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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 sex worker 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, provoke and entertain young and old, male and female.
Review:
'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.' So begins Michel Faber's astonishing novel, set in a Victorian London reminiscent of many other depictions of Victorian London but with a harsh tangible reality all its own. Faber's vision is cinematic in its intensity as he leads the reader through the filthy slum of St Giles and introduces us to its inhabitants. Chief amongst these is Sugar, a sex worker from her early teens but determined to better herself by any means available. When she meets William Rackham, heir to the vast empire of Rackham Perfumeries, she thinks her chance has come. But William's wife Agnes is on the verge of insanity and he has no conception of the intellectual maturity that Sugar craves. Faber brings his characters to life with the same passion and precision as he does the city, sometimes showing us what is happening from a distance and sometimes taking us almost painfully deep into an individual consciousness. But he keeps a sense of detachment throughout, never yielding to sentimentality; even when the worst things happen he does not dwell on their horrors but shows us their effects through the words and actions of the characters. As we read we begin more and more to share Faber's quiet outrage at the plight of Victorian women, illustrated most clearly in the contrasting situations of Sugar and Agnes. Agnes is shielded from life to such an extent that she thinks that her menstrual periods are a sign of mortal illness; she retreats into a world of frenzied gaiety alternating with complete breakdown. Sugar has known too much, for too long; she is brilliantly clever but her talents are unappreciated by men only interested in her sexual prowess. As the two women fight to realize themselves under the crushing weight of male expectations Faber subverts the conventions of the Victorian novel to show us the age from the point of view of the voiceless - the woman, the servant, the child. Absorbing and moving in equal measure, The Crimson Petal and the White is nearly a thousand pages long, but it still ends too soon, expelling us from its world as abruptly as it drew us in. An unforgettable achievement. (Kirkus UK)
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