Why did I read this book: I’ve been told many times I should read a Sarah Waters novel. Once in, however, Sue begins to pity her helpless mark and care for Maud Lilly in unexpected ways…But no one and nothing is as it seems in this Dickensian novel of thrills and reversals. With dreams of paying back the kindness of her adopted family, Sue agrees to the plan. Once the inheritance is secured, Maud will be disposed of?passed off as mad, and made to live out the rest of her days in a lunatic asylum. One day, the most beloved thief of all arrives?Gentleman, an elegant con man, who carries with him an enticing proposition for Sue: If she wins a position as the maid to Maud Lilly, a naïve gentlewoman, and aids Gentleman in her seduction, then they will all share in Maud’s vast inheritance. Sucksby’s household, with its fussy babies calmed with doses of gin, also hosts a transient family of petty thieves?fingersmiths?for whom this house in the heart of a mean London slum is home. Sucksby, a “baby farmer,” who raised her with unusual tenderness, as if Sue were her own. Sue Trinder is an orphan, left as an infant in the care of Mrs. Publication date: First published in 2002 Genre: Historical Fiction, Gothic, Romance, LGQBT Today, Ana reads her first ever Sarah Waters (I KNOW). What better way to snap out of a reading fugue than to take a mini-vacation into the past?

We came up with the idea towards the end of 2012, when both Ana and Thea were feeling exhausted from the never-ending inundation of New and Shiny (and often over-hyped) books. Old School Wednesdays is a weekly Book Smuggler feature.

Fingersmith pages