Affinity by Sarah Waters Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Affinity
Book Review: A Tricky Gothic Novel that Leaves a Mark
Summary: 4 Stars
A story with gothic atmosphere, AFFINITY is set in 1875 London. The narrator, Miss Margaret Prior, is an upper class woman on the verge of turning 30, and when we become acquainted with her, she is making her first visit to Millbank Prison. She is to be the Lady Visitor-someone who comes to visit and motivate the pathetic denizens locked up for everything from petty crimes and prostitution to murder. Very quickly she becomes compulsively interested in a young woman, Selina Dawes, a spiritualist and medium in jail for harming a young girl and for involvement in the death of her benefactress.Miss Prior's elaborate descriptions of Millbank, the incarcerated women, and her daily life at home soon reveal that she, too, is locked in her own private prison from which she has no way to escape. She's already had one "nervous" episode nearly resulting in her death. This followed the betrayal of a woman with whom she was smitten and the death of her dearly beloved father. She is a woman locked in a world with social mores that do not allow her to be herself-nor even to know who her real Self is. Only Selina has managed to introduce a little magic into her life.
With each passing week, the story builds in intensity as Miss Prior visits the dismal Millbank and attempts to see Selina Dawes as often as possible. Though she fights it, little by little, she surrenders to her feelings for the other woman. Will Selina manage to escape and will Miss Prior assist? Is the young woman truly innocent and wrongly convicted? We get clues from periodic diary entries made by Selina, but the mystery of the spiritualist's past is not revealed until the end.
AFFINITY has a feel much like the gothic novels of old, and the style and tone made me wonder if Waters could possibly be the spiritual daughter of Emily Brontė and Mary Shelley. The story's impact quietly creeps up on the reader until the surprising denouement, which, though it seems to come out of the blue, I realized I should have seen coming. I found myself thinking of this novel and Miss Prior's horrendous predicament for weeks. AFFINITY leaves a mark.
~Lori L. Lake, Reviewer for Midwest Book Review, [ ], and The Independent Gay Writer.
Book Review: A pageturner that wins your confidence
Summary: 5 Stars
"Confidence" is the operative watchword of Sarah Waters's splendid second novel set in the Victorian period: it is told through the confidences told in the diaries of two women, one a wealthy single woman who is visiting prisoners in a London pentitentiary, and the other a medium who has been arrested for fraud. As the novel continues, Margaret Prior slowly comes to gain confidence in the medium, Selina Dawes, especially when she herself is visited by ghostly manifestations. It is almost impossible to put the novel down: it gains your own confiedence as you go along, and you come to care desperately about the characters. But this (like Waters's next novel FINGERSMITH) is the rare pageturner that also builds a complex web of allusion and metaphor as it proceeds.Book Review: A very fine piece of writing
Summary: 4 Stars
"Affinity" is a very good book, but not as much a tour de force as Waters' other two, "Tipping the Velvet" and "Fingersmith," both of which are broader in plot development and richer in detail. The two historical wells from which Waters draws material for "Affinity," namely, the women's prison system in Victorian England and the Spiritualist movement of the same period, are by definition specific and limited. Where "Tipping.." and "Fingersmith" are epic in scope as well as overflowing with strong characterizations, "Affinity" is a close, intimate, psychological portrait of a few individuals brought together in oppressive, stifling circumstances. By definition, "Affinity" is not a book which fills the reader with large, grand emotions and ideas. But it is, like its counterparts, an artfully written piece of English historical fiction, impeccably well-researched and sensitive to the issues of gender and class that inform all of Ms. Waters' work. It also contains other elements that will be familiar to Ms. Waters' readers - lesbian themes, either overt or implied; plot twists (here, a particularly juicy and unexpected ending); the juxtaposition of dual narratives; explorations of good and evil; and the alienation of women in patriarchal society - all held together by evocative descriptions that nail the reader visually and viscerally to the spot and hold you there. The descriptions of prison life are harrowing, tragic, gripping, brutal, and, unfortunately, based on hard research. This alone makes for a devastating and intense read.
"Affinity" starts slowly, and tried my patience for about the first 100 pages. I offer this comment to encourage the potential reader to stick with the book, because it will improve. I ended up reading the last 250 pages in one sitting, having been completely taken in. Once you fully enter the world of the two narrators, you will need to know how it turns out, and it will not be what you expected. Given the fact that Ms. Waters is such an exceptionally fine writer, when I say that "Affinity" is not the best of her works, still, it is a first-class piece of fiction nonetheless. (And, by the way, if you are expecting to be titillated by lesbian erotica or pornography, you have most definitely come to the wrong place.) Recommended.
