Lulled into a kind of Hell

It only takes a few pages of Fingersmith before I can feel something in me surrendering gratefully and joyfully. Something wonderful is happening. I am in the hands of a master storyteller, one worthy of her place on the Booker Prize short list. Led, like a little child by the hand, I can step further into this world, knowing that the person who leads me knows every corner, every tripping step.

I should have known that a book from the author of Tipping the Velvet, the TV lesbian costume drama, might not follow the normal path, but for the moment I believe we are going to come out safely at the other end and we will have seen marvels. Better still, the book in my hand is heavy. We are going to be in there a long, long time.

All of this is true but it doesn't do to relax when the world which the storyteller creates is so very, very dark.

Fingersmith fools you from the start by leading you to believe that you are entering the very familiar world of Dickensian London. There is even a performance of Oliver Twist, right at the beginning, to put you off your stride.

There is a thieves' kitchen, just like Fagin's. There is a baby farmer, Mrs Sucksby, who could be sinister but is warm-hearted and loving too, cherishing our heroine, Sue, above all the rest. There is a very misleading hint of cosiness.

And then there is a scam. Inheritance, orphans, dark country houses, double dealing, a possible fortune at the end. Sue is despatched to Briar, a bleak house inhabited by an eccentric bibliophile and his demure niece, its Sleeping Beauty.

She is to become the maid and chaperone who will facilitate the seduction of the niece, Maud, by a conman, Gentleman, who will, on marriage to Maud, have access to a vast fortune which he will share with Sue.

Sarah Waters gives us all the elements of melodrama and she does it supremely well. Her pacing is faultless. Her description of Briar's clockwork world, ruled by bells, where the servants glide on predetermined tracks, is memorably good. It is because you surrender so willingly to her spellbinding that the twist at the end of part one comes as such a shock.

The whole structure creaks and groans and spills apart for you to re-examine. We were already in a world of deep deception but even here, nothing was as it seemed. We weren't in the seventh circle of Hell, only the first, and we must go deeper.

It is at this point that my holiday sense of being led by the hand gave way to a sense of coercion and mistrust, like a child being lured into a dark wood. It is a very nasty world that Sarah Waters has created.