Class Action February 2006 Book of the Month! 

Sarah Waters

Fingersmith

(Riverhead Books, 2002)

Ready for a book that will keep you turning the pages? A book of love and intrigue? A story of cross-class alliances and deceits?

This Valentine’s day treat yourself to Fingersmith, a great story of friendship, romance, and thievery. This story winds its way from the working-class streets of late nineteenth century London to wealthy countryside estates outside the city. Along the way, Fingersmith weaves a tale that ends in page-turning suspense, and unbelievable twists of fate.

Two young girls, each raised without a mother, find themselves at opposite ends of the class spectrum. One is raised by nurses then turned over to the care of a wealthy uncle. For Maud Lilly, material needs may be few, yet she is trapped by age and gender in a household run by a sadist.

The other girl is raised among fingersmiths (petty- thieves) near the Thames. For Sue Trinder, childhood was full of thieves and dreamers. Raised by a woman who lent her out to be taken begging, she was continually assured, “Your fortune’s still to be made. Your fortune, Sue, and ours along with it.”

These girls grow up to be young women, with the power to love or destroy each other. As they approach their 20s, they find themselves intimately connected, yet entrapped in a twisted plot to steal a fortune and self-determination – for one of them. Each desires freedom from the binds of her class and her situation. Along the way they find love, but at a cost too high to embrace.

Fingersmith offers opportunities to consider the powerful role of social class. Who is rich? Who is poor? To what ends will people go to attain wealth? How do wealth or poverty influence one’s choices and ability to control her own life?

Fingersmith is also a story about love, about the risks and efforts a mother will undertake to assure her child of a better life than she can offer, and about romantic love found where it is least expected.

View previous Class Action Book of the Month selections...

January Book of the Month: Invisible Privilege: A Memoir about Race, Class, and Gender by Paula Rothenberg

View last year's Book of the Month selections...

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