The Crimson Petal and the White

Jul 22, 2008 Kelly rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: favorites, fiction, brit-lit, victorian-wannabes, po-mo, 21st-century, shes-quite-an-original-my-dear, grand-opera

Watch your step. Keep your wits about you; you will need them. This city I am bringing you to is vast and intricate, and you have not been here before. You may imagine, from other stories you've read, that you know it well, but those stories flattered you, welcoming you as a friend, treating you as if you belonged. The truth is that you are an alien from another time and place altogether..."

Thus does Faber begin his beguiling spell of a novel, the Crimson Petal and the White. He sets the bar rat...more Watch your step. Keep your wits about you; you will need them. This city I am bringing you to is vast and intricate, and you have not been here before. You may imagine, from other stories you've read, that you know it well, but those stories flattered you, welcoming you as a friend, treating you as if you belonged. The truth is that you are an alien from another time and place altogether..."

Thus does Faber begin his beguiling spell of a novel, the Crimson Petal and the White. He sets the bar rather arrogantly high with such an introduction, intriguing the reader, drawing us in with words that manage to be both the sharp slap of a glove across the face as well as the whispered words of a mysteriously dangerous lover whose face we can never quite see.

This is the late Victorian London that Faber gives us. This London, this England, belongs to no one author's inspiration. It is the dirty, industrial exploitative mess of Sinclair's "The Jungle," it the deeply urgent, hypocritical, stridently moral mess of Thomas Hardy's desperately dark imagination, it is the woman repressed to barely breathing in the the attic of the Brontes' imagination, it is a nearly unbearably complex Dickens character that 900 pages are not sufficient to describe. Faber gives direct or indirect homage to all the teeming, screaming, whispering, and of course, most interestingly, involutarily silent voices of the era. No one could hope to capture it all, of course, but Faber does his very best. It is for this sort of novel that I wish the word "awe" could be reserved for.

Faber gives us various guides on our journey, characters connected somehow in the teeming mass, tenously, momentarily, or perhaps intimately, showing the reader many different perspectives on the era, as characters have sometimes vastly different experiences based on one degree of birth, 10 shillings in their pocket, an address three streets better than someone else's, or the lack of a few pieces of vital, basic life information. He manages to give us the deeply urgent feelings of the era, on a range of topics from progress and modernization to a deeply religious perspective on romantic love to consumerism to the deep schism between sexual and "spiritual," love. Different characters' views on these subjects were everything from repulsive to ignorant to poignant to infuriating, covered in grime, tears, and rage. And yet, I found myself deeply touched by the unlikeliest of small minded, miserable characters. It was as if I saw their hands flailing in the darkness behind a door, and I kept wanting to kick that door in to take their hands and lead them out, and I couldn't do a thing about it.

Faber brings out the realities of every day life that seem to never surface in novels of the era. He coats his city in filth from the very first, not scrupling to show us a child covered in piss or a whore cleaning herself after a rank smelling customer has left her. He speaks of decaying teeth in the mouths of beauties, carriage collison deaths in routine morning traffic, and the realities of burial in a city where catching disease from corpses was a very real risk in the streets. And yet, this is not a treatise on the difficulties of early modern life alone. Faber just means to point out that these things existed alongside the big ideas, dreams, and spiritual yearnings of the era. Even married ladies who had no idea what sex was or where babies came from had chamber pots that smelled and needed to be emptied in the morning. He is right to yank us from our polite disregard of such facts in the typical journey into this era, just as ladies of the time should have been yanked.

He is not without poetry or a sparkling, sly humor in descriptions of this roiling mess, either. That is one of the greatly surprising aspects of the tale. Out of a dramatic vignette of hustle-bustle London life, there are observations like this: "morally, its an odd period, both for the observed and the observer: fashion has engineered the reappearance of the body, while morality still insists upon perfect ignorance of it. The bodice hugs tight to the bosom and the belly, the front of the skirt clings to the pelvis and hangs straight down, so that a slight wind is enough to reveal the presence of legs. Yet no righteous man must dare to think of the flesh and no righteous woman must be aware of having it. If an exuberant barbarian from a savage fringe of the Empire were to stray into St. James' Park now and compliment one of these ladies on the delicious looking contours of her flesh, the response would most likely be neither delight nor disdain, but an instant loss of consciousness."

His characters are surprising, too. They often seem ridiculous, overly dramatic, silly enough to dismiss at first sight. The author himself seems to feel the need to beg his audience to pay attention, to follow along specimens that we can only roll our eyes at for just a little bit longer. Sugar, our main protagonist, goes through a social mobility and through many changes not at all common for a woman of the era. Her slow transition and revelation as her economic and social class change, the needs and focuses of her thoughts as she changes again and again what she wants out of life. It is amazing to watch her transformation from chapter to chapter, how her voice and thoughts change. Our main male character, William Rackham, is introduced as a silly, self-important twit with vainglorious artistic aspirations, and an aversion to any sort of responsibility. Even when he takes hold of his fate, he does not really rise in quality in the slightest. Some might say he even decreases. Yet... I came to understand him. He has all the flaws of men of the era, and some not even as badly as most. His struggles to cope with so much he doesn't understand, his delusions become pitiful, even painful by the end. His relationship with his wife ends up being particularly powerful. Poor Agnes Rackham is enough to inspire anyone, feminist or not, into a rage at what women were meant to be, and what they could not be. The struggles of Emmeline Fox and Henry Rackham brought tears of rage to my eyes... it goes on and on. Faber gets us so involved with people that perhaps we would dismiss from an author less talented. I could go on and on here about all the issues of feminism raised through the female characters, the perceptions of them through the eyes of men, the classism, relative morality, but I do believe I would run out of characters allowed in this review before I'd barely begun.

As to the ending: (spoilers, perhaps? Though I don't plan to give much specific away.) I liked it. It was abrupt and shocking, rather, but after 900 pages of this epic... I somehow think it appropriate. At least from a modern novelist. I could almost believe that he stopped it there out of sheer fatigue with his narrative, but I don't think that's entirely it. His interweaving of his storylines over and over again into the complex web that they became was far too delicately done for that to be the case. We're meant to see the sort of ending that reality gives us... if indeed there ever really is an ending. Is there?

"It is time to let me go," is a fittingly sensitive, yet cruel parting from a story that has embodied that contradiction.

PS- (okay, now stop reading if you don't want to see a sort of spoiler)
... I think they go to America, Martine. :) If the heavy handed hints at the end were to be believed.
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May 18, 2013 Cecily rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: miscellaneous-fiction, historical-fiction-set-pre-20c

"Watch your step. Keep your wits about you; you will need them." From that captivating opening (echoed several times later on), you are a voyeur, on an extraordinarily vivid journey. I was enthralled from the start, raced through the 800+ pages at every opportunity, and remain in awe of the way the story is told. Regularly addressing the reader in conspiratorial tones, lends an air of intimacy that suits the subject.

CHARACTERS

The central character is Sugar, a young prostitute who is uncommonly i...more

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Aug 12, 2007 Teresa Jusino rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: readandreviewed

I've been of the mind recently that there is something slightly worse than bad. And that is: almost. Bad, one can deal with. It's easily classifiable, and can be (to paraphrase Susan Orlean in The Orchid Thief) "whittled down to a more manageable size." Almost is harder. Almost teases you with what could have been, only to disappoint you with what is. Almost is wasted potential. Almost lingers inside you like a dust bunny under a bed in a clean room. The Crimson Petal and the White by Michel Fab...more I've been of the mind recently that there is something slightly worse than bad. And that is: almost. Bad, one can deal with. It's easily classifiable, and can be (to paraphrase Susan Orlean in The Orchid Thief) "whittled down to a more manageable size." Almost is harder. Almost teases you with what could have been, only to disappoint you with what is. Almost is wasted potential. Almost lingers inside you like a dust bunny under a bed in a clean room. The Crimson Petal and the White by Michel Faber almost lives up to its promise.

I was drawn into the novel by seductive narrative voice leading me down the streets of Victorian London. It was a little bit cinematic and a little bit Dickensian, and I was immediately enthralled. Crimson Petal tells the story of Sugar, a 19-year-old prostitute who is renowned in London for doing everything. There is no depravity too extreme, as long as she's getting paid for it. Yet, that's not what makes Sugar truly interesting. She's interesting, because while she was raised in prostitution, she's literate and reads voraciously. She's also an aspiring novelist, hoping to better the plight of prostitutes by exposing their ills (and their secret vengefulness) to the world through her prose. Meanwhile, on the other side of London, there resides the Rackham family, and at its head, William Rackham, heir to a perfume company.

It's his meeting and subsequent infatuation with Sugar that's supposed to be the main story in the novel, but Faber packs the novel with intricate "secondary" characters that are much more interesting: Agnes, William's addled, very Catholic wife; Henry Rackham and Emmeline Fox, William's brother and the unorthodox humanitarian he loves; little Sophie Rackham, forced into observing her household rather than taking part in it; and Caroline, Sugar's soulful prostitute friend.

All of their stories are so captivating that it must have seemed a daunting task to do them all justice...so Faber opted not to try. Instead, the lives of the supporting characters peter out with no resolution, good or bad. Now, we all know that life is not a neatly packaged thing. Situations don't resolve themselves perfectly, and one could argue that the "point" of this book is that that's how life is. However, that "rationale" for ending things with no change or resolution has more often than not seemed like a cop-out to me. I did find the resolution for Sugar (which also involved Sophie) very interesting, but that, too, is glossed over. Sugar is more spoken about than spoken through, and I found that very unfair to her.

