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A review by amnah_a
Fingersmith by Sarah Waters
5.0
Once upon a time there was me, in my quite comfortable life, and I hadn’t read Fingersmith yet.
Then one day I persuaded my immigrant friend to read it with me since we had so much fun with the last massive mystery thriller we read together.
I explained the plot slowly to her, in the clearest English, and with the appropriate gestures so I wouldn’t overwhelm her immigrant brain. Lesbian victorian gothic mystery? repeated my friend, blinking her immigrant lashes at me, and I heard the click of her Slightly-South-West European finger as she marked it as Want to Read. Yes, I sighed, relieved, and wiped the sweat from my brow after the exhausted effort of portraying the Frankenstein monster and scissoring my fingers together.
It took us 569 days to finish the book, since we were also working on her language lessons. By day 569, her visa had expired and she was sent back home with a broken heart.
I’m going to miss you, she whispered while on the phone to me, her voice broken.
I’m going to miss you too! I wailed.
I wasn’t talking to you, she snapped. You are such a hypocrite and all you ever called me was ‘my favourite immigrant’. I’m only from ITALY. I can’t wait to leave you and your sad rainy country. And I meant that I’m going to miss Sue and Maud.
I howled into the phone: You were so brave and we all loved you and none of us cared that you cooked your pasta sauce with WHOOLE GARLIIICS in your adorably foreign way.
She hung up the phone while I sobbed into the pan of Dolmio sauce I’d made with my undercooked penne. And you knew just how to say PENN-EY, I cried to no-one as the hard pasta crunched between my teeth. Something she said in particular troubled me.
What did she mean by hypocrite?
I glanced down and noticed the shade of my hand through my web of tears. My gaze swivelled to the spice rack. The penn-ey flew out of my mouth in a shower of yellow sparks.
The truth had hit me full force in the chest: I was the immigrant all along.
Did FINGERSMITH have a better plot twist than this? Maybe not. But it blew my fcking mind the same!
Then one day I persuaded my immigrant friend to read it with me since we had so much fun with the last massive mystery thriller we read together.
I explained the plot slowly to her, in the clearest English, and with the appropriate gestures so I wouldn’t overwhelm her immigrant brain. Lesbian victorian gothic mystery? repeated my friend, blinking her immigrant lashes at me, and I heard the click of her Slightly-South-West European finger as she marked it as Want to Read. Yes, I sighed, relieved, and wiped the sweat from my brow after the exhausted effort of portraying the Frankenstein monster and scissoring my fingers together.
It took us 569 days to finish the book, since we were also working on her language lessons. By day 569, her visa had expired and she was sent back home with a broken heart.
I’m going to miss you, she whispered while on the phone to me, her voice broken.
I’m going to miss you too! I wailed.
I wasn’t talking to you, she snapped. You are such a hypocrite and all you ever called me was ‘my favourite immigrant’. I’m only from ITALY. I can’t wait to leave you and your sad rainy country. And I meant that I’m going to miss Sue and Maud.
I howled into the phone: You were so brave and we all loved you and none of us cared that you cooked your pasta sauce with WHOOLE GARLIIICS in your adorably foreign way.
She hung up the phone while I sobbed into the pan of Dolmio sauce I’d made with my undercooked penne. And you knew just how to say PENN-EY, I cried to no-one as the hard pasta crunched between my teeth. Something she said in particular troubled me.
What did she mean by hypocrite?
I glanced down and noticed the shade of my hand through my web of tears. My gaze swivelled to the spice rack. The penn-ey flew out of my mouth in a shower of yellow sparks.
The truth had hit me full force in the chest: I was the immigrant all along.
Did FINGERSMITH have a better plot twist than this? Maybe not. But it blew my fcking mind the same!
’Is this desire? How queer that I, of all people, should not know! But I thought desire smaller, neater; I supposed it bound to its own organs as taste is bound to the mouth, vision to the eye. This feeling haunts and inhabits me, like a sickness. It covers me, like skin.’