Queer thieves, intellectual sex workers, true love, and academic footnotes: this book appeals to many of my interests and lived up to most of my expectations.

What I love about it (apart from all the queer bodice-ripping and 18th century slang) is that it explains how everything and everyone (hormones, fenlands, footnotes, body parts) can be treated as property within capitalism - and suggests how we can rebel against that.

It is an extremely self-conscious novel which makes no attempt to be or sound "natural" or "realistic"; for some readers that might be a problem, but it's integral to the concept (which basically argues that authenticity is elusive or non-existent and not even that desirable anyway).

Why not 5 stars? Firstly, because the "common people" are idealized too much (e.g. when a thief is going to be executed, it seems like the entire proletariat are protesting while the bourgeoisie are all in favour, which seems like a simplification). And secondly, because the 18th century language is sometimes careless/anachronistic in a distracting way (e.g. we are suddenly told that someone "did the math") - the author finds a cunning way to explain/justify this late in the novel, but I felt like that was a slight cop-out.

Still, I loved this. And the footnotes are full of references to real books about colonialism, queerness, etc.