspiring towards English as spoken in mid 19th- century London.
When an author takes prose itself so casually, evident from curiously modern dialogue and little attention to the grammar and syntax of social classes, it is small wonder that the reader quickly disengages.
Life among the criminal classes, as Waters is aware, has long provided the stuff of fiction. And stuff looms large here. Sue speaks to the reader and tells the story of how she was raised by Mrs Sucksby, a lovable old con artist with, it seems, a face, body and personal hygiene straight out of Hogarth. So there was Sue, brought up among thieves, freaks and all matter of recycled stolen goods, but lovingly nurtured and protected from the rest of the domestic villains by the Fagan-like Sucksby, who specialises in stolen and/or abandoned babies.
Well, behold, a scam is born when one of Mrs Sucksby's buddies, the dastardly evil and dastardly handsome character known as Gentleman or Richard, announces his plan. Having fallen in with a circle through which he has met a wealthy old book-dealer who keeps Maud, a luscious niece, captive in a country house, Richard has decided that he is going to marry the girl, who is usefully stupid and "desperate" for him, and then disappear with her fortune.
In order to do this, he needs an accomplice. Good old Sue looks ideal to play the part of a new lady's maid that will replace Maud's current maid, whose life and health are to be ruined by Richard. The plan brings joy to all at Ma Sucksby's humble and smelly hearth. And as Sue is truly a bad 'un herself, she agrees to do it, providing she gets a few thousand for herself - she wants to give the loot to Mrs Sucksby in honour of all the old lady has done for her.
But make no mistake, Sue, for all the love she has received in unlikely surroundings, is tough. Walters might well have enjoyed herself immensely writing this caricature of a novel peopled by caricatures who all sound the same but the joke wears very thin, very quickly. The nasty old uncle is, of course, a pornographer who uses Maud as part of his business.
All of this is very predictable, if not quite as predictable as the erotic hue that quickly infiltrates the relationship that develops between the niece and the lady's maid.
Furtive innuendo such as "'He won't want to stand. It's rough, when you stand. You only stand when you haven't a place to lie in or must be quick. A gentleman would embrace his wife on a couch or a bed. A bed would be best.' 'A bed,' she said, 'like this?'" - and heaving sexuality soon becomes far more explicit and there are several contrived interludes, not least one involving a sharp tooth and a silver thimble. Sue proves a resourceful individual, somewhat more resourceful than Waters, but even tough old Sue is no match for Maud. All of this is so obvious that Waters need not have even bothered with the caddish Richard. It is curious that although this embarrassingly convoluted tale approaches epic length, most readers will have figured out the finale dangerously early on in the telling.
Lewd men in hansom cabs, white skin, trips to the madhouse, babies switched at birth and a murderess for a mother - yes, Waters is really doing her bit to reconstruct shades of Victorian London. The catch is that everything is so obviously modern.
But history is not as relevant to the narrative as sex, sleaze and, above all, pornography. Unsubtle and overblown, Fingersmith is crude, stagey and self-conscious, but it is also, for all the screaming and shouting and sense of action, a lazy book. There are no nuances, no art, no silences.
Assessed as an individual novel, it offers very little aside from a clichéd view of the standard Victorian melodrama - the only invention is the play on the notion of wronged women. Here, the women do a lot of the wrongdoing and then, hey presto, deceit and betrayal are acceptable and forgiven when all in the name of a love that Waters works hard at creating yet fails to render convincing. It comes as a surprise to discover how boring a frenzied novel about multifaceted deception can be.
It is difficult not to struggle through the apparently endless pages of this bloated novel without being aware of two vastly superior novels of similar genres. Emma Donoghue's Slammerkin (Virago, 2000), set in the 18th century, is exciting, convincing and atmospheric, all things which Fingersmith is not. Even more impressive is Anne Haverty's beautiful and assured performance, The Far Side of A Kiss (Chatto, 2000). Either of these novels would have been far more deserving of Booker shortlisting in their year of publication than Fingersmith merits its surprise contention for this year's prize, to be decided on October 22nd.
Eileen Battersby is Literary Correspondent of The Irish Times
Fingersmith. By Sarah Waters. Virago, 548 pp. £15.99
Eileen Battersby