Sarah Waters With the two-part BBC adaptation of the lesbian novel Fingersmith screening on TVNZ this Sunday night (26 June) and a week later, GayNZ.com revisits an interview with its equally lesbian author. Claire Gummer caught up with Sarah Waters shortly before her first novel Tipping the Velvet was televised — and after a round of appearances related to the 2002 Orange Prize, for which Fingersmith was shortlisted. (It was subsequently shortlisted for the Booker Prize and won the CWA Dagger for historical crime fiction.) "Good reviews can make me feel like I've managed to pull the wool over everyone's eyes," says Welsh author Sarah Waters: "like I've somehow managed to convince all these people that I'm a real writer." The illusion of her writing abilities is certainly compelling and widely held. Waters has had plenty of good reviews since she started writing novels in the 1990s, as a spin-off from her Ph D thesis on historical gay and lesbian fiction. As well as critical acclaim, she's won a cult following, awards and the rare honour of being the odds-on favourite to win the Orange Prize for Fiction. Having her third book Fingersmith shortlisted for the prize was "marvellous, if a little daunting," she says. "...It was funny being favourite — I did actually go into a bookie's and put a fiver on myself, just for the novelty of it." While she's disappointed at missing out on the Orange ("that £30,000 would certainly have come in very handy!"), not winning is almost a relief. "Actually, the increase in attention I've received this year has been rather stressful," she says. "...The handful of Orange-related events I did were exhausting; now at least the way ahead is clear for me to get back to a daily writing routine. And you know, I've never had great ambitions for my books. When I started, I just wanted a little niche in the lesbian market." WINNING HEARTS Her first novel, the Victorian romp Tipping the Velvet, won the hearts of many lesbian readers. It features the versatile Nancy King, who falls for music hall star Kitty Butler and goes on to have a wild time in London — first as a rent boy and later as a wealthy woman's plaything. Andrew Davies, famous for his TV adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, has written a TV version of Tipping the Velvet to be screened by the BBC, starring Diana Rigg's daughter Rachael Stirling. Britain's Independent newspaper reported that the filming in Whitstable, Kent (where the novel opens) prompted "a large group of happy lesbians" to buy adjoining beach huts there, with the result that prices escalated. Waters is amused: "Whitstable is where I first fell in love with another woman — we were both students there. In those days it was a very quaint, unpretentious town; more recently, it's got rather trendy. I like the idea of it becoming a bit of a lesbian resort; I'm not sure I like the idea of prices being pushed up there, though..." The cult following linked to her debut novel can be "a bit spooky", she says, citing Tipping the Velvet parties whose guests are encouraged to come dressed as their favourite character. "But the enthusiasm of lesbian readers has been marvellous, right from the start. Events I've done for mainly lesbian groups have been fantastic fun; and at events at mainstream bookshops there are always some lesbian readers, and they are the ones who will come up afterwards and say hello." AN AFFINITY WITH THE AUTHOR Lesbians were not the only ones to notice Waters's arrival on the scene. Tipping the Velvet (1998) received mainstream praise and a Betty Trask Award. Affinity (1999) — a much darker story featuring seances, laudanum and a women's prison — brought even better reviews and more prizes: the Somerset Maugham Prize and the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award. General readers really started paying attention. "Affinity in particular was a book that lots of straight women readers seemed to be able to identify with: I got lots of women saying to me, ‘I'm 100% straight, but I absolutely adored your book!' I don't think they were saying that in a defensive way... I think they were genuinely drawn into this story of intense attraction between two women, in a way they hadn't expected.” Fingersmith, Waters's third novel, has received the biggest response of all. Reviewers' enthusiasm has known no bounds; the Guardian ran an extract and asked Waters to name her favourite 10 Victorian novels; there's been the small matter of getting onto the Orange shortlist and being the bookies' favourite to win — and the oft-dreaded Author's Tour, in this case a punishing schedule involving nine American cities (five of them in the first week). The sales show that her readership is growing rapidly. The hardback edition of Fingersmith has been reprinted at least twice. It's sold about 25,000 copies, compared with 7000 and 10,000 for Tipping the Velvet and Affinity in their first formats. So, what's the story? Fingersmith starts off straightforwardly, it might seem, with Londoner Sue Trinder becoming involved in a plan to defraud an heiress. Like its predecessors, this novel is set in the 19th Century. “I love those big, mad sensation novels of the 1860s — novels like The Woman in White and Lady Audley's Secret — and wanted to have a go at one," says Waters. "I wanted to do some real lesbian melodrama... I was also, after having researched Affinity, still interested in London's criminal underworld: I wanted to capture a Victorian ‘criminal' voice, but camp it up a hit. The thieves in Fingersmith aren't very scary, they're a sort of criminal Happy Families: Mrs Sucksby the Baby-farmer, Mr Ibbs the fence, etc. Then there was Victorian pornography, and madhouses... Really, I wanted to do one more Victorian novel, and so filled it with all the weird old bits of nineteenth-century culture I hadn't been able to squeeze into the others.” Don't let her modesty mislead you: Fingersmith is far from the literary equivalent of a stew made from leftovers. Waters has honed her writing skills. Each novel she produces is more sophisticated — more complex and more deftly plotted — than the last. Fingersmith is a page-turner in the very best sense of the word. Straightforward? Not a bit. "I like the bits that surprise people," she says. "...It's fantastic to be able to move people in some way - to make them go 'Oh!' It seems incredible that you can do that, to strangers, with just words on a page..." MAID AND MISTRESS The key relationship in Fingersmith is the intriguing one between Sue Trinder and Maud (the woman she intends to defraud) after Sue is engaged as Maud's personal maid. Waters became interested in "the whole mistress–maid thing” while working on Affinity. "You can't bring a lesbian perspective to the Victorian period and NOT be fascinated by it," she says. "To think of two women with this enormous class barrier between them, yet living on terms of such astonishing intimacy: imagine having someone wash and dress you, brush your hair, empty your chamber-pots, lace you into your corsets; imagine being a servant, and yet having a mistress who's utterly dependent on you... “There are obvious erotic resonances, but there's a mother–infant thing going on, too. The idea that someone who's supposed to have total care of you might cheat and abuse and abandon you is particularly horrible: it taps into those very primitive, infantile anxieties we all have. That was more of an issue in Affinity, really. In Fingersmith, I liked the idea of Maud and Sue being mistress and maid, but neither of them really having much clue what the rules are, and the boundaries blurring." Waters has been frank, in various interviews, about pursuing a queer "agenda" in her writing — unlike many authors who feel that an agenda impedes creativity or reduces the value of their work. "I did have an overt agenda when I wrote Tipping the Velvet," she says, "a more or less academic agenda, with points to make about lesbian history and how we imagine it. But I've had less and less of that kind of agenda with each book. Affinity, I think, is a rather reflective book, but I used to worry that Fingersmith was 'just a story'. "I would still say I had an agenda in writing, just as I have an agenda in life: a broadly political agenda; a critical agenda; a sensitivity to issues around sexuality, gender and class.... I see it as helping, rather than hindering, the creative process. You think of a period, a scenario: you think naturally, ‘What would it mean to fall in love with a woman, in that setting?' or ‘How would it be to live as a dyke?', ‘What difference would class make?', ‘What kind of sex would you have?'