The Crimson Petal and the White has moments of brilliance, full characters, and an interesting narrative voice. It's just a shame that all of these wonderful parts don't add up to a more successful whole. I wouldn't tell you not to read it....at the same time, I will say that you shouldn't expect to be completely satisfied when you've finished. I wasn't.
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Jan 17, 2013 Steve rated it 5 of 5 stars

A word of warning, my friends: I’ll be giving this the hard sell. To begin, please create in your mind’s eye (and ear) the most interesting tour guide imaginable. He knows all about Victorian England – its people, its paradoxes – and what’s more, he knows what you don’t know but would find fascinating. Transitions back and forth between our modern perspectives and their older, more circumscribed ones are virtually seamless. He’s wise about people, too, their quirks and motivations, independent o...more

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Jun 05, 2007 Emily rated it 4 of 5 stars

If you don't like reading about sex, don't read this book. And when I say sex, I don't necessarily mean the pleasant kind of reading about sex, or the titillating kind of reading about sex. I mean, there are plenty of gory details in here about the everyday lives of Victorian women and prostitutes. And many of them aren't pretty.
The thing that fascinates and attracts me to this book is that it could only take place in Victorian London, and yet it could only have been written in the modern era. D...more If you don't like reading about sex, don't read this book. And when I say sex, I don't necessarily mean the pleasant kind of reading about sex, or the titillating kind of reading about sex. I mean, there are plenty of gory details in here about the everyday lives of Victorian women and prostitutes. And many of them aren't pretty.
The thing that fascinates and attracts me to this book is that it could only take place in Victorian London, and yet it could only have been written in the modern era. Dickens would never have been able to describe these things in such detail; things that range from contraceptive methods used by 19th century women to the vulgarities used by men looking for fun on a night out. But not only would Dickens not have written these things, he wouldn't know how to write them for us 21st century readers. He wouldn't know that we don't know how chamberpots work, or that we've never watched impoverished children looting the scene of an accident. Dickens would never guess that we don't understand why a woman can't walk the streets alone, or why two deeply-in-love and unmarried friends can't just stop freaking out about hellfire and have sex already. But Michael Faber understands these things, and he manages to describe them in a way that is usually elegant, sometimes repulsive, and always fascinating.
There are some problems with this modern Victorian thing. For example, why must Sugar, the Prostitute Protagonist (I like this phrase, it has nice alliteration, I'll have to start writing reviews of novels about whores) also have a superior knowledge of literature? Why do the heroines of historical fiction always have to be so damn modern in their thoughts? I mean, yes, admittedly, it makes us relate to them, but it does not seem realistic. I read these books because I like to know about people in the past, educated or not.
For this reason, I found the character of Agnes particularly interesting. She's a mess, for sure, I don't know if she's any more typical of the Victorian woman than Sugar is. She's insane, suffering from brain problems, she's sexually repressed to the point where she refuses to acknowledge her own child, and she's basically a child herself. I'd much rather hang out with Sugar. Still, Agnes is a much more unusual case to read about.
Anyway, the bottom line is, I couldn't stop reading this book. Sometimes I thought it was over the top and melodramatic- but then I always ended up getting sucked right into the melodrama, even more fascinated than I had been from the start. It's definitely worth a try.
I will say, as a final note, that many people find the end disappointing. I was told, by a number of people, on a number of occasions, that the end sucked. Perhaps as a result of that (or rather, as a result of the fact that I don't always like neat endings) that I found more satisfactory than I originally expected. I don't think Faber leaves any loose ends unintentionally.(less)

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Feb 21, 2011 Priya rated it 1 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Aug 27, 2011 Paul rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: modernvictorian, really-big-timeconsumers, novels

You know in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind they've invented this brilliant device for erasing specific memories and the whole plot revolves around people who meet each other after they've had their memories of each other already erased, so they re-meet and re-love and it's all poignant and kind of whoah and oops I kind of gave the plot away - well, you should have seen it by now, come on, it's years old. Anyway, I'd love that particular invention to be true true true so that I could hustl...more

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Dec 19, 2012 pinkgal rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction-and-um-stuff

Prostitute? Check. Crazy wife? Check. Bumbling young rich man? Check. Detailed descriptions of human and physical plumbing and the state of the sewers? Um... check. =) That was one thing I absolutely adored about this book! It was the detailed look at the underbelly of their world in England; it wasn't pretty and the streets sure smelled with all the toilet water going here and there. Sugar wasn't the world's most likeable protagonist, but you couldn't help but just feel indignity for her, even...more

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May 04, 2011 Suna rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: historic-fiction, sacred-whores

This book was read by me alongside the broadcast of the BBC2 adaptation, which turned out to be a fun and interesting exercise in itself.

It's extremely well written and extremely frustrating, so much so that it eventually took away a whole star from my initial rating.

Open endings are fine, usually, but this became so vague and make-of-it-what-ye-will that once I closed the book I mostly came away with the sense that it hadn't been worth the effort.

The Victorian underworld is exquisitely drawn an...more

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Jul 03, 2008 Martine rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: people who believe the journey is more important than the destination

Shelves: british, favourites, family-drama, historical-fiction, modern-fiction, pseudo-nineteenth-century, psychological-drama

If I had to give a one-word response to the big, sprawling monster of a faux-Victorian novel that is The Crimson Petal and the White, it would be 'WOW'. (With capitals. Yes.) At 895 pages, it's a big book, and it's not without its flaws, but such is the quality of the writing, the characterisation and the staggering amount of research that went into it that I was enthralled from beginning to end and stayed up until 4am on a weekday night to be able to read the last four hundred pages. I don't re...more If I had to give a one-word response to the big, sprawling monster of a faux-Victorian novel that is The Crimson Petal and the White, it would be 'WOW'. (With capitals. Yes.) At 895 pages, it's a big book, and it's not without its flaws, but such is the quality of the writing, the characterisation and the staggering amount of research that went into it that I was enthralled from beginning to end and stayed up until 4am on a weekday night to be able to read the last four hundred pages. I don't regret the sleep I lost that night; if anything, I regret that there weren't four hundred more pages to stay up for. That's how much I liked the book.

So what's it all about? Well, it's hard to sum up an 895-page story in a few lines, but basically it's about an intelligent prostitute who lives in 1870s London, wheedles her way into a rich man's life and ends up changing several lives, not least her own. She's an appealing (albeit emotionally scarred and manipulative) heroine, and she's portrayed in admirable detail. So are all the other characters, who make up one of the finest casts since the heyday of Dickens. Randy gentlemen, cross-dressing prostitutes, society-obsessed ladies with brain tumours, would-be parsons tormented by sexual fantasies, love-starved children who grow up in the servants' quarters because their mothers can't be reminded of their existence, guards who spend all the days of their lives reciting news of deathly disasters, well-bred ladies who risk expulsion from polite society to help fallen women... they're all here, and they're drawn in shockingly intimate detail. All their thoughts, dreams and fantasies are spilled out on the pages, and for the most part they're riveting. Similar candour is employed in the descriptions of actions and places. Not content with simply providing lush descriptions of Victorian splendours (although he certainly does that, too), Michel Faber gives his book a distinctly modern feel by describing things no Victorian novelist in his right mind would ever have mentioned, such as, well, sex. The Crimson Petal and the White is full of highly inelegant sex scenes, liberally sprinkled with four-letter words. In addition, it features painstakingly detailed descriptions of unmentionable things like the heroine's skin disease, the sounds, sights and smells of London's red-light district, the vaginal douches with which prostitutes tried to prevent pregnancy, the look and smell of used chamber pots, a farting concert, and so on. This may sound off-putting, but the descriptions are so vivid and so, well, interesting that they greatly add to the authenticity and local colour of the book, presenting a truly kaleidoscopic view of London in the 1870s. The result is a rich and fascinating story which is at turns utterly Victorian and thoroughly modern, dirty and elegant, highbrow and lowbrow, disgusting and engrossing. It certainly isn't for the faint of heart, but in its own daring way, it's spectacular. I would even go so far as to call it mesmerising.

As for its shortcomings, well, I guess you could say the book is a bit jarring at times. Faber has an interesting tendency to introduce characters, devote many words to them, and then suddenly and quite randomly to kill them off or otherwise lose sight of them, thus making you wonder what their point was in the first place. In a way, the sudden deaths/disappearances are as realistic as the descriptions of the chamber pots and vaginal douches (after all, death does creep up on us very suddenly, and people do really vanish from our lives like that, don't they?), but it's an uncommon device in literature, and it's a bit jarring at times, especially since it's so thoroughly un-Victorian. Aren't storylines usually tied up neatly in Victorian novels?

Which brings me to the ending. Much has been written about the ending of The Crimson Petal and the White, which is as jarring and un-Victorian as they come. There is no 'Reader, I married him' here, much less a summary of what happened to the main characters after the final curtain. Instead, the story comes to an abrupt halt, leaving the main characters in medias res. Like many readers, I was initially put off by the ending, thinking that the narrator's sudden 'But now it's time to let me go' was a paltry reward for staying with him for nearly nine hundred pages. However, the more I thought about it, the more I liked the ending. After all, what could be more fitting in a book which is largely about fantasies than to leave the reader on a note which has him fantasising about what might have happened to the characters, weighing the pros and cons of each scenario? I definitely agree that Faber should have ended the story on a less abrupt note, but I've forgiven him for the openness of the ending. It works for me, even if many other people hate it.

