Tipping
the Velvet
The heroine of Sarah Waters's audacious first novel knows her destiny,
and seems content with it. Her place is in her father's seaside restaurant,
shucking shellfish and stirring soup, singing all the while. "Although
I didn't long believe the story told to me by Mother--that they had found
me as a baby in an oyster-shell, and a greedy customer had almost eaten
me for lunch--for eighteen years I never doubted my own oysterish sympathies,
never looked far beyond my father's kitchen for occupation, or for love."
At night Nancy Astley often ventures to the nearby music hall, not that
she has illusions of being more than an audience member. But the moment
she spies a new male impersonator--still something of a curiosity in England
circa 1888--her years of innocence come to an end and a life of transformations
begins.
Tipping the Velvet, all 472 pages of it, is as saucy, as tantalizing,
and as touching as the narrator's first encounter with the seductive but
shame-ridden Miss Kitty Butler. And at first even Nancy's family is thrilled
with her gender-bending pal, all but her sister, best friend, and bedmate,
Alice, "her eyes shining cold and dull, with starlight and suspicion."
Not to worry. Soon Nancy and Kitty are off to London, their relationship
close though (alas for our heroine) sisterly. We know that bliss will come,
and it does, in an exceptionally charged moment. A lesser author would
have been content to stop her story there, but Waters has much more in
mind for her buttonholing heroine, and for us. In brief, her Everywoman
with a sexual difference goes from success onstage to heartbreak to a stint
as a male prostitute (necessity truly is the mother of invention) to keeping
house for a brother and sister in the Labour movement. And did I mention
her long stint as a plaything in the pleasure palace of a rich Sapphist
extraordinaire? Diana Lethaby is as cruel as she is carnal, and even the
well-concealed Cavendish Ladies' Club isn't outré enough for her. Kitting
Nancy out in full, elegant drag, she dares the front desk to turn them
away. "We are here," she mocks, "for the sake of the irregular."
Only after some seven years of hard twists and sensual turns does Nancy
conclude that a life of sensation is not enough. Still, Tipping the Velvet
is so entertaining that readers will wish her sentimental--and hedonistic--education
had taken twice as long. --Kerry Fried - Amazon.com
Paperback: 472 pages ; Dimensions (in inches): 1.08 x
8.03 x 5.12
Riverhead Books; ISBN: 1573227889; Reissue edition (May
2000) |
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