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I've now read every novel that Sarah Waters has written and this one, her debut I believe, has all the hallmarks of what makes Sarah Waters great: realistic period setting, brilliant, lively characters and thrills and spills (bawdy pun indeed) to keep any reader entertained. With it's musical hall quality, it reminded me of Angela Carter's Wise Children in parts - there is perhaps a touch too much of the melodrama about it and the ending neatly contrived to tie up loose ends. But all that is for
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I adore this novel. It's a Dickensian Lesbian novel with one of my personally favorite characters in literature. I've re-read this multiple times since, and could easily read it ten times more. I mean, what more can you ask out of a gripping read? Music halls, Victorian Drag Kings, devilish seductresses, transgender female-to-male male prostitution, lesbos, sexual underground dens of vice, picturesque sentimentality...it's got everything I could ask for. I could see how this wouldn't be for ever
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This book briefly made my mind dirtier. But in a Victorian, cross-dressing, socialist-romance-triumphs-over-all sort of way.
Jun 14, 2009
Isabel
added it
Apr 04, 2014
Clarke
marked it as to-read
Jan 25, 2015
Lindsy Lawrence
marked it as to-read
Feb 23, 2017
Sara
marked it as to-read
