Book Club Guide

Fingersmith

by Sarah Waters · 2002 · Literary Fiction

Key themes

The double plot — and the betrayal that is the hinge
Female desire in Victorian England — and the institutions that punish it
Identity as something that can be stolen — and what the theft reveals

About this book

Sue Trinder, a London pickpocket, is hired to play a lady's maid to an heiress named Maud Lilly, assisting a conman who plans to steal her inheritance. The plot turns on itself twice in ways that completely reframe everything that came before. Waters's Victorian thriller is also a novel about female desire and the institutions that punish it.

Published in 2002, Fingersmith was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Orange Prize. Waters drew on extensive research into Victorian asylum practices and the Contagious Diseases Acts. It was adapted into a television series and a Korean film, The Handmaiden.

Discussion questions

The novel's first twist completely reframes everything you have read. How does Waters prepare for it — and does the revelation retroactively enrich or destabilise the first section?
The second major revelation changes the moral landscape again. How does Waters manage two structural reversals in a single novel?
The Victorian madhouse is one of the novel's central settings. How does Waters use this institution — as Gothic atmosphere, as historical critique, or as both?
The relationship between Sue and Maud is central. How does Waters develop female desire in a period and genre that made it almost unspeakable?
Fingersmith engages explicitly with the Victorian sensation novel tradition — Wilkie Collins in particular. How does Waters use this intertextual relationship — reverentially or subversively?