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The Crimson Petal and the White

By Michel Faber

(80)

| Paperback | 9780156028776

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Book Description

Meet Sugar, a nineteen-year-old prostitute in nineteenth-century London who yearns for escape to a better life. From the brothel of the terrifying Mrs. Castaway, she begins her ascent through society, meeting a host of lovable, maddening, unforgettable characters on the way. They begin with William Continue

Critics

'The Crimson Petal and the White' by Michel Faber

Michel Faber's The Crimson Petal and the White is, quite simply, an astounding literary accomplishment. Within its 800-plus pages unfolds a story that draws the reader into another time and place so expertly that you feel as if you, too, are treading ... (read full critics)

readingmatters published on Tue, 28 Sep 2010

Hold on to your bustles

The Crimson Petal and the White by Michel Faber Canongate £17.99, pp835 Early on in this voluminous novel, the 'criticisin' of books becomes a bawdy euphemism for something that no lady would ever be caught doing, especially not in 1874, which is why ... (read full critics)

guardian.co.uk published on Sat, 25 Sep 2010

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9 Reviews

4 people find this helpful

The only time I actually took a sick day at work just to finish reading a book. In fact it's not even a book, it's a teleportation chamber straight into scuzzy 19th century England. Insanely good.

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Danelectrico said on Dec 6, 2007 | Add your feedback

Reading The Crimson Petal and the White is a surreal experience. It has the rare ability in a postmodern novel to transfer you to the Victorian London without bumps in the road, no evidence of being carried there, not even intentional. It could be easily been associated with the major realist text o ... (continue)

Reading The Crimson Petal and the White is a surreal experience. It has the rare ability in a postmodern novel to transfer you to the Victorian London without bumps in the road, no evidence of being carried there, not even intentional. It could be easily been associated with the major realist text of the XIX century. It is not important to know what fate has decided for Sugar, what is really important is to keep on reading, keep on meeting the fascinating and at times disturbing inhabitants of that luminous yet bleak conglomerate of souls which is the fin de siècle London.

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Black Mamba87 said on Feb 15, 2012 about the Hardcover edition | Add your feedback

A great surprise

It's so refreshing when you find a book which is completely out of your comfort zone and it delights you so much that you just don't want it to end.
The Crimson Petal and the White was a) sized more like a brick than any book I would normally be attracted to read and b) Historical fiction which I ... (continue)

It's so refreshing when you find a book which is completely out of your comfort zone and it delights you so much that you just don't want it to end.
The Crimson Petal and the White was a) sized more like a brick than any book I would normally be attracted to read and b) Historical fiction which I would normally completely avoid as a genre.
I decided to read it because I had enjoyed the BBC adaptation - again, never normally the basis I would normally choose to read a book on. From the first chapter to the last, Michel Faber had be completely lost in the world of Sugar and her Mr Rackham.
It keeps you hooked like a soap opera, and the plot lulls and falls tugging at every emotion, Faber makes you feel like you are actually in the presence of the characters throughout the book - a secret onlooker privy to all and every tiny important detail.
I would recommend this book to anyone, especially someone who wants to leap out of their comfort zone and read something different for a change.

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Danielle said on Dec 9, 2011 about the eBook edition | Add your feedback

"A fucking time machine to scuzzy Victorian England"

(I'm quoting some other reviewer on this site, I loved the description).
The modern take on Victorian times already existed - The French Lieutenant's Woman - but this takes it to the extreme. You are definitely there looking from ten inches away at all the horrors that Dickens didn't dare to descri ... (continue)

(I'm quoting some other reviewer on this site, I loved the description).
The modern take on Victorian times already existed - The French Lieutenant's Woman - but this takes it to the extreme. You are definitely there looking from ten inches away at all the horrors that Dickens didn't dare to describe.
The basic plot is an old trope - smart whore crawls her way up in society - and so are the banal subplots (madwoman in the attic, neglected little girl, a couple of repressed Victorians to offset the definitely non-repressed protagonists). Nothing new there then - but this goes on for 700 pages and it's a relentless HOOT. I could say it loses its hammering rhythm around the end, but that still means that you've read 600-plus pages of literary dynamite and it only stops for breath in the very last chapters (predictably, Sugar's life gets boring the more respectable she becomes - yet another trope).
Some books have this rare ability to conjure a whole time and place as a whole and close the real world off - not many, I could mention Buddenbrooks or The Magus. But the "just like I was there" feeling gets a new level here; I actually FELT I was the one screwing Mr Rackham (often, and inventively), or I was the one scratching my hands because of a mild skin condition that might be God knows what venereal disease.

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Paola said on Jun 23, 2011 about the Others edition | Add your feedback

Gorgeous!

Read this several years ago during a rainy holiday in Norfolk and fell in love with Faber's vision of Victorian London. The clever use of the 2nd person, the rich language and Sugar - what's not to love?

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Paula Jeffery said on Jun 19, 2011 | Add your feedback

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 t ... (continue)

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.

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Lindyloumac said on Nov 3, 2009 | Add your feedback