Anyone who has ever read any of my other reviews of Sarah Waters' books will have already heard about - and been immeasurably bored by - my enduring admiration for her work.
They will also be familiar with my mixed relationship with said work, so I won't rehash it again. Suffice to say, Waters' debut novel was the last one I came to and it has stirred up rather heated debate in the little book group in my heart.
It is no surprise that critics and readers alike were gripped and excited by this new writer, who showed a brilliant ability to characterise, to create a sense of place and time, to sprawl her characters' stories across many settings and situations, just as real life itself tends to spew all over the place, rather than just chunter along nicely on a pre-set, pre-destined course.
And for that reason, I liked Tipping the Velvet very much. Not having seen the TV adaptation, the storyline had not already been spoiled for me and I enjoyed the way in which the central character Nancy makes her way from naive starstruck oyster girl, to rent boy and decadent 'tom', as she tries to find her true identity in Victorian London.
Everybody knows that Tipping the Velvet is absolutely bursting with girl-on-girl action and I can confirm that the adaptation was no exaggeration of the book. The central section in particular is so full of heaving bosoms, damp 'spendings' and choice terms for a lady's private parts that I became convinced a crusty copy of this book must be tucked under the mattress of every teenage boy in the land. It's so full-on that it actually becomes boring and loses its titillation factor, but I suspect even that is a purposeful and clever technique employed by the author.
At the beginning of her story, Nancy is young, inexperienced and frightened by her burgeoning feelings for her friend Kitty and the tentative, gentle sex reflects that. Later on, betrayed and jaded by the world, Nancy almost loses herself in the abandon of sex as a way of life, indeed, a way of earning a living. If the reader is bored with the constant depravity, then Nancy most certainly is and this pulls the role of physical gratification back into perspective for both character and reader.
All in all, a highly entertaining read, just don't give it to your gran for Christmas.
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