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Loading... Tipping the Velvetby Sarah Waters
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. I enjoyed Fingersmith, so I thought I would also try this one. I was surprised at how much I really did enjoy this book. It was a great historical novel. It was just a tad slow starting for me, but once Nan met Kitty and the story really got started, I could hardly put it down. Another good read from Waters, the life of a 19th Century "tom" in London. Nancy, an oyster girl from Kent, moves to London with Kitty, a masher. London brings her freedom, but society still dictates how she should act. Sexy, sexy book. The writing is lush; you can almost taste the gaslights and the London streets, the cold cream and the sweat. It's hard to relate to Nan, personally, but I LOVED the other characters, particularly Diana. I was sad when it ended because I wanted more, more, more. It seems almost improper that this book gets lumped under "lesbian fiction." It's so much more than that. I came across this book while looking for something completely engrossing and entertaining in that old-school Dickens sort of way. Characters and places that pull you in and wrap you up in an engaging experience unlike your own. What I found was a mesmerizing tale of Victorian England's sub-culture and the richly described characters who were part of it. This is a larger-than-average book, but I raced toward the end at breakneck speed wanting to read more and more about these people. Yet, as I got toward the end of the novel, I was torn between wanting to finish and wanting to savor our last minutes together. This is an unbelievably good novel for any author, and especially for an author's first novel. I will be reading more of Sarah Waters' books. 0.060 seconds to build listing no reviews | add a review
Amazon.com (ISBN 186049448X, Paperback)The heroine of Sarah Waters's audacious first novel knows her destiny, and seems content with it. Her place is in her father's seaside restaurant, shucking shellfish and stirring soup, singing all the while. "Although I didn't long believe the story told to me by Mother--that they had found me as a baby in an oyster-shell, and a greedy customer had almost eaten me for lunch--for eighteen years I never doubted my own oysterish sympathies, never looked far beyond my father's kitchen for occupation, or for love." At night Nancy Astley often ventures to the nearby music hall, not that she has illusions of being more than an audience member. But the moment she spies a new male impersonator--still something of a curiosity in England circa 1888--her years of innocence come to an end and a life of transformations begins.Tipping the Velvet, all 472 pages of it, is as saucy, as tantalizing, and as touching as the narrator's first encounter with the seductive but shame-ridden Miss Kitty Butler. And at first even Nancy's family is thrilled with her gender-bending pal, all but her sister, best friend, and bedmate, Alice, "her eyes shining cold and dull, with starlight and suspicion." Not to worry. Soon Nancy and Kitty are off to London, their relationship close though (alas for our heroine) sisterly. We know that bliss will come, and it does, in an exceptionally charged moment. A lesser author would have been content to stop her story there, but Waters has much more in mind for her buttonholing heroine, and for us. In brief, her Everywoman with a sexual difference goes from success onstage to heartbreak to a stint as a male prostitute (necessity truly is the mother of invention) to keeping house for a brother and sister in the Labour movement. And did I mention her long stint as a plaything in the pleasure palace of a rich Sapphist extraordinaire? Diana Lethaby is as cruel as she is carnal, and even the well-concealed Cavendish Ladies' Club isn't outré enough for her. Kitting Nancy out in full, elegant drag, she dares the front desk to turn them away. "We are here," she mocks, "for the sake of the irregular." Only after some seven years of hard twists and sensual turns does Nancy conclude that a life of sensation is not enough. Still, Tipping the Velvet is so entertaining that readers will wish her sentimental--and hedonistic--education had taken twice as long. --Kerry Fried (retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:57:57 -0400) The first test round has been closed. Visit the Open Shelves Classification group for details. |
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Tipping the Velvet is a good book, but not a great book. The setting and historical detail are exquisitely sumptuous, but in the end the story is a simple one. It is a coming of age story that ends with a romance. Nancy starts out as a naive girl, not only not understanding her own sexuality, but really not understanding the ways of the world. As she moves through various aspects of London's society, she discovers that bad people and treachery abound. In the end, though, she is redeemed in her relationship with Florence, who not only is open about her sexuality, but pursues good causes, helping the poor and indigent. Nancy learns that her own background is honest and good, as she is herself.
In many ways, I wish I had read this before I had read Waters' third book, Fingersmith. Fingersmith was so astonishingly good that any other novel, especially a debut, would have a difficult time measuring up. Which is not to say that Tipping the Velvet is not a good book. Waters does a fantastic job of bringing Victorian London alive. There is so much period detail - you feel as if you have been dropped into the middle of the action. Unfortunately for me, though, I didn't particularly like Nancy. I found her to be a bit too naive, too overwrought, and found it difficult to have a lot of sympathy for her. But the other characters, especially the fascinatingly cruel Diana and her friends, helped balance the occasional annoyance I had with Nancy. (