Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #5987 in Books
• Published on: 2003-09-11
• Binding: Paperback
• 894 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Although it's billed as "the first great 19th-century novel of the 21st century," The Crimson Petal and the White is anything but Victorian. It's the story of a well-read London prostitute named Sugar, who spends her free hours composing a violent, pornographic screed against men. Michel Faber's dazzling second novel dares to go where George Eliot's The Mill on the Floss and the works of Charles Dickens could not. We learn about the positions and orifices that Sugar and her clients favour, about her lingering skin condition, and about the suspect ingredients of her prophylactic douches. Still, Sugar believes she can make a better life for herself.

When she is taken up by a wealthy man, the perfumer William Rackham, her wings are clipped and she must balance financial security against the obvious servitude of her position. The physical risks and hardships of Sugar's life (and the even harder "honest" life she would have led as a factory worker) contrast--yet not entirely--with the medical mistreatment of her benefactor's wife, Agnes, and beautifully underscore Faber's emphasis on class and sexual politics.

In theme and treatment, this is a novel that Virginia Woolf might have written, had she been born 70 years later. The language, however, is Faber's own--brisk and elastic--and, after an awkward opening, the plethora of detail he offers (costume, food, manners, cheap stage performances, the London streets) slides effortlessly into his forward-moving sentences. When Agnes goes mad, for instance, "she sings on and on, while the house is discreetly dusted all around her and, in the concealed and subterranean kitchen, a naked duck, limp and faintly steaming, spreads its pimpled legs on a draining board." Despite its 800-plus pages, The Crimson Petal and the White turns out to be a quick read, since it is truly impossible to put down. --Regina Marler, Amazon.com

Synopsis
Gripping from the first page, this immense novel is an intoxicating and deeply satisfying read. Faber's most ambitious fictional creation yet, it is sure to affirm his position as one of the most talented and brilliant writers working in the UK. Sugar, an alluring, nineteen-year-old whore in the brothel of the terrifying Mrs Castaway, yearns for a better life. Her ascent through the strata of 1870's London society offers us intimacy with a host of loveable, maddening and superbly realised characters. At the heart of this panoramic, multi-layered narrative is the compelling struggle of a young woman to lift her body and soul out of the gutter. The Crimson Petal and the White is a big, juicy, must-read of a novel that will delight, enthral, provoke and entertain young and old, male and female.

Customer Reviews

Fantastic Story, Over Too Soon
This book captivated me immediately and I suspended all but the most necessary of my obligations until I could finish it. But, alas, it was over too soon. At over 800 pages, I would have thought I'd be exhausted and ready for a new read, but I want to know what happens next for Sugar, Agnes, Mrs. Fox, William Rackham, and even Caroline, who only appears briefly but ties the book together in a subtle thread.

The device this author uses is pure genius - knowing that he's writing across a century to a modern-day audience, and starting us with one character and then, as that character meets another, having us follow along with the new face. None of the story's inhabitants are particularly likeable, except for little Sophie, but it doesn't matter. I still wanted to get to the next page and see what would happen for them. Highly recommended, and I'd love to see a sequel.

Extraordinary world
A delightful romp through the ranks of society in 1870's London. From the very first page the author invites you to participate as though you were a character within its pages. The story starts by introducing us the lowest strata of Victorian society in Church Lane St Giles where we are introduced to the first character Caroline, who in turn will lead us to be introduced to the main protagonists as we become part of their lives for a year or so. I believe this is why the ending may be a little disappointing to some as nothing is actually resolved completely, for life goes on!

The heroine is Sugar a nineteen year old prostitute that we follow as she yearns for a better life, on the way getting to meet a whole cast of believable and memorable characters. The other main protagonists are mainly members of the Rackham family, a perfume family that were rivals of Pears and Yardley. They are William Rackham, second son and reluctant heir to the family business, his wife Agnes, ignorant of the facts of life and so a very troubled and tormented lady. She is even unable to accept the existence of her own daughter Sophie. Williams's older brother Henry and his lady friend Emmeline Fox along with Bodley and Ashwell, university friends of William, are the other characters that link William Rackham's two worlds together.
Religion, Prostitution and Poverty are all covered in this detailed description of life in C19 London, which for so very many people was one of misery.
The descriptions are extremely intimate and if you are going to be easily offended by crude language and very explicit details of a personal nature then this is not a book for you.

It was a lengthy read at over 800 pages but one I would not have missed what an extraordinary world Victorian London must have been.

One of my very favourite books
The title, as all good Victoriana-o-philes will know, comes from a poem by Tennyson called 'Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal' ("Now sleeps the crimson petal, now the white"), a poem about love and longing, and to be frank, a little bit of lusting too. How apt this is for this wonderful, wonderful, all-consuming book.


"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."


So opens this novel set in the dark, dirty streets of Victorian London. The story follows a headstrong young man-hating prostitute called Sugar as she progresses through the rigid social structure of the times thanks to a liaison with William Rackham, gentleman and newly crowned head of Rackham Perfumeries. At home he has a daughter and a wife - his wife is confined to her bed, hysterical in the way that only Victorian women could be. She is, perhaps, his madwoman in the attic.

This is a chunky book - my paperback edition weighs in at 835 (very good quality) pages - but my word I zipped through it. The beauty of it is that Faber is a genius at character. Every single person, no matter how inconsequential, pops out of the page a fully formed human being, elliciting sympathy or derision or hatred as appropriate. And London herself becomes as much as character as any person in the book - the city is perfectly etched with no details left out. No dim corner is too dirty or deprived for our eyes, and this means that the social inequality of the Victorian class system is laid bare for all to see. We watch Sugar as she drags herself from 'The Streets' to 'The World at Large', but then what happens to her?

The ending of the book caused some controversy with readers when the book was published in 2000 because it... no, I can't tell you. All I shall say is that Michel Faber had enough letters (both pleading and admonishing) to write a follow up book of short stories called The Apple in 2006. I can tell you that when I closed The Crimson Petal and the White, I was bereft, and it remains one of the best books I have ever read. It, like the London, and like the characters it is populated by, is "vast and intricate", and leaves quite the indelible print on the memory.

I read that there is to be a film adaptation. I could see it working as a film, but I'm not sure I would want to see the film itself. I think I'm too attached to the book to be able to let go of the mental picture I have of the characters. *Sigh*. Wonderful book. Wonderful, wonderful book.