Affinity by Sarah Waters Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Affinity
Book Review: Good story spooky ending
Summary: 4 Stars
Read Tipping The Velvet, loved it so I picked up the next book and what do I find. Geeze. Can you say spooky. The ending gave me interesting dreams for about a week. But heck. The book was good so I forgive it. Just don't read the book in a haunted house or alone in the woods. Just warning ya.
Basic plot. (from memory lost book) Young woman fast on her way to becoming a loony spinster takes a volunteer job at the local women's prison (oh takes place in Britian when people still road in horse drawn buggies) and becomes fasinated by one of the women in the all star unit. The woman claims she can talk to the dead and since spinster lady wants to talk to dead daddy she become fasinated by the girl. Soon they are plotting the girl's escape.
There's more to it but that's the basic plot.
Book Review: Great Book!
Summary: 5 Stars
I've read tons of books over the years, but the only time I ever read anything that had to do with homosexuality was always over done and unrealistic. This however I could not put down I think i was trying to read this rather than sleep! Although the beginning is a bit slower then usual it grips onto you and you feel it impossible to even put down. Not only was i completely into this book, the ending had such a twist that i was takin completely back by it. Great book all around. Im sure you will love it as well!Book Review: Great Ending
Summary: 4 Stars
A gay Victorian novel about the spiritualist cult, the psychology of desperation, and an in depth look at prison life for women of the era, Affinity innitially took some work for me because of Waters' endeavor to be authentic. Lots of commas and fog. The novel does get pretty Gothic and while there is stuff of interest throughout (enough to keep me going) I did almost put it aside. Murky atmospheres oppress me - which is interesting in that this novel is about varieties of oppression. Something told me to keep going and it was well worth it. I have to say the last 50 pages are magnificent! I won't say more because I don't want to ruin it. TRULY great ending, which is a rare thing.
Most interesting to me is that I recognized the name of another terrific gay author hidden in the writing. Added another dimension.
Book Review: Great modern twist on a tradition Victoria melodrama
Summary: 5 Stars
As an English major, my favorite literature was often novels like "Middlemarch" or anything by Jane Austen. Sarah Walters creates a wonderfully traditional Victorian melodrama/thriller with a more candid modern description of the sexual undercurrents of her characters. I greatly enjoyed this novel and the complicated psychology that motivates her characters.Book Review: Great pace and story
Summary: 5 Stars
Pace and a good story, that's all I want and this book delivers. Miss Margaret Prior, recovering from some personal shock, is advised to spend some time visiting a women's prison in London. There she meets a number of colourful characters appropriately reeking of Dickens and Bronte. She becomes obsessed and taken in by a particularly stunning and suffering young lady who possesses spiritual powers. It is because of these gifts that this alluringly pale Miss Dawes is now serving time, having conducted a seance that went awry, to put it simply. Miss Prior visits regularly, speculates and finally plots an escape for Miss Dawes. Here the plot cannot be revealed but I don't mention pace and story for nothing. Wonderful stuff! You expect The Woman in White or the theatrical The Woman in Black, anything to satisfy the desire and expectation of the macabre and other-worldly, but this is a more bitter and realistic story.
Juicy depiction of 19th century London, of contrasts between life on Cheyne Walk and life in the prison near London Bridge, of life at home as a spinster daughter to a difficult mother, of a love that cannot even be defined let alone nurtured.
I didn't think I would be taken in by the occult subject of this book, but the historical details and characters are so vivid that I was completely charmed. Sarah Waters is a top writer. I've read them all and can't wait for more of her books.