The Crimson Petal and the White.
New York : Canongate Canons : 2002Description: 315 Pages : 24cmContent type: text Media type: unmediated Carrier type: volume001: 28276ISBN: 9780156028776Subject(s): Contemporary Fiction | FictionDDC classification: 823 FABItem type | Current library | Collection | Call number | Copy number | Status | Date due | Barcode | |
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Book | MAIN LIBRARY FICTION | FICTION (Browse shelf(Opens below)) | 1 | Available | 100280 |
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Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:
A teenage prostitute ascends through the many layers of Victorian London society in this highly acclaimed "big, sexy, bravura novel" (New York Times).
London, 1870s. At the heart of this panoramic narrative is a young woman's struggle to lift her body and soul out of the gutter. Sugar, a nineteen-year-old whore in the brothel of the terrifying Mrs. Castaway, yearns for a better life. Her ascent through the strata of Victorian society begins with the egotistical perfume magnate William Rackham. Infatuated with Sugar, William's patronage brings her into the circles of his family and milieu: his wife who barely overcomes chronic hysteria to make her appearances during "the Season"; his mysteriously hidden-away daughter, left to the care of minions; his pious brother, foiled in his devotional calling by his lust for the Widow Fox; as well as preening socialites, drunken journalists, untrustworthy servants, vile guttersnipes, and whores of all stripes and persuasions.
Twenty years in its conception, research, and writing, The Crimson Petal and the White is teeming with life, rich in texture and incident, with breathtakingly real characters.
"Cocky and brilliant, amused and angry, [Faber] is rightfully earning comparisons to observer extraordinaire Charles Dickens. . . . It's hopeless to resist" (Entertainment Weekly).
Table of contents provided by Syndetics
- Part 1 The Streets (p. 1)
- Part 2 The House of Ill Repute (p. 125)
- Part 3 The Private Rooms and the Public Haunts (p. 275)
- Part 4 The Bosom of the Family (p. 495)
- Part 5 The World at Large (p. 669)
Excerpt provided by Syndetics
Reviews provided by Syndetics
Library Journal Review
Set in 1870s London, Faber's second novel (after Under the Skin) is a powerful portrayal of a young prostitute named Sugar. Intelligent and ambitious, Sugar yearns to escape from the livelihood forced on her at age 13. Enter William Rackham, a besotted philanderer and idle heir to a family perfume business,who installs Sugar as his secret mistress in a fashionable hideaway. When the incompetent William is forced into managing the family firm, he initially seeks advice from Sugar, who, fearful of losing his affection, schemes to gain closer proximity to the Rackham family. She succeeds by becoming governess to William's only child, young Sophie, who is cruelly ignored by her father and his insane and sickly wife, Agnes. As William's interest in Sugar wanes, she seeks to maintain her position both by earning Sophie's respect and by gaining possession of the intimate diaries that Agnes has foolishly discarded. Faber's mastery of character, evocative descriptions of Victorian England, and rich dialog, together with his weaving of enduring themes throughout a complex plot, creates a remarkable novel. Strongly recommended for most literary and historical fiction collections. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 5/1/02.]-Joseph M. Eagan, Enoch Pratt Free Lib., Baltimore (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.Publishers Weekly Review
Faber's bawdy, brilliant third novel tells an intricate tale of love and ambition and paints a new portrait of Victorian England and its citizens in prose crackling with insight and bravado. Using the wealthy Rackham clan as a focal point for his sprawling, gorgeous epic, Faber, like Dickens or Hardy, explores an era's secrets and social hypocrisy. William Rackham is a restless, rebellious spirit, mistrustful of convention and the demands of his father's perfume business. While spying on his sickly wife's maid, whom he suspects of thievery, he begins a slow slide into depravity: he meets Sugar, a whore whose penetrating mind and love of books intrigues him as much as her beauty and carnal skills do. Faber (Under the Skin) also weaves in the stories of Agnes, William's delicate, mad and manipulative wife, and Henry, his pious, morally conflicted brother, both of whom seek escape from their private prisons through fantasies and small deceptions. Sin and vice both attract and repel the brothers: William, who becomes obsessed with Sugar, rescues her from