As for conjectures about the ending... My guess is that Sugar and Sophie end up building a new life for themselves in Australia. What do you think, those of you who have read the book? (less)

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Jun 04, 2007 Siria rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 21st-century, historical-fiction, british-fiction

Enjoyable and rather compulsively readable, but not particularly impressive, The Crimson Petal and the White is essentially an 18 rated version of Dickens—a cautionary tale set in Victorian London, but with more mention of prostitutes, erections and human excretions than you could shake a reasonably sized stick at.

The prose is quite solid, though it feels a little padded in places, particularly in regards to the Henry Rackham/Emmeline Fox subplot; similarly, the narrative flows well, though I wo...more

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Aug 16, 2007 Laurie rated it 2 of 5 stars Recommends it for: shut-ins

Okay, I read this book. I read every page because, you know, Michel Faber, right? I mean, his prior work was not without merit.

What the hell was he thinking, though, when he wrote this book? Was he aiming for mediocre language and predictable plot with lots of crusty, nasty Victorian sex? Cause if so, bravo!

Still, I did read it all the way through. So what does that say about ME? I think what it says about me was that I hang in, even against my better judgment. I read all the way through becaus...more

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Feb 23, 2009 Beth F. rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: historical-fiction, best-book-i-read-that-year, victorian, favorites

Watch your step. Keep your wits about you; you will need them. This city I am bringing you to is vast and intricate, and you have not been here before. You may imagine, from other stories you've read, that you know it well, but those stories flattered you, welcoming you as a friend, treating you as if you belonged. The truth is that you are an alien from another time and place altogether...

What a beginning! I passed my copy on after I originally read this in 2005. I gave it to my mom who gave it...more Watch your step. Keep your wits about you; you will need them. This city I am bringing you to is vast and intricate, and you have not been here before. You may imagine, from other stories you've read, that you know it well, but those stories flattered you, welcoming you as a friend, treating you as if you belonged. The truth is that you are an alien from another time and place altogether...

What a beginning! I passed my copy on after I originally read this in 2005. I gave it to my mom who gave it to her sister who gave it to her daughter. Mom and aunt loved it and the three of us still go into raptures over this book whenever we're all in a room together. My cousin wasn't a big fan; she thought the descriptions were too much, but she’s a much sweeter girl than me, my mom and my aunt.

Faber's descriptions of Victorian England are both vulgar and gorgeous. He doesn't mince words. This book is definitely not for the faint at heart. The main character is a prostitute and while Faber doesn’t go into detail about the ACT of sex, there are a number of graphic descriptions about the steps women take to prevent pregnancy, terminate pregnancy, treat illness, etc.

There is also so much more to this book. It also explores the struggle of women living in a man’s world and it almost becomes a psychological study. The end is rather abrupt, but Sugar does something unthinkable and morally wrong, and yet I loved the end because I realized that if you’ve been pushed past your breaking point and there is literally no other option out there, something the only thing left to do is the “wrong thing” unless you want to give up and succumb entirely to the wishes and demands of others. Given the circumstances, I suspect that if I were in the same position, I probably would have done the same thing Sugar did, as horrible as it was.

Anyway, a few weeks ago I found a copy on the discount shelf at Half Price Books. $2, yes! This was a wonderful book...one of my all-time favorites and I can't wait to read it again.
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Jan 07, 2013 Alice rated it 2 of 5 stars Recommends it for: people very interested in Victorian London

Shelves: historical-fiction

I agree with a lot that has already been said about this book. Faber has almost written a critique of life in the late Victorian period for people of different social classes, different beliefs, and of course he includes a lot of sex...This is all very interesting, especially if you like learning about the Victorians. Faber writes wonderful prose, which has stayed in my mind for some time after reading it and he has vivid characters, looking at the development of not only the main protagonists....more

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Sep 25, 2007 Anna Klein rated it 2 of 5 stars

Nineteen year-old Sugar is a whore in 1870s London. William Rackham is the proud, immature inheritor of the Rackham perfumery. William's wife, Agnes, is mentally off. William's brother, Henry, is confounded by his religion. William's young daughter, Sophie, is hidden away in the Rackham mansion and cared for by servants. Is it any wonder William seeks out a prostitute? Of course, we all know he's going to find Sugar. The only question is, what sort of tortured relationship between them can fill...more Nineteen year-old Sugar is a whore in 1870s London. William Rackham is the proud, immature inheritor of the Rackham perfumery. William's wife, Agnes, is mentally off. William's brother, Henry, is confounded by his religion. William's young daughter, Sophie, is hidden away in the Rackham mansion and cared for by servants. Is it any wonder William seeks out a prostitute? Of course, we all know he's going to find Sugar. The only question is, what sort of tortured relationship between them can fill up 834 pages?

