Questions for Sarah

The most odd feeling accompanies the idea of meeting and having a conversation with British novelist Sarah Waters. Which is not to say any such meeting is planned nor particularly likely. But the fact it is possible feels odd. Not because she is living, for many an author whose work I love still breathe. Rather, because she lives even though she writes the stories she does.

But I digress.

Sarah Waters (seven years my junior) earned degrees in English Literature and since graduating from the University of London became a best-selling novelist. Frankly, there isn't another writer of her ilk, at least in my eyes. The first novel of hers that I read remains my favorite, Fingersmith. Many a friend I've introduced to her through this work, a lesbian love story as it might been composed by Wilkie Collins or Charles Dickens. Like her first novel (Tipping the Velvet ) the title rises from Victorian slang--in this case "pickpocket" but is also a pun, given the nature of the love story. A pair of young women, Maude the secluded heiress and Sue the London fingersmith, come together amid a plot (and plots) worthy of Anthony Trollope. Circumstances should make the two orphans enemies, or at least adversaries--and do. Yet they also become much, much more. Their story remarkably eschews sentimentality yet remains as romantic and passionate as any bodice-ripper. It was a magnificent achievement, and Waters' third novel.

Yet the first novel of hers I owned was her second, Affinity, a much darker and in some ways more intense work having to do with a Victorian women's prison and the world of Spiritualists. Frankly, the cover did what a book cover in theory is supposed to do--persuade me to buy the thing. Just a glance said things like "occult" and "mystery" and "love story, probably tragic" and even then (knowing nothing about Waters or her novels at that point) I got the impression of a lesbian love story rather than a "conventional" one.

Fair warning--Affinity has a tragic tone and disturbing plot, and fron interviews even Waters herself was in a terrible mood when writing it. Frankly, small wonder. It is a tale of prisons, walls that constrict and limit, not merely physical structures of stone and mortar but the bars forged from habit, emotional blackmail, societal pressure and personal weakness. Compelling, fascinating stuff. But not nearly as much fun.

Since reading those books, I've now read all her novels. True to expectation, her first was set in another Victorian setting, that of the Music Hall and the tale of a girl who becomes a male impersonator (an entertainment tradition with some modern inheiritors, such as Madonna sometimes). Again (or more accurately, to begin) the title refers to Victorian slang, in this case of a certain sexual act. Later she wrote The Night Watch, about a cluster of characters in and around London during the last days of World War II and those years immediately following. Much as Harold Pinter in Betrayal, she plays tricks with time, telling the story in many ways in reverse. And most recently is her ghost story, The Little Stranger, also set in the aftermath of the second World War as Britain writhed its way into a new form, said writhing enacted as upset lives on so many levels.

Honestly, her fourth novel felt jolting to me. I didn't want to leave the world of gaslights and hansome cabs behind. More, I didn't really like the characters very much--although I did find myself wishing I did, and being interested in their stories. Yet a sense of doom permeated the book, as it did in her second novel. One wonders if this will be a pattern? Will her even-numbered novels prove so much more depressing than the odds? If so, why? Therein lies a question I'd like to discuss with her.

So let us turn to my fantasy. A dinner with Sarah Waters, in which we would have a conversation. From her interviews my sense it such could make quite an event! In my mind's eye, I cook dinner (only fair, since she's going to be answering my questions) and it will be something very nice--stuffed mushrooms perhaps with a good rice piaf. Wine or spirits or whatever of our choice. The question arises--might she enjoy a glass of absinthe after dinner? Not that I would presume to know the answer. If I did, what would be the point of asking it, save the hope of being wrong?

Within this imaginary setting, so many more questions and subjects offer themselves. A return to Victorian settings and/or themes--or has she explored that enough for present? She's hinted at a tale to be told in between the Wars. What kinds of things most draw her about that time? A hint of the supernatural pops up now and then in her works. How might she consider exploring that? How successful (or not) does she view her own novels, in comparison to what she imagined they might be? I'd proably end up playing one of those interesting/annoying games of word association some toss at interviewees--What is your favorite sin? If you could play a musical intrument what would it be? Is there a movie star you'd like to bed? Your ideal home? Greatest ambition? What you least like about your own face? And so on. Equal parts intrusive and fun.

What do you think of Dracula? How about LeFanu's Carmilla? Sherlock Holmes? Alan Moore's dive into fictional Victorian iconography a la The League of Extraordinary Men? Why do you think your love stories tend to be tragic, unfullfilled? If you could talk to your own characters, who would it be and what would you say to them? I know it sounds silly, but I'd also like to be introduced to her cats. But the wiser part of me knows that the best part of any such conversation would be its surprises, the subjects not expected to rise, the answers totally out of left field. And to be honest--this is precisely part of what makes Sarah Waters such a fine author. She does surprise. She does shake things up. Enter one of her fictional worlds and expect to see your own, but via a new lens.

Hence the whole reason for having this fantasy in the first place.

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