Sarah Waters, will you marry me?

This is the stuff of trashy novels and dirty movies – wealthy spinster volunteers at women’s prison, meets beautiful young prisoner – add a few naughty bits up against the bars and there you have it.

Sarah Waters did not take the obvious route with Affinity, though; she’s far too talented for that. True, this book does center on a wealthy woman named Margaret Prior and an extraordinary young prisoner named Selina Dawes, but proves from cover to cover to be engaging, sexy, and anything but ordinary.

This long awaited second novel from the celebrated author of Tipping the Velvet is a masterpiece in its own rite. Set in gray, dreary Victorian London, Affinity is the story of how Margaret and Selina, two very different characters, seem, at times, to fit together as though each one were created to compliment the other.

The erotic and lesbian elements in Affinity are far subtler than those in Tipping the Velvet but the veil over the sexuality is a thin one and it only serves to tease and tantalize. Selina’s diary entries reveal her past, years spent as a spirit medium, a sort of performer/spiritualist one step above a parlor magician. We’re never really sure who manipulates Selina to do what, but through Margaret we find Selina locked in London’s bleakest prison serving time for murder. Margaret is a prisoner of a different kind, visiting criminals, if not to make them more comfortable, then to distract herself from a tense, sad domestic situation (you know, dead father, beautiful, attention-hogging sister, former love interest now married to brother, typical stuff) and a recent suicide attempt. When Selina and Margaret become inextricably tangled in each other, what ensues is amazing, passionate, and surprising despite the bars and locks that stand between them.

Waters’ prose is so elegant and beautiful that, at times, I had to put this book down and catch my breath. She’s single-handedly breathing life into the lesbian historical fiction genre and in the process making a name for herself as one of the few modern lesbian authors with true literary merit. I’d like to make a name for myself as her girlfriend, but, in the meantime, you should read this book.

Affinity by Sarah Waters was first published in the states in 2000 by Riverhead Books.

Related: This book can be purchased at chicagopride.com.