Affinity - Sarah Waters

I have heard a lot of good things regarding Sarah Waters and her books have been on my 'to be read' pile for a while. So when I found 'Affinity' on my course reading list I was eager to read it. 'Affinity' tells the story of Margaret Prior, a young woman who is approaching 30 and a future as a spinster. She is recovering from a failed suicide attempt, apparently the result of her father's recent death, and takes up the role of a lady visitor at Millbank Prison. Whilst visiting the prison Margaret is drawn to the quiet, enigmatic Selina Dawes who has been imprisoned for fraud and assault. It emerges that Selena is a spiritualist and claims that the crime she ...  Read the complete review

This is the second of Sarah Waters' books that I have picked up and I did so only on the strength that I enjoyed FINGERSMITH so much. Recently I watched the BBC adaptation of TIPPING THE VELVET and was very impressed by this and this also strengthened my resolve to read something else by the same author. I can safely say that this is one I robably shouldn't have bothered with... Set in Victorian England, AFFINITY begins with what appears to be a random event for which we are given little explanation before going off into the life of Magaret Prior who, following an illness and the death of her father, becomes a lady-visitor to the women incarcenated in a local ...  Read the complete review

I have to admit when I bought this book, I did so based on the picture on the cover, as I did not have my glasses with me. Sounds silly, doesn't it, although relevant to my review of this book since, had I read the descriptions of other works given by the Independent on Sunday, whom I can only presume did not read this book, I perhaps would not have bought it. They describe her work entitled “Tipping the Velvet” as “a sexy and picaresque romp through the lesbian and queer demi-monde of the Roaring Nineties”. That made my approach to the book wary, since the kind of literature that I enjoy reading would not be of this ilk. Undaunted by descriptions of her ...  Read the complete review