Affinity in Reading with Style

Jan 06, 2017 Elizabeth (Alaska) rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: women, late-20th-century, 5-star-reads, xx-20th-c-women-read, xx-2017-women, xx-2017-reps

Sarah Waters sets the atmosphere of this early on. Does gothic always take place at an old mansion hidden in fog? No, here it is Millbank prison on the banks of the Thames River. Let's not forget the spirits that we can expect in a gothic novel - certainly Sarah Waters has not.

To Millbank. It is only a week since my last visit, but the mood of the prison has shifted, as if with the season, and it is a darker and more bitter place now, than ever. The towers seemed to have grown higher and broader

Sarah Waters sets the atmosphere of this early on. Does gothic always take place at an old mansion hidden in fog? No, here it is Millbank prison on the banks of the Thames River. Let's not forget the spirits that we can expect in a gothic novel - certainly Sarah Waters has not.

To Millbank. It is only a week since my last visit, but the mood of the prison has shifted, as if with the season, and it is a darker and more bitter place now, than ever. The towers seemed to have grown higher and broader, and the windows to have shrunk; the very scents of the place seemed to have changed, since I last went there—the grounds smelling of fog and of chimney smoke as well as of sedge, and the wards reeking of nuisance-buckets still, of cramped and unwashed hair and flesh and mouths, but also of gas, and rust, and sickness. There are great black, blistering radiators at the angle of the passages, and these make the corridors very airless and close.

This is written in series of journal entries by the two main characters. They do not alternate, but are interspersed. The chapters are dates, and from this is easily understood from whose journal we are reading. In this way, not only is the story told - a story, which as it progressed was more and more compelling - but also the characters are developed. I said elsewhere that sometimes first person narratives are not always reliable. Let me just admit that I am gullible.

I really like books where there are a couple of sentences that give context for the title.

Who will she fly to then, when she has crossed the spheres? For she will fly to someone, we will all fly to someone, we will all return to that piece of shining matter from which our souls were torn with another, two halves of the same. It may be that the husband your sister has now has that other soul, that has the affinity with her soul—I hope it is. But it may be the next man she takes, or it may be neither.

And

I looked only at her, heard her voice only; and when I spoke at last, it was to ask her this: ‘How will a person know, Selina, when the soul that has the affinity with hers is near it?’

I have read just one other by Sarah Waters - Fingersmith. Her prose is interesting: neither does it rely on simple sentence structure and vocabulary, nor is it so convoluted that the reader is lost along the way. You can depend on an LGBT focus in the main characters, but without being hit over the head with it. The characters are what they are, the story line and characterizations make no attempt to convince the reader that life is unfair because of sexual orientation. Life may be unfair, but isn't it so in some way for everyone?

This title is less well known than her others, but I think it should be otherwise. Another 5-star read for me. I'm on a roll. ...more

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Nov 14, 2007 Joanna rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: historical-fiction, 2010-read

This is the first Sarah Waters book that I've read, but it won't be my last. The atmosphere of the book is so grim and dark that I was glad I was reading it in the spring and not during the dark of winter. The book traces the story of Maragaret, a "Lady Visitor" at the Millbank women's prison in the late 1800s, and Selina Dawes, a medium imprisoned for a death that happpened at one of her "dark circles."

Though I had a sense of where the book was headed, I still found the plotting suspenseful and ...more

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