Victorian, THE CRIMSON PETAL AND THE WHITE most assuredly is not. Whatever I was expecting from this novel, it was not the graphic and often repulsive sex scenes that I got. And when the plot isn't reading like soft porn, it's drowning in details. I managed to read the first 300 pages word for word, but after that it was either start skimming or give up, so I started skimming. And although the last third of the book was a pleasant surprise -- the characters become more fully developed, the plot takes some interesting turns, and the sickly sweet tone of the first half is focused into something much sharper -- I was still considerably relieved to reach the end.

Some other disappointments I would note: Several of the characters die without apparent reason, perhaps simply because Michel Faber tired of them. But neither did I miss them, since I never enjoyed any of the people in the first place, although I did grow closer to Sugar near the end. William positively disgusted me and I rue the 500 pages I spent in his company. And Faber's interesting technique of addressing the reader personally as "you" and tossing in little side comments (welcome comic relief, if you ask me) is lost about halfway through and unfortunately seldom reappears.

Least you think I am totally down on this novel, there were a couple of interesting points. The time period and its people are well researched and depicted with a sort of graphic honesty that's a lot like a car accident -- you'd like to look away, but you can't. Bodily functions are common in these pages. Dirt and grime and pain and insanity abound. Nothing escapes the author's probing finger. Nothing is too sordid to discuss.

I cannot recommend this novel. I found it irritating at best and regret the time I wasted on it. Still, THE CRIMSON PETAL AND THE WHITE is notable for its honesty, crude is that may be. (less)

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Nov 13, 2012 agent zero rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: anglofoni

Faber è uno scrittore coi fiocchi.
I personaggi e la trama sono un chiaro omaggio al romanzo ottocentesco.
Lo stile parte da lì, ma è lo stile di Faber, ricco, talentuoso, affascinante.
Il narratore esterno si rivolge direttamente al lettore, portandoselo dietro alla scoperta della Londra a tratti infernale di fine ottocento e delle vite che nei suoi meandri conducono i protagonisti del romanzo.
Lo stratagemma funziona e il lettore non può che rimanere incollato alla pagina, abbagliato dalla straor...more

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Jul 28, 2010 Liz Vegas rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: historical-fiction, favorites, pages-galore

In an interview, The Crimson Petal and White’s author, Michael Faber says: “I use the metaphor of a novel being like a prostitute, promising the reader a good time, promising intimacy and companionship”.

If this is the case, boy did I feel like I got a good “fuck” for my moneys worth. At 850+ pages, I thought this tome of a novel was magnificent.

Faber led me by the hand, and brought me to Victorian London, where I fell in and out of love with the characters. The robust writing and detailed desc...more

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Jan 25, 2008 minnie rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

It’s not often a book comes along, that when you close the final pages you already miss the characters. Their ups and downs have become your life as you go into the early hours with them every night. Well, this is one of those books, a book with amazing characters that keep you guessing til the last page. There’s Sugar the well read prostitute, Agnes the beautiful Victorian wife teetering on the brink of madness, and Emmeline.Fox the campaigner whose modern views ostracize her from society.In th...more

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Sep 10, 2007 Aimee rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

So I thought this book had a lot of potential but it completely dissappointed me. I thought at the end it would bring all the 800ish pages but it DID NOT. It just ends and I was so shocked and angry with myself that I actually spent all that time reading this lame ending book.

I loved the way they narrator of the story took us with him/her through the story and I was really sad when that character just disappeared from the storyline. I enjoyed having at all-knowing eye lead me to next plot. So I...more

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Mar 31, 2007 Mina rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Bored Housewives? I kid.

I got this book because I love Victorian lit. I should clarify that this isn't a Victorian novel per se; a more accurate description is that it is a contemporary take on the Victorian novel. The descriptions of 19th century London are vivid and detailed; Faber lovingly notes the filth on the streets (and the sheets) and the stench of unwashed bodies in the air. The sex scenes are adequately salacious (were Victorian men really into anal play?) but this is no "bodice-ripper," despite what the cov...more

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Jan 27, 2009 Sarah Edwina Rose added it

As a former English Literature student, I have been around the literary block. I have delved into the Medieval ramblings of priests, danced with Milton's devil, analysed King Lear's madness, cried with Keats and romanced with Jane Austen.

Becoming somewhat snobby about literature, you do not expect to pick something from a promotion table in Boarders and be inspired. Yet the mindless spending of an ancient book voucher gave me a unfailing companion, and allowed me to dwell in a time alternative t...more As a former English Literature student, I have been around the literary block. I have delved into the Medieval ramblings of priests, danced with Milton's devil, analysed King Lear's madness, cried with Keats and romanced with Jane Austen.