. You get your story beginning to emerge." SHADES OF GREY It's not as if Waters has a simple, black-and-white world view that she imposes on her characters and her readers. Affinity and Fingersmith, in particular, are full of shades of grey. As with life, there are ambiguities and even contradictions. For example, things that restrain or constrain people (socially, physically or otherwise) are a recurring theme in her work. She critiques constraint by revealing how people are trapped and how this affects them negatively. Yet there is also a degree of fascination with the constraint — for the readers at least. “Affinity seems to be the kinkiest of my books, in this sense:” says Waters. “The characters are all trapped in very dubious dynamics with one another, and no-one manages to escape. But that's life, isn't it? We're all desperately pulled towards repeating the same old patterns that have already fucked us up: we all succumb to dark addictions. For me, Affinity provides the kind of horrible pleasure you get from pressing a bruise. And Fingersmith was diabolical fun to write... At least it has a happy ending, though. I think Fingersmith licks Affinity's wounds, if you know what I mean.” It has crossed her mind that she might be able to write a less lesbian book, get a bigger audience and make more money. “But actually, I don't think I could: you can only write the book that comes, if you know what I mean. I've never been put under any pressure — by editors or by my agent — to write ‘straighter'. Usually it's me being apologetic. delivering a manuscript and saying sheepishly, ‘Sorry, it's another lesbian Victorian one!" Waters's next novel, to be published in 2006, looks as though it's going to be "very lesbian indeed", she says. This time, however, she's leaving the nineteenth century behind; moving out of her comfort zone and into the 1940s. "I've had to abandon all those Gothic trappings. and that's been hard. But I want to see if I can write a novel without them: a 'grown-up novel about relationships', I keep telling myself. That's the sort of thing I feel you should be able to do, if you're a real writer." The author may need to be persuaded, but her readers are already convinced that she's the genuine article. Renowned critic and novelist A.N. Wilson has said of her: "This is such a brilliant writer that her readers would believe anything she told them" — and he's right. Sarah Waters has pulled the wool over our eyes. That's the mark of an exceptionally good storyteller. PRAISE FOR FINGERSMITH The TV adaptation: "Beautifully shot... the relationship at the heart of the story, between Maud and the pickpocket Sue (Sally Hawkins), who poses as her maid, is handled with tremendous sensitivity." — Paul Hoggart, The Times. The novel: "There are always novels that you envy people for not yet having read, for the pleasures they still have to come. Well. this is one. Long, dark, twisted and satisfying, it's a fabulous piece of writing, but Waters's most impressive achievement is that she also makes it feel less like reading, more like living: an unforgettable experience." — Julie Myerson, Guardian. "Readers will turn the pages with delighted dread." — Library Journal. ‘"The nineteenth-century novelists themselves... would have wondered at the tensile strength of Waters's intricate story-line. There's a secret ingredient here, a touch of Lycra which makes the shapes of her fiction cling without the need for lacing." — Adam Mars-Jones, Observer. "She writes great Gothic, her descriptive skill augmented by an acute ear for dialogue." — Tom Gilling, New York Times Book Review. "Her books bulge with period detail and have gripping, carefully constructed plots. There's plenty of danger, mystery, hysteria and corruption. Yet she also puts what's only ever hinted at in Victorian novels — drug addiction, sexuality, pornography — right up front. It's as if Charlotte Bronte revealed a passion for clubbing, Mrs Gaskell discussed her cocaine habit, and Charles Dickens came out." — Marianne Brace, Independent. "It's a thriller, yes, but it's also a love story — a sexy, passionate and startling one. I hesitate to call it lesbian, because that seems to marginalise it far more than it deserves. Suffice to say, it is erotic and unnerving in all the right ways." — Julie Myerson, Guardian. "Nobody writing today surpasses the precocious Waters's virtuosic handling of narrative complexity and thickly textured period detail. This is a marvellous novel." — Kirkus Reviews. "Characters who seemed to start out as caricatures clothed in quirks — Mrs Sucksby with her babies ‘laid top to toe in cradles, like sprats in boxes of salts', John Vroom with his greatcoat made of patches of dogskin — take on a richness and a roundness that make them convincing.” — Rachel Campbell-Johnson, The Times. "What fun it is to be scared, shocked and utterly gripped by a true master — or mistress — of Gothic suspense." — Helen Brown, Telegraph. Claire Gummer - 24th June 2005