Saturday, October 16, 2010

SM5S: Affinity by Sarah Waters

A fun way to add variety to review formats this meme was created by Alipet at That's A Novel Idea.


Jenners at Life...With Books has the Mr Linky each week so we can share our posts .

1 book I read:   Affinity by Sarah Waters
 
2 words that describe the book: Victorian spiritualism
 
3 settings and/or characters I met:
  • The setting is London in the 1870's.
  • Margaret Prior is a sad and lonely young woman. She has lost her lover who has now married her brother and her beloved father whose work she shared has died. She becomes a prison visitor with the intention of writing about Millbank Prison and its inmates.
  • Selina Dawes is a disgraced medium, sent to prison for five years after a woman died following one of her seances.
4 things I liked/disliked about the book:
  • While I didn't like what I was reading the look inside a woman's prison was interesting. Some of the crimes were so petty they didn't seem to warrant such a punishment and the treatment of the women was cruel and totally lacking in compassion. It also reflects the very restricted lives of all women of that time.
  • I enjoyed Selina's accounts of her work as a medium. Spiritualism underwent a huge revival after 1850 and many Victorians consulted mediums and attended seances .
  • I love Sarah Waters writing - it's vivid and imaginative and the atmosphere she creates with her imagery is as dark and heavy as the subject...
'There have come fogs, too-yellow fogs and brown fogs, and fogs so black they might be liquid soot-fogs that seem to rise from the pavements as if brewed in the sewers in diabolical engines.'
  • At one point I decided that Affinity was going to be different from her other books I'd read - centred more on the relationship of Margaret and Selina and how they would overcome the difficulties facing them. I really should have known better because the diabolically clever Sarah Waters sucked me right and I was totally unprepared for the ending.............it was devastating!!
5 Stars or less for my rating.

4 Stars for Affinity................for me it didn't quite measure up to either Fingersmith or The Little Stranger but it's still very, very good.

8 comments:

  1. I really, really liked Fingersmith, and Affinity intrigues me.

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  2. I am half way thru the Little Stranger right now...
    this sounds like her "story" (not her writing) is lessening as she writes more books.?

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  3. Reviews for this are quite mixed but it sounds completely up my street.

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  4. Jessica - I've noticed the same mixed responses to The Little Stranger so I think this is an author some like/some don;t - I do!

    Stephanie - I'm sure you'd like this too but not quite so much perhaps.

    DesLily - No, I don't think so. The Little Stranger was her last book and I thought it was great. This one is just a little different in comparison.

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  5. I want to read this one badly--I love Sarah Waters, especially when it comes to her novels set in Victorian England!

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  6. So far, I've only read "Fingersmith" but I have "A Little Stranger" to try next. She does seem to come up with some involving and different story lines.

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  7. I actually was supposed to have read this by now. I just haven't had a chance. I am looking forward to some Waters, though!

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  8. Devastating is exactly the word I would use too. I'm looking forward to re-reading 'Fingersmith' again. I loved both 'The Little Stranger' and especially 'The Night Watch'. Waters is such a beautiful writer.

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