Book Review

The Crimson Petal and the White

I knew I wanted this book from the moment I first heard about it. A sweeping, naughty epic set in 1870's London, with the main character a young whore? Bring it on! I have a weakness for Victorian smut, and this was Victorian smut on a grand, literary scale.

No grotty little paperback, this, with headmasters whipping recalcitrant bottoms. The same twenty-six bucks that would almost buy you the 430-page Koontz novel reviewed above will get you a jam-packed 830 pages of marvelous prose.

One of my main gripes with 'historical' novels is that too often, the author will unthinkingly use language that doesn't seem to fit the era, thereby jarring the reader. It's like watching an episode of "That 70's Show" and hearing them use slang that wasn't common until the '90's. And yes, I know how wrong a comparison that is. Sorry.

For instance - I recently read a novel set during the Trojan War. "Daughter of Troy," by Sarah Franklin, was quite well done (except for the discrepancy of the title; the main character wasn't from Troy at all). But I recall a couple of places in which the word 'crazy' popped up in dialogue. Didn't seem to fit. 'Mad' would have been better. Or there was the author I met at a con, who told of how she used "okay" in an Arthurian novel. Doesn't work.

There is no similar problem in "The Crimson Petal and the White." Nothing in the language, either dialogue or description, struck me as unfitting or anachronistic. The style of the writing alarmed me at first, because it's told in the present tense, and starts out from the second-person point of view:

"Watch your step. Keep your wits about you; you will need them."

Of all the styles of writing, that is the hardest to master and the most off-putting to the average reader. I thought 'uh-oh,' but read on regardless. The technique worked fairly well in King & Straub's "Black House," after all.

Four hours and 330 pages later …

I should not have taken this book to work. That's where I'm supposed to do most of my writing. I did not get a single thing accomplished that night. Bad for me, but it says something very good about Michel Faber.

Lordy, what a book! It's truly wonderful, a real work of art. The characters, the scene-setting … this is a Victorian London so real you can smell it (not that you'd want to, especially as it starts out in the low part of town where the cheapest whores live).

"The Crimson Petal and the White" is primarily the story of Sugar, a 19-year-old whose mother led her into a life of prostitution at a very early age. Sugar's true feelings about her life and her mother come through in the novel she's working on, a semi-autobiography that allows her to vicariously get her gruesome revenge on her clientele.

Sugar catches the eye of William Rackham, as-yet-unproven heir to a perfumeries and cosmetics company. He establishes her as his mistress, which draws Sugar into the twisted life of the Rackham family. From older brother Henry, the would-be priest consumed by lustful thoughts, to William's seriously deranged wife Agnes, to their poor children-should-be-seen-and-not-heard (and preferably not ever seen) daughter Sophie, the Rackhams are just teeming with problems.

The cast is rounded out by a lively bunch of characters. The Widow Fox, daughter of Agnes' doctor (himself one of those dubious physician-types whose 'treatments' prescribed to genteel ladies make one wonder as to their actual medical veracity), spends her days seeking to rescue 'fallen' women and is the object of Henry's unspoken love. William's wastrel friends Ashwell and Bodley lead lives solely devoted to pleasure and entertainment, taking in everything from high society operas to a show by a professional flatulence performer.

This is not a book for the faint of heart or the easily offended. The sex scenes aren't especially graphic, but a lot of the rest of it - the detailed seamy underside of low-class life - is shamelessly and matter-of-factly presented.

It may not be what life was really like in those days. But "The Crimson Petal and the White" does the best job I have ever seen of what I would imagine life was like in those days. It has a sense of gritty realism to it that sets it worlds away from a romance novel, and the story is the most compelling and best-written I've encountered in months.

review by Christine Morgan