Your place is here, at your mother's side.'' you must take up your proper duties in the house. After Margaret's father dies, her mother tells her: ''Now. The tale is told through alternating selections from the journals of the two women: short entries by Selina, written in 18, before her arrest, and a more detailed narrative describing Margaret's life during her prison visits, from Sept.Ģ4, 1874, until Jan. More she is attracted to her - and the more she is convinced of her innocence. Armed only with secondhand experience (she has read theĪuthoritative work of the day, Mayhew's ''Criminal Prisons of London''), she begins to visit the women's ward in Millbank Prison, ostensibly to help improve the spiritual lives of the inmates.Īmong the thieves, prostitutes and murderers, one woman catches her notice: Selina Dawes, a spiritualist convicted, after one of her sessions turned deadly, of fraud and assault. The central character, Margaret Prior, is an unmarried, upper-class Victorian Englishwoman who has recently attempted suicide and who, as part of her recovery program, has turned to charity work. Sarah Waters's remarkable second novel, ''Affinity,'' is both of these - and also a wrenching love The crime is solved but not the mystery, which arises from a dark corner of the human condition. The first gives us the crime and the clues the guilty party is then unmasked and the mystery solved. A medium and a lady connect in a novel set in Victorian England.
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