![]() ![]() Rivers,” then disposed of in a madhouse, while the conspirators share her wealth. Lilly, a connoisseur of rare books-as lady’s maid “Susan Smith” to Lilly’s niece and ward Maude, a “simple, natural” innocent who will be married off to “Mr. “Gentleman”), engages Susan in an elaborate plot to fleece wealthy old Mr. One of the latter, Richard Rivers (a.k.a. ![]() It begins as the narrative of 17-year-old Susan Trinder, an orphan resident of the criminal domicile run by Hogarthian Grace Sucksby, a Fagin-like “farmer” of discarded infants and den-mother to an extended family of “fingersmiths” (i.e., pickpockets) and assorted confidence-persons. ![]() Imagine a university-educated lesbian Charles Dickens with a similarly keen eye for mendacity and melodrama, and you’ll have some idea of the pleasures lurking in Waters’s impudent revisionist historicals: Tipping the Velvet (1999), Affinity (2000), and now this richly woven tale of duplicity, passion, and lots of other good stuff. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |