Affinity [Paperback]

Sarah Waters (Author)

Book Description

Release date: January 8, 2002

“Gothic tale, psychological study, puzzle narrative…This is gripping, astute fiction that feeds the mind and senses.”—The Seattle Times

An upper-class woman recovering from a suicide attempt, Margaret Prior has begun visiting the women’s ward of Millbank prison, Victorian London’s grimmest jail, as part of her rehabilitative charity work. Amongst Millbank’s murderers and common thieves, Margaret finds herself increasingly fascinated by on apparently innocent inmate, the enigmatic spiritualist Selina Dawes. Selina was imprisoned after a séance she was conducting went horribly awry, leaving an elderly matron dead and a young woman deeply disturbed. Although initially skeptical of Selina’s gifts, Margaret is soon drawn into a twilight world of ghosts and shadows, unruly spirits and unseemly passions, until she is at last driven to concoct a desperate plot to secure Selina’s freedom, and her own.

As in her noteworthy deput, Tipping the Velvet, Sarah Waters brilliantly evokes the sights and smells of a moody and beguiling nineteenth-century London, and proves herself yet again a storyteller, in the words of the New York Times Book Review, of "startling power."

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Affinity is a tale of power and possession that Henry James himself might admire. In her first novel, Tipping the Velvet, Sarah Waters explored secrets and longing--capping off this lesbian romp with a utopian-socialist vision. Her intricate follow-up is just as sensual but infinitely darker, its moral more difficult to descry. Its stylistic and psychological rewards, however, are visible at every turn, the author's persuasive imagination matched by her gift for storytelling.

In late September 1874, Margaret Prior makes her way through the pentagons of London's Millbank Prison, a place of fearful symmetry and endless corridors. This plain woman on the verge of 30 has come to comfort those behind bars, several of whom Waters brings to instant, sad life. And our Lady Visitor plans to take her role dead seriously, having recovered from two years of nervous indolence in her family's Chelsea house. One person, however, makes her job a passion. Opening an inspection slit (or "eye" as these devices are known), Margaret hears "a perfect sigh, like a sigh in a story." Peering inward, she's confronted by the most erotic of visions--a woman turned toward the sun, caressing her cheek with a forbidden violet: "As I watched, she put the flower to her lips, and breathed upon it, and the purple of the petals gave a quiver and seemed to glow..."

Selina Dawes may indeed have the face of a Crivelli angel, but this medium is in for fraud and assault, her last session having gone very badly indeed. Suffice it to say that the first full encounter between these two very different women is enthralling. "You think spiritualism a kind of fancy," Selina riddles. "Doesn't it seem to you, now you are here, that anything might be real, since Millbank is?" And soon enough Margaret receives several viable signs of the supernatural: a locket disappears from her room, flowers mysteriously appear, and her dazzling friend knows everything about her. Strangest of all, Selina seems to love her.

As Margaret records her weekly prison forays, her own past comes into focus, notably her plans to travel to Italy with her first love (who is now her sister-in-law). But her current journal, she convinces herself, is to be very different from her last one, which "took as long to burn as human hearts, they say, do take." Meanwhile, Waters offers a narrative two-for-one, placing Margaret's diary cheek by jowl with Selina's chronicle of her pre-Millbank existence. This dispassionate, staccato record initially suggests that we can separate truth from desire. Or can we? What Waters's haunting creation leaves us with is a more painful reality--that knowledge and belief are entirely different things. --Kerry Fried --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From The New Yorker

Her first, Tipping the Velvet, was good; her second is just terrific. Moody, haunting, and haunted (it's about love among Victorian spiritualists), Affinity is two parts Wilkie Collins, with whose The Woman in White it shares an obsession with prisons, madness, journal-keeping, and elaborate, carefully engineered deceits; and just a dash of Jeanette Winterson for up-to-the-minute lesbian-historical-fiction flavor. ("He, she--you ought to know that in the spheres there are no differences like that.") --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: Riverhead Trade; Later Printing edition (January 8, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1573228737
• ISBN-13: 978-1573228732
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.2 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (115 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #325,018 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Sarah Waters is the bestselling author of Tipping the Velvet, Affinity, Fingersmith, and The Night Watch. Winner of many literary awards, she has been shortlisted for both the Man Booker and Orange Prizes. She lives in London.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

107 of 114 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A Marvelous Novel June 1, 2000

By P. Ducharme

Format:Hardcover

If you have read "Tipping the Velvet", you know that Sarah Waters is a talented author. In that first novel, we discovered a lesbian author able to put up some good sex scenes. So, maybe she was a great lesbian author, maybe she was a good author of erotic books (not pornographic, by the way). But can she be more than that?

I was so anxious to know for sure, that I bought "Affinity" from Amazon.co.uk in January 2001 (Sarah Waters being a english author, I was right thinking that she would be published in U.K. before being published in U.S.A.). I was not disapointed.

Although my english is not that good, I fully appreciated this novel. "Affinity" is not an erotic novel. There is love, but not sex, and the fact that the love is between two women is not the main feature. I don't want to make a complete résumé because I think it is difficult to do so without spoiling the pleasure you'll have reading it until the end.

Let's just say that this novel is about a sad young woman who desperately need to be loved, who is desperately ready to believe in love and who thinks that she had find it while visiting a prison in London, in 1874. This is not a funny or a "feeling-good" book. But Sarah Waters knows how to make you feel, smell, taste and see the life of a woman who would have live 125 years ago.

Now I know: Sarah Waters is a great author. Don't read "Affinity" because you think that it is a sex book (it is not). Don't read it because you think Sarah Waters is a lesbian. Read it because it is a great book. The best I've read in a long time. Believe me, I'll wait for her next book.

24 of 24 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Fine Writing, Great Story August 27, 2000

By A Customer

Format:Hardcover

Waters successfully brings the Victorian era to life in this story of an emotionally vulnerable "spinster",Margaret Prior, who attempts to overcome the losses of loved ones by taking up charitable social work with the women of Millbank prison in London. Her relationship with Selina Dawes, a spiritualist imprisoned for fraud and assault, progresses from mere fascination to blind passion, and the reader is pulled along with her in her quest for love and purpose in a world which has deprived her of the opportunity to achieve either. The cold, damp and dreary setting of London and Millbank Prison is a fitting backdrop to this story of Margaret, who much like the women to whom she ministers, is herself imprisoned and nearly destroyed by the repressive social structures of her day. The book is written mostly as excerpts from Margaret's diary. Interspersed among these are brief excerpts from the diary of Selina Dawes, the spiritualist. This technique works brilliantly, because it creates more of a challenge for the reader to distinguish between the inner reality of the characters and the objective reality of the story. It also makes the ending much more dramatic. Read it, by all means. It's a bit of a slow go at first, but the build up is necessary to the progression of the story.

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A Literary Masterpiece January 9, 2001

By labellepersonne

Format:Hardcover

Affinity has to be one of the most amazing books I have ever read. I don't come across very many books that I consider literary classics, but this one definitely fits that catagory.

Set in Victorian England in the 1800's, the book gives a very clear insight into life in those times, especially life for women who remain unmarried. It also gives a look into spiritualism, and the conditions of women's prisons.

The book moves at a leisurely pace and lulls the reader into thinking not much is really happening, but like a river with a still, dark surface, there are undercurrents beneath.

The author is a master of language and writing technique. She skillfully layers the story, and when you reach the conclusion, you will be both stunned and yet see how very logically it all comes together like the perfectly fitting pieces of a puzzle.