| |  | Books : Tipping the Velvet: A Novel |  | | | | | | | | | |
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.914
EAN: 9781573227889
ISBN: 1573227889
Label: Riverhead Trade
Manufacturer: Riverhead Trade
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 480
Publication Date: May 01, 2000
Publisher: Riverhead Trade
Sales Rank: 27650
Studio: Riverhead Trade
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
This stunning and steamy debut chronicles the adventures of Nan King, a small-town girl at the turn of the century whose life takes a wild turn of its own when she follows a local music hall star to London...
'Glorious...a sexy, sinewy sojourn of a young woman in turn-of-the-century England.'--The Boston Globe
'Erotic and absorbing...If lesbian fiction is to reach a wider readership, Waters is the person to carry the banner.'--The New York Times Book Review
'Wonderful...a sensual experience that leaves the reader marveling at the author's craftsmanship, idiosyncrasy and sheer effort.'--The San Francisco Chronicle
'Amazing....This is the lesbian novel we've all been waiting for.'--Salon.com
'Compelling...Readers of all sexes and orientations should identify with this gutsy hero as she learns who she is and how to love.'--Newsday
'Echoes of Tom Jones, Great Expectations...Waters's debut offers terrific entertainment: pulsating with highly charged (and explicitly presented) erotic heat.'--Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
Amazon.com Review:
The heroine of Sarah Waters's audacious first novel knows her destiny, andseems content with it. Her place is in her father's seaside restaurant,shucking shellfish and stirring soup, singing all the while. 'Although Ididn't long believe the story told to me by Mother--that they had found me as ababy in an oyster-shell, and a greedy customer had almost eaten me forlunch--for eighteen years I never doubted my own oysterish sympathies, neverlooked far beyond my father's kitchen for occupation, or for love.' At nightNancy Astley often ventures to the nearby music hall, not that she hasillusions of being more than an audience member. But the moment she spies anew male impersonator--still something of a curiosity in England circa1888--her years of innocence come to an end and a life of transformationsbegins.
Tipping the Velvet, all 472 pages of it, is as saucy, astantalizing, and as touching as the narrator's first encounter with theseductive but shame-ridden Miss Kitty Butler. And at first even Nancy'sfamily is thrilled with her gender-bending pal, all but her sister, bestfriend, and bedmate, Alice, 'her eyes shining cold and dull, with starlightand suspicion.' Not to worry. Soon Nancy and Kitty are off to London, theirrelationship close though (alas for our heroine) sisterly. We know thatbliss will come, and it does, in an exceptionally charged moment. A lesserauthor would have been content to stop her story there, but Waters has muchmore in mind for her buttonholing heroine, and for us. In brief, herEverywoman with a sexual difference goes from success onstage to heartbreakto a stint as a male prostitute (necessity truly is the mother ofinvention) to keeping house for a brother and sister in the Labourmovement. And did I mention her long stint as a plaything in the pleasurepalace of a rich Sapphist extraordinaire? Diana Lethaby is as cruel as sheis carnal, and even the well-concealed Cavendish Ladies' Club isn'toutré enough for her. Kitting Nancy out in full, elegant drag, shedares the front desk to turn them away. 'We are here,' she mocks, 'for thesake of the irregular.'
Only after some seven years of hard twists and sensual turns does Nancyconclude that a life of sensation is not enough. Still, Tipping theVelvet is so entertaining that readers will wish her sentimental--andhedonistic--education had taken twice as long. --Kerry Fried
Customer Reviews Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Turn of the Century, London, Lesbians...yes, that's what I said...
Another moving and well written story by Sarah Waters.I don't want to say too much, the review from Publishers Weekly tells too much of the story, I think it's better to be surprised.
Nancy Astley narrates her life for the reader with candor and abandon.We can smell the oysters in Whitestable where she grew up an oyster-girl with her fishmonger family.We smell the grease-paint, hair oil and spilled beer of the music hall where she first sees the pretty Kitty Butler dressed as ... Read More
Rating:  - Great storytelling
Let's get right to it, shall we?This is one fine novel.Period.Regardless of the fact that it deals with lesbian society during the late 19th century doesn't mean that it will alienate everyone save its target audience, as gay novels sometimes tend to do.These characters are first and foremost 3 dimensional and they leap off the page at the reader and grab him by the throat (in a good way, of course).I wanted to become more familiar with every single one of them, including the loathsome ... Read More
Rating: - SUBVERSIVE, SHOCKING AND SINFULLY GOOD
This epic tale of one girl's pursuit of what she calls "desperate pleasures" in the arms of a series of archetypical women is deliciously subversive, sinfully entertaining and filled with explicit, shocking sex scenes -- but underneath it all, "Tipping the Velvet" is really a big, old-fashioned, kind-hearted and beautifully realized romance. Made up of equal parts picaresque, without the satire or irony, bildungsroman and historical fiction, the novel traces the travels and sentimental education ... Read More
Rating: - An engrossing tale
This is a lavishly beautiful story that draws the reader in and doesn't let go until the immensely satisfying end.Highly recommended for fans of lesbian erotica, and those who don't yet know that they are!
Rating: - Charming and completely absorbing of a search for love through the sexual underbelly of London that meanders down many roads
Based on the cover I had always assumed this book was about lesbian strippers in the late 1800's. Well, I was wrong. It' actually more about-how to say it?-the kind of sexual underground