Shelf Control: Fingersmith, by Sarah Waters

Shelf Control is a feature where bloggers pick an unread book from our shelves and talk about it a little. It's supposed to be a Wednesday thing but I have French Movie Mercredi on Wednesdays already, so. Shelf Control is hosted at BookshelfFantasies.com.

 

How and when I got it:  

I bought it at Lorem Ipsum, a used bookstore in Cambridge, Mass., that's since gone out of business, in 2011. Lorem Ipsum was a favorite haunt for several years, one of those stores with a truly eclectic selection of the interesting, the odd and the unusual.  It was my go-to for selling my own used books for a while and located near a favorite restaurant.

 

Why I Want to Read It:

A crime novel set in Victorian England and described as "female and sexually aware" by one critic, it was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2002 and I am always interested in Booker winning and nominated books. Blurbs used words like "pulsating" and "astonishing" to describe it. It's a crime novel with lots of twists and turns or so I've heard, and the basis for the delicious thriller The Handmaiden; I loved that movie and ever since seeing it in the theater I've been meaning to read Fingersmith and compare the two.