Affinity by Sarah Waters

Virago Press, 1999 (paperback 2008 & 2012)

Why?

Sarah Waters is one of my all-time favourite novelists (I particularly loved The Little Stranger and Fingersmith) and I was keen to find an unputdownable gothic read for dark winter nights.

Enjoyment factor

Slightly disappointed, unfortunately! Whilst her prose, total immersion in period and evocation of time and place is as impressive as always, the dual narrative and reliance on a number of devices (diaries, press reports, flashbacks) didn't quite hang together for me.

Added to which, I could take or leave both main characters, and found myself continuing only for the sake of the (fairly clever) denoument.

It left me thinking ...

About the Victorian obsession with seances, and how it somehow feels at odds with their religiosity - like so many other paradoxes of that time.

How sometimes as a reader you don't care quite enough about the characters to become invested.

That I should order The Paying Guests - the one Waters novel that I've not yet read.