Waters has researched her mood-drenched Victorian gothic quite impressively (down to such convincing minutiae as this injunction to search all prison visitors: “Infants may be taught to pass on blades, in their very kisses”).

The developing closeness between the two women-intensified by evidence that Selina is telepathically sending ‘tokens’ of her affection to Margaret's home-is juxtaposed with flashback scenes that gradually disclose the truth about Selina's supposed powers (especially as embodied in the visitant she claims is her collaborator, seductive “Peter Quick”-in a knowing nod to Henry James's The Turn of the Screw).

At Millbank, Margaret is drawn to the vibrant figure of Selina Dawes, a “spirit medium” blamed for the death of a client during a séance. This is intended as therapy, for Margaret has recently attempted suicide-an act presumed to stem from the recent death of her father (a respected Renaissance scholar), but is in fact connected to a disappointment in love. The dominant “world” is London's Millbank Women's Prison, to which highborn Margaret Prior comes in 1874, as a “Lady Visitor” offering solace and companionship to Millbank's wretched inhabitants. Although initially skeptical of Selina's gifts, Margaret is soon drawn into a twilight world of ghosts and shadows, unruly spirits and unseemly passions, until she is at last driven to concoct a desperate plot to secure Selina's freedom, and her own.As in her noteworthy deput, Tipping the Velvet, Sarah Waters brilliantly evokes the sights and smells of a moody and beguiling nineteenth-century London, and proves herself yet again a storyteller, in the words of the New York Times Book Review, of 'startling power.This ambitious second novel, a richly detailed exploration of the mysterious ‘affinity’ that appears to unite two lonely women, boldly extends the range of the British writer ( Tipping the Velvet, 1999). Selina was imprisoned after a seance she was conducting went horribly awry, leaving an elderly matron dead and a young woman deeply disturbed. Amongst Millbank's murderers and common thieves, Margaret finds herself increasingly fascinated by on apparently innocent inmate, the enigmatic spiritualist Selina Dawes.

's grimmest jail, as part of her rehabilitative charity work. Gothic tale, psychological study, puzzle narrative.This is gripping, astute fiction that feeds the mind and senses.'-The Seattle Times An upper-class woman recovering from a suicide attempt, Margaret Prior has begun visiting the women's ward of Millbank prison, Victorian London.

Affinity by Sarah Waters