her old life, while Henry, paralyzed by his love for Emmeline Fox, a comely widow working to rescue the city's prostitutes, slowly unravels. Faber's central characters, especially the troubled William and the ambitious Sugar, shine with life, and the author is no less gifted in capturing the essence of his many minor characters-the evil madam, Mrs. Castaway, and William's pompous father-in-law, Lord Unwin. The superb plot draws on a wealth of research and briskly moves through the lives of each character-whether major or minor, upstairs or downstairs-gathering force until the fates of all are revealed. A marvelous story of erotic love, sin, familial conflicts and class prejudice, this is a deeply entertaining masterwork that will hold readers captive until the final page. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reservedBooklist Review
An unseen narrator bids the reader into a London that at first seems simply Dickensian. But Faber's breathtaking novel is more intimate with its characters and less hopeful in its resolutions. This is part saga, part morality play, and utterly engrossing. The book's premise is that men may rule the world, but women's emotions move it by their gravitational force. The man who runs this particular world is William Rackham; once a dilettante and would-be writer, he finally agrees to take over his father's well-established perfumery business in order to finance his entrancement with a red-haired prostitute, Sugar, renowned for her willingness to service her customers in any way they prefer. The clever, literate Sugar insinuates herself into Rackham's life, first as his mistress, then as his business muse, and finally as governess to his daughter, Sophie, who is persona non grata to her seemingly mad mother, Agnes. Sugar, Agnes, and the crusading Miss Emmeline Fox propel the story, unraveling the lives of William and his brother, Henry, like loosely wound bolts of thread. The large themes that intertwine the characters with one another--religion, health, sexuality, death, and, reluctantly, love--are juxtaposed against the most minute and intimate details of Victorian life, everything from how a prostitute douches to the ways God whispers inside the heads of His flock. This massive work is startling and absorbing. Readers will not soon forget the richly drawn world into which they have been enticed. --Ilene CooperKirkus Book Review
Imagine a Dickens novel freed of the restraints imposed by Victorian propriety. There's no other way to describe this enthralling melodrama from the British author of Under the Skin (2000). Set in 1870s London, Faber's second outing is a brilliantly plotted chronicle of the collision between high and low, as played out in the complex relationship binding would-be writer William Rackham, heir to a perfume-maker's fortune and an inveterate whoremaster, and a cunning prostitute known as Sugar, whose special erotic talents inflame the smitten Rackham to the extent that he installs her in his home, ostensibly as his young daughter's governess; in fact, as the mistress who distracts his attention from the illnesses and "fits" endured by his frail (and possibly "mad") wife Agnes. Faber tells this story through the voice of a cajoling omniscient narrator implicitly likened to a whore luring her customer on, incidentally providing a thickly detailed panorama of 19th-century urban life. And the characters: not only the egoistic, self-justifying Rackham, the fascinating Agnes (a keen study in what used to be called "female hysteria"), and the calculating Sugar (herself a secret authoress, of "a tale that throws back the sheets from acts never shown and voices never heard")-but also William's priggish brother Henry, who wishes to reform prostitutes but suffers "nightmares of erotic disgrace"; Henry's cohort in benevolence, "Rescue Society" bluestocking Emmeline Fox; the Hogarthian procuress Mrs. Castaway and the ghastly Colonel Leek; "eminent swells" Bodley and Ashwell, William's companions in depravity and the exploitation of women-these and many others leap from Faber's crowded pages, as the whore Sugar's progress clashes with the sanctity of the Rackham hearth, Agnes's runaway manic-depression, William's inexplicable recovery of love for his wife and eventual dismissal of her replacement-and leads to Sugar's horrific climactic revenge. It's hard to imagine that any contemporary novelist could have appropriated with such skill and force the irresistible narrative drive of the Victorian three-decker, or that readers who hunger for story won't devour this like grateful wolves. Riveting, and absolutely unforgettable. First printing of 75,000; author tourThere are no comments on this title.