Sarah Waters is great at constructing compelling plots and characters who fascinate even if you dislike them. In Affinity, Margaret Prior begins visiting the woman’s ward of Millbank Prison as a volunteer in an effort to become more active after a year of depression. As with many Victorian charities, the point of this volunteer work is to set the inmates the example of a proper upper-class woman and to make sure they have religious training. Margaret is despondent because her father treated her like an equal and employed her as his assistant, but with her father’s death, she is left with a mother who apparently despises her and with no work or purpose.

Margaret becomes fascinated with a prisoner named Selina Dawes, a spiritualist found guilty of complicity in her sponsor’s death as well as fraud and assault. Although initially skeptical of Selina’s abilities, Margaret begins to experience strange, unexplainable events. Not only does she become convinced of Selina’s powers, but she believes she is innocent.

As Margaret’s obsession grows, she devises a daring escape plan for Selina.

Waters’ depiction of London in Victorian times is convincing, and the atmosphere of the novel is grim and foreboding. Although I was not at all sympathetic to Margaret, I was engrossed by the story and particularly interested in the explanation, if there was any, for the apparently psychic phenomena in the novel.