sneaking in a reading Wednesday

[felinejumper]

Not a full report, but I've been reading Sarah Waters' Affinity and wow, is it a claustrophobic queer horror experience. I think I really like it,but it's almost too intense an experience to enthusiastically recommend. It's visceral and creepy and deeply disturbing.

My brother & his partner did me the immense favor of showing me The Handmaiden--which, incidentally, watching that bath scene? That buttons scene? With a family member? Do NOT recommend, I've never been so turned on in the presence of a family member before, I can't tell if they know how hot those scenes are-- and I was like yes, I sure do need more of this in my life. And thus, Affinity.

I described Handmaiden as "body horror", but in reading Affinity am realizing that maybe Sarah Waters falls into more of a "soul horror" category; or that those are equivalent categories for me in a way that differs from the norm. The creeping sense of spirits and ghosts that are not actually beyond mortal ability, & the extreme tightness of narration both keep me off balance in a very particular way. It's reminiscent of Carol in some ways--the claustrophobia, the ever-present doom, the hidden machinations of others -- in ways that seem, ah, perhaps just recognizable. I can't quite figure out why "body horror" is the right term for all of that, but I think it reflects a horror with the body as a whole, with embodiment, rather than the mutilation of the body being made un-whole or unwell.

Somewhat unfortunate that I'm about to meet a new person in checks watch now o'clock while completely mired in the horrors of Millbank and Victorian era prisons, but hey, whatcha gonna do.

Comments

[felinejumper]

I finished it! I can have feelings about it! I think the ending felt somehow a little flat on Selina's end, as if her intermittent journaling about the spirits was to hoodwink the reader, rather than to explore/capture her actual internal state. Margaret's journal is so clearly Margaret's journal, blinkered to the rest of the world, but Selina's naiveté seems inconsistent to me with the very clear tactile deception she's practising from Millbank. Peak enjoyment time for me was in the 60%-90% completed range, before the specific plot unraveling but during maximum Margaret slo-mo breakdown. I would be *exceedingly* interested in your thoughts on it as well!

[breathedout]

Yes, this was exactly my issue with the ending as well, although it sounds like I had it to an even greater extent than you did... I mean it's a clever plot twist but I just don't think there's any way for it to make sense, on a characterization level. If Selina actually buys her own schtick, then how does she justify to herself all the active deception she perpetrated on Margaret, AND ALSO all of the facts that she OBVIOUSLY KNOWS about Ruth, & how they make the con work? I feel like I can buy living with a high level of cognitive dissonance, but that exceeds even my ability to believe. Unless Selina is writing for the benefit of someone else, off-screen, whom we never meet... which is equally unsatisfying as there's no way to extrapolate the existence of such a person except by extending Sarah Waters an incredible amount of readerly credit that I don't feel she really earns here. I actually wrote a whole Affinity fanfic trying to find a way around this problem that I could believe, but I failed to convince myself. Those two Selinas are just too incompatible.