![]() ![]() And Gentleman - as he's known - has a plan.Īn heiress, Maud Lilly, lives with her grim, scholarly uncle in a huge, dark mansion "out Maidenhead-way". It's a rough, crooked yet comradely household, which is occasionally visited by one Richard Rivers, a debonair criminal, forger and seducer. She's been brought up by Mrs Sucksby and Mr Ibbs - the latter fences stolen property and the former does much the same with unwanted babies. Sue, 17, knows only that her mother was hanged for murder. The people, too, come throbbing off the page - none of your watery heroines here. Most brutal, daring and refreshing of all, it's a place where pornography, emotional abuse and rape are the natural bedfellows of greed and lovelessness. Waters's Victorian London is a city where thieves say "fuck" and "cunt", where babies are dosed with gin until they conk out, where "knifish" boys sit by the fire spitting out peanut shells. In the 1860s, the Borough - the shanty town at the wrong end of Southwark Bridge - is a place of petty thieves and criminals, of poverty, "mean little dodges" and scams. Addicted to its atmosphere and hung up on its plot, I've gulped it exhaustedly until 3am, only to sleep and dream that I was still caught among its urgent, unnerving characters. Now Debenhams is a dim and dreary memory, but this past week Sarah Waters has thrilled me in identical ways to Collins with this, her third novel. ![]()
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