MixedThe Washington PostWaters is not interested, thank God, in prissy Victorian affectations; like Dickens, she digs around in the poorhouses, prisons and asylums to come up with characters who not only court and curtsy but dramatize the unfairness of poverty and gender disparity in their time … Waters's noted attention to historical detail and her beautifully sensitive dialogue help to anchor the force-five plot twisters … Waters's tough and intelligent heroines are often too busy girlishly pinching themselves out of their astonishment to keep pace with the Dickensian escapades Waters sends them on, and their separate narratives keep them (almost entirely) from pinching each other.
