Fingersmith, Sarah Waters

John Everett Millais, Twins, 1876

(May 21) This book Blew. Me. Away. By the end of Part One, I felt like an innocent country bumpkin who had wandered into Dickensian London and had been fleeced and filleted, and all my worldly goods fenced before I even knew they were gone.

Then the plot becomes a leeetle overcomplicated... but it is still a tour de force of mirroring and false identities and interweaving points of view. And -- the narrators! After Part One, I thought I could never invest in any other narrator but Sue... NEVER! Yet, the next narrator, Maud, was just as compelling, if not more. Sweet.

It's a faux Victorian novel, and hits all the beloved leitmotifs of the genre: pickpockets, orphans, grim prisons, lunatic asylums, "laughing villains," stolen fortunes and girls made out to be mad -- but it actually feels more authentic than even a genuine Victorian novel like The Woman in White (which it resembles a lot). It was well done.