Je t'aime... moi non plus

Talk about keeping a stiff upper lip! Sophia must have 5 pounds of starch in her's because she shares her tale of woe in such a cool calm and detached manner you'd think that she's a Stepford Wife, London division. 

Sophia marries fellow artist Charles despite his family's objections. They're poor and Charles won't work because he's an artist! What follows next is poverty! Babies! An abortion! Adultery with Snidely Whiplash! An illegitimate child! Scarlet fever! Divine punishment! A divorce! Single motherhood! Indentured servitude (kind of)! And then the unrealistic happy ending!   

Comyns description of the birthing process for the poors in a big London hospital, no matter how detached Sophia comes across as being, sounds like a sticky circle in hell designed to shame women for having sex. According to a note in the foreword the chapter dealing with Sophia giving birth is all true. Ick! Nast! 

I appreciate Comyns keeping the tone "*shrug* and so that happened... and then this happened next. *shrug*" because this is actually a sad and horrific story and in the wrong hands it could have been an annoying girly melodrama. Instead of "you rat bastard!" moments, we get a lot of polite moments of intense dislike.

I've personally been on the business end of that cool detached and disinterested English stoicism and it can be frustrating to the point you want to punch that stoic bastard the hell out, so if you need yelling, banshee like wailing and a lot of face slapping in your stories of love gone wrong, then this is not the book for you.

Elvis, are you there? Tap twice for yes and once for no.

In the Victorian era spiritualism was very popular. There was a lot of table tapping, cheesecloth ectoplasm (a woman who held seances was caught swallowing cheesecloth to produce "ectoplasm") and card and palm reading. This reproduction of a real guide to world of the occult Victorian style is a snooze. 

This book includes instructions on the art of palm reading, dream interpretation, how to tell a persons character from the way their face is structured to analyzing ones handwriting. 

I was expecting this old timey novelty to be fun, but I didn't have fun reading it.

They should have stayed at the Super 8.

Sarah Waters sure does love her some old timey lesbians and the English class system. 

Frances Wray is a sourish spinster who had dreams, but those dreams were dashed by WWI, the death of both of her brothers and her father. When her father dies, Frances and her mother learn the true state of affairs of the family finances and they're not good. Poor and servantless, it's now Frances' duty to keep up a home and care for her mother as well. In order to stave off their creditors and complete humiliation they turn a suite of rooms into guest lodgings. Enter Lillian and Leonard Barber. 

The Barbers are of the clerk class, if that's not bad enough they've had elocution lessons own tacky furniture and oh the tchotchkes, so many ugly tchotchkes! Leonard's a lech and a creep and Lillian dresses like a carefree spirited gypsy in colorful dresses but deep down she's sad gypsy in colorful dresses. They couldn't be more different from Frances and her mother. 

Frances becomes fascinated with Lillian and the more she gets to know Leonard the more creeped out she gets by him. Frances and Lillian fall in love and carry on an affair underneath Mrs. Wray and Leonard's noses and when Leonard finds out tragedy strikes and it will change everything, including the new dreams Frances has made for herself.

This book is too long, just like Tipping the Velvet but at least it's not the hot wet sticky mess that Tipping the Velvet was. There wasn't one likable character in the whole book, wait I take that back, Frances' neighbor Mrs. Playfair had two Siamese cats, they were likable. Frances and Lillian are actually a little evil and I was rooting against them. But then again I was rooting against everyone in this book. 

So far I've only read three of Sarah Waters' novels and I hated two of them, but I know I'll keep reading her. After all she is one hell of a writer and I'd rather read something that is well written and bad than something that is poorly written and bad.