Book Review: A well written, darkly intense novel - Unputdownable!!
Summary: 5 Stars
"Affinity" is a well written, darkly intense novel about an extremely complex woman, Margaret Prior, and her singular love affair. It is also a tale of psychological suspense - a literary mystery with an ending that certainly caught me off guard. Author Sarah Waters paints a vivid picture of upper middle class life in Victorian London, as well as the period's grim women's penal system. She also writes with passion and sensitivity about "the "love that dare not speak its name." The novel delves into Victorian spiritualism as well, and is actually a gothic ghost story of sorts.
Ms. Prior is a not-so-young woman rapidly approaching spinsterhood. In 1874 London an unmarried female nearing the age of 30 is considered a spinster with the definite connotation of "old maid." To be truthful, until about 40 years ago the same could have been said about an American women of the same age! However, a single American woman of the 1950's and 60's would have had infinitely more personal freedom than her cloistered, over-protected Victorian sister. Margaret is recuperating from a nervous collapse which resulted in her attempted suicide by overdosing on laudanum. Her family, with their typical Victorian morality, accustomed to repressing and denying unsuitable feelings and actions, thinks that Margaret's illness is the result of the sudden death of her beloved father. His demise has caused her pain, but not as much as her broken heart over a fickle lover. Her former love is now her sister-in-law, Helen, who married Margaret's brother, (of all people). Ashamed of the lesbian affair Helen impulsively decided to conform and lead the socially accepted life of a married woman. To do otherwise would have meant being totally ostracized by her peers. Her constant proximity as a new family member has made Margaret desperate to get out of the house and away from everything that reminds her of her loneliness, loss and betrayal.
Thus, Margaret is induced to visit the women at the local prison on a regular basis as a form of therapy - to involve herself in the wider world. She becomes a "Lady Visitor" at one of London's grimmest prisons, Millbank, where "murderers, poisoners and common thieves" spend seemingly endless days and nights alongside convicted debtors and beggars. It is a harsh and terribly sad existence which offers no hope to the inmates. Millbrook Prison epitomizes the Gothic edifice, with numerous towers, labyrinthine tunnels, endless corridors laid out in geometric patterns leading to dank, dark cells where most prisoners spend each day in isolation. Long after I finished the book I was left with the image of the huge building looming over the Victorian landscape, offering meager shelter to those who dwelled within its claustrophobic confines. Ms. Waters creates an atmosphere that is downright creepy.
Selina Dawes is an inmate at Millbank. A well-known spiritualist and medium in the increasingly popular subculture of the pseudo-sciences, she has been imprisoned for assault and fraud after a séance she was conducting went horribly wrong. It resulted in the death of her benefactor and an adolescent girl's nervous breakdown. Ms. Dawes, a seemingly gentle young woman, is filled with despair at her situation and honestly blames all that has gone awry on a ghost. Margaret finds herself drawn to the apparently innocent and enigmatic inmate, although she is initially quite skeptical of her story. Through a series of mysterious occurrences Margaret finds herself believing more and more in the shadowy world of the supernatural. As the secret relationship between the two women develops in intensity, Selina tells Margaret that she is her "affinity"- that together they are two halves of one whole. There must be a way for them to be together.
From her three-dimensional characters, the clear depiction of bourgeois Victorian life to the Dickensian misery in London gaols and the thriving spiritualist movement of the period, Sarah Waters has created a compelling, powerful novel. I really cared about the intelligent, sensitive Margaret. Her isolation and stress at repressing her most intense feelings are palpable, as is her longing to love and be loved. Margaret's narrative, through journal entries initially undertaken to record her progress as a Lady Visitor, is juxtaposed with Selina's pre-prison story. An excellent read! Absolutely unputdownable!
JANA
Book Review: Affinity
Summary: 3 Stars
Margaret Prior is a lady visitor to the grim Millbank Prison - her role is to encourage the inmates to reflect on their misdeeds. But her encounters with the spiritualist Selina Dawes, convicted of fraud and assault, turn into something more, dot dot dot. This is Sarah Waters so of course we have the two vital elements: lesbianism and Victorianism. She writes beautifully and atmospherically, although I think this suffers from being all in first person - she's not too good at differentiating voices, and it's so limiting in terms of what she tries to achieve in plot and suspense. I enjoyed this mostly until the final sections, partly because the plot becomes rather contrived, and partly because it's so depressing.