Becoming somewhat snobby about literature, you do not expect to pick something from a promotion table in Boarders and be inspired. Yet the mindless spending of an ancient book voucher gave me a unfailing companion, and allowed me to dwell in a time alternative to that 2008 London.

Faber's novel is more than 800 pages long, and even in paperback weighs the same as a small child (so I'd imagine), however I found myself lugging it to work in my poor straining bag because a tube journey would not do without an update.

The novel is written in third person and cleverly casts the reader themselves as a physical character in Victorian London. Faber guides the time traveler, advising whom to follow along the dark and dirty streets. This is just one technical aspect that involves you in the world; you are made to realise that the words in the book are telling just one narrative within a world that has millions.

Sugar is perhaps the main character; working as a prostitute she escapes working into the night on a fantasy novel, a novel in which she brutally murders her male customers. Visited by William Rackham a successful business man with an insane wife, she begins her journey.

It is not my aim to relay the plot, it is an intricately woven web that requires all physical 800 pages. I simply wish to state my admiration of this modern author writing about Victorian London. As a man unbound by Victorian sexual repression and literary censorship, does this book written in the 21st Century tell us more about the nineteenth century than Dickens could? Now there's a question for a dissertation.

Perhaps it doesn't matter. Perhaps all that matters it the effect a book has upon one, fact or fiction? As I closed this book for the final time, digesting the unsatisfying yet most satisfying ending I have ever encountered, I felt a loss; Faber's greatest achievement is undoubtedly the way the characters outlive the paper on which they are created. In a dull moment I still muse upon the fate of Sugar.

It is books like this that remind one that writing is not simply placing signified meaning onto a blank sheet. Yes words are mundane tools of communication, but if used by someone who understands they can transcend their basic purpose and origin.
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Aug 04, 2012 Commodore rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Really, 3.5 stars, but after that ending I'm not feeling generous.
Pros:
Exhaustively researched. All the details fit perfectly into place, and it's probably ruined other, less well researched books set in that time period for me. I felt like I was there and that I learned something, but not in a preachy or look-at-how-clever-I'm-being way.

Reading it on Kindle was great too, because I could just touch a word to define it. I learned a ton of awesome new words and didn't have to pause every five m...more Really, 3.5 stars, but after that ending I'm not feeling generous.
Pros:
Exhaustively researched. All the details fit perfectly into place, and it's probably ruined other, less well researched books set in that time period for me. I felt like I was there and that I learned something, but not in a preachy or look-at-how-clever-I'm-being way.

Reading it on Kindle was great too, because I could just touch a word to define it. I learned a ton of awesome new words and didn't have to pause every five minutes to get out the dictionary.

The supporting cast and their stories are wonderful. Mrs. Fox and Agnes in particular.
Cons:
That obnoxious narration. I'm lucky I didn't throw the book away after reading that opening, where the narrator addresses the reader. Maybe Faber was playing with the "dear reader" type of narration used in novels at the time, but it was just bad.

I don't think Rackham's reasons for abandoning Sugar were well-enough defined. Yes, fancies pass, but I couldn't even tell if it was that, societal pressure, his head injury, or any combination of the three that caused it to happen. Right after Rackham gets attacked, in fact, the novel takes a pretty steep dip as far as making sense is concerned.

Faber's love affair with the word "slime". All the crusty bits most accounts of Victorian times gloss over, Faber goes into great detail. And I basically loved it. Except for the fact that he uses "slime" as a noun seriously every three pages.

The ending: seriously? Are you kidding me? I didn't realize it was an acceptable practice after discovering you've written your characters into a corner after 800 pages, just saying, "uh, yeah, I think I'm just going to stop writing now." I'm not asking for every loose end to be tied in a pretty bow, but just a little more closure would not have been amiss. I'm actually HOPING the mini-series changed that bullshit ending.

Secret theories: Rackham misidentified his wife's body. Agnes made it to a convent in the countyside just fine in fact, and helps them sew for the poor now.
Sugar and Sophie hopped ship for America, and joined up with a school for girls in Philadelphia. (less)

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Aug 04, 2012 Brian rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Over eight hundred pages of very small print, The Crimson Petal and the White is, nevertheless, tremendously readable. Like a mixture of Fielding and Dickens filtered through a twenty-first century sensibility, it positively teems with life, its pages stuffed with characters who leap out of the pages at you.

It's the story of Sugar, an intelligent, resourceful prostitute, making her way in Victorian London. As you might imagine with such a protagonist, there's plenty of sex but it's not the kind...more

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Sep 20, 2012 Tom Barry rated it 4 of 5 stars

The Crimson Petal and the White (Paperback)
This is a great read, but you'll need plenty of stamina for the 800 pages, and pace does bleed off somewhat in the middle.
The story is impeccably researched, set in the squalid london of dickens, plus the leafy suburbs of mid 19th century Notting Hill (very clever of the author). It is extremely well written in a literary style, but the language can be blue with lots of use of the C word and the sex scenes are pretty graphic with explicit mention of un...more

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May 22, 2008 Kristen rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. This book would have been so much better if they cut it in half. There were so many side stories, which were not necessary to the plot. The author could have cut Henry's and the Rescue party's part out of the book, and it wouldn't affect the plot.

Summary:
William heard of a prostitute that would do anything to satisfy her partner. Once William and Sugar had intercourse, he became obsessed with Sugar. He hired her as his personal mistress. Once William moved her out of Mrs. Castaway's, and into a...more

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May 26, 2008 Federica rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: London lover, historic novel lover

Recommended to Federica by: Nicola Cionini

Shelves: historic-book

If you love London and the Victorian Age let the narrator of "The Crimson Petal and the White" lead you in the dedalo of the streets of the most dreary slums crowded with whores and drunks in the company of the prostitute Sugar and her mother Mrs. Castaway to then follow Mr. and Mrs. Rackham in the most beautyful and elegant drawing rooms of the upper class.

The balance between the two side of the London of the Victorian Age is very well coordinated and you feel like you are getting in and out of...more

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Feb 04, 2008 Darby rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: historical-fiction, 2007

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Basically it is the story of Sugar. Sugar is a 19-year old prostitute that is well read and intelligent. She is waiting for the opportunity to pull herself out of the misery of poverty when William Rackman comes into her life. William Rackman is the heir to a perfumery business who found Sugar when looking for a specific erotic skill. William's enchantment with Sugar leads him to purchase her making her his exclusively. He tries to give her every comfort he can think of and in exchange she's ope...more

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Aug 19, 2007 Grace Lucas rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: those who love book about character

Shelves: so-so-fiction

This is a book about sex, life and struggles in Victorian England. I found this book imaginative and detailed (perhaps more than necessary at times). The opening pages were some of the best that I have ever read - a really great introduction for someone who loves to read. I think the details of the story made reading enjoyable, but found the book was a bit long. I think the author could have trimmed 200 pages of fat from the story and things would have turned out the same.

This is a book for thos...more

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Jun 12, 2007 Sammy rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: c-the-okay

This isn't a book for children, I can surely state that without opinion... that is unless you enjoy corrupting your children, because surely if you read this book to them they will know just as much as the Victorian whores do about the ins-and-outs of sex. The book is rich in detail and imagery with nearly every event, person, and location we incounter. Michael Faber clearly has a strong grasp on what he's writing about from everything to the fashions, sicknesses, technology, social patterns, an...more This isn't a book for children, I can surely state that without opinion... that is unless you enjoy corrupting your children, because surely if you read this book to them they will know just as much as the Victorian whores do about the ins-and-outs of sex. The book is rich in detail and imagery with nearly every event, person, and location we incounter. Michael Faber clearly has a strong grasp on what he's writing about from everything to the fashions, sicknesses, technology, social patterns, and even the way a woman's mind works.

His characters were brilliantly flawed. Imperfect enough that you could actually see them as real people and care for them as real people. There are so many times when an author tries to create characters that have one innocent flaw that usually passes unnoticed. Either that or they write a character so flawed you automatically know that this is the antagonist, and the character clear of imperfections is obviously your protagonist. This wasn't the case in The Crimson Petal and the White. There was no outright villian. And even if there was, the person I think is the villian may be quite different from the person you think is the villian.

The one flaw I found in this book is a flaw others might find rewarding, and that was the ending. Well, really there are three endings with each of the three characters that have come to the top of this book. I felt each ending very unsatisfying because it just left you hanging, there was no finished feeling or conclusion that came with them. It bothered me because with the way I was wrapped up in the story I wanted a resolution for each character, it didn't matter what the resolution was, just as long as it was there. It left me going, "That was it?" After such a wonderous read I was left hanging and dissapointed. But don't let this discourage you from reading this book. After reflecting on it, I realized that these endings were endings of a chapter in each character's life, and what happens next is really up for the reader to decide. And though it left me rather upset, it may leave other readers happy and content.

So despite the unsatisfaction I had with the ending of the book, the rest was absolutely superb and a thrilling good read. Mind you it is rather verbose and I suspect that over half the 20 years Michael Faber spent on this book was clearly spent writing it, you won't really worry about how much you have to read once you get involved.(less)

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Sep 20, 2007 Dave rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

I only made it through the first 150 pages. In short, this is my least favorite type of book; it's good enough to keep you reading, but not good enough to be ultimately rewarding. With a book that is 900 pages long, this is a fairly large issue. Seeing how it was going, I put the book down and moved to another.

On the upside, the writing is good and it paints a wonderful (though seedy) picture of England in the late 19th century. The text just flows; which leads to you wanting to read more. So if...more

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