Rachael Eyre's Blog - Posts Tagged "sarah-waters"
Hurrah for Sarah Waters!
I can remember exactly what I was doing when I first encountered Sarah Waters. I was studying for my A Levels and, home alone, channel hopping on the TV one night. Nothing appealed. Every other programme seemed to be a period drama, which glutted the air waves in those days to saturation point. Mincing women proclaiming their love to men with mutton chops? You could keep them.
If only there could be a costume drama for lesbians. It was such a waste of frisson: something about a woman unhooking her lover from her corset struck me as unbearably erotic. I clicked the remote. Two attractive women in Victorian dress, kissing hungrily in a shadowy carriage. Never has a wish been so speedily granted. Slack jawed, I watched the rest of the episode - Tipping the Velvet, it was called. I bought the novel on my way home the next day.
Since that bawdy, freewheeling debut (Waters has jokingly described it as a 'Victorian lesbo romp'), she has written several acclaimed novels: Affinity, Fingersmith, The Night Watch and The Little Stranger. Her latest, The Paying Guests, is due out on August 28th. Fans have been promised that it's a return to form; while The Little Stranger was a tremendous mainstream success, there was a disappointment at the lack of sapphism and suggestions she had sold out. There's no denying her popularity and influence; of her five novels, only The Little Stranger has yet to be filmed (though Hollywood bigwigs are said to be interested).
Waters satisfies on numerous levels. More than a gimmick or titillation, her largely lesbian casts and themes have given an audience who aren't generally represented stories they can relate to, heroines they can root for. Her women aren't the pitiful freaks or two dimensional bit parts from older works but placed front and centre. Nor are they sickly sweet paragons: Kitty Butler is a coward who marries for appearance's sake; Helen Giniver cheats on her girlfriend with a glamorous frenemy. Butches are shown in dashing, charismatic roles rather than as objects of censure; Kay and her best friend Mickey do sterling work on the ambulances during the war.
Another reason why she stands out: she can actually write. Lesbian readers previously made do with tawdry pulps, where racy covers were let down by flat, uninspiring contents. Her style is lyrical but accessible: she deftly captures a variety of different worlds, whether the hot lights and grease paint of the music hall, the dank squalor of Millbank prison or the mundane horror of a private lunatic asylum. Hundreds Hall is practically a character in its own right. As for narrative: while the bulk of her stories are told in first person, each character is carefully delineated. You would never confuse the streetwise thief Sue Trinder with her neurotic upper class lover Maud Lily, for example.
Above all, they're fantastic stories, with as many twists and turns as the Victorian novels that inspired them - or the grit and detail of a Greene. As someone who has long loved women in prison narratives and been fascinated by mediums, Affinity is the answer to a prayer; anyone who saw the potential of The Well of Loneliness but was frustrated by its doom and gloom should give The Night Watch a go. There are romances you can cheer, villains you can boo. They're engrossing reads whatever your orientation.
In fact, that is Sarah Waters' chief contribution: she has proved that there is a market for lesbian fiction, and not simply in the arenas you'd expect. Now it's worthy for inclusion on prime time TV; it's no longer stuffed away in dodgy backrooms but pride of place in bookshops. She deserves our eternal gratitude.
If only there could be a costume drama for lesbians. It was such a waste of frisson: something about a woman unhooking her lover from her corset struck me as unbearably erotic. I clicked the remote. Two attractive women in Victorian dress, kissing hungrily in a shadowy carriage. Never has a wish been so speedily granted. Slack jawed, I watched the rest of the episode - Tipping the Velvet, it was called. I bought the novel on my way home the next day.
Since that bawdy, freewheeling debut (Waters has jokingly described it as a 'Victorian lesbo romp'), she has written several acclaimed novels: Affinity, Fingersmith, The Night Watch and The Little Stranger. Her latest, The Paying Guests, is due out on August 28th. Fans have been promised that it's a return to form; while The Little Stranger was a tremendous mainstream success, there was a disappointment at the lack of sapphism and suggestions she had sold out. There's no denying her popularity and influence; of her five novels, only The Little Stranger has yet to be filmed (though Hollywood bigwigs are said to be interested).
Waters satisfies on numerous levels. More than a gimmick or titillation, her largely lesbian casts and themes have given an audience who aren't generally represented stories they can relate to, heroines they can root for. Her women aren't the pitiful freaks or two dimensional bit parts from older works but placed front and centre. Nor are they sickly sweet paragons: Kitty Butler is a coward who marries for appearance's sake; Helen Giniver cheats on her girlfriend with a glamorous frenemy. Butches are shown in dashing, charismatic roles rather than as objects of censure; Kay and her best friend Mickey do sterling work on the ambulances during the war.
Another reason why she stands out: she can actually write. Lesbian readers previously made do with tawdry pulps, where racy covers were let down by flat, uninspiring contents. Her style is lyrical but accessible: she deftly captures a variety of different worlds, whether the hot lights and grease paint of the music hall, the dank squalor of Millbank prison or the mundane horror of a private lunatic asylum. Hundreds Hall is practically a character in its own right. As for narrative: while the bulk of her stories are told in first person, each character is carefully delineated. You would never confuse the streetwise thief Sue Trinder with her neurotic upper class lover Maud Lily, for example.
Above all, they're fantastic stories, with as many twists and turns as the Victorian novels that inspired them - or the grit and detail of a Greene. As someone who has long loved women in prison narratives and been fascinated by mediums, Affinity is the answer to a prayer; anyone who saw the potential of The Well of Loneliness but was frustrated by its doom and gloom should give The Night Watch a go. There are romances you can cheer, villains you can boo. They're engrossing reads whatever your orientation.
In fact, that is Sarah Waters' chief contribution: she has proved that there is a market for lesbian fiction, and not simply in the arenas you'd expect. Now it's worthy for inclusion on prime time TV; it's no longer stuffed away in dodgy backrooms but pride of place in bookshops. She deserves our eternal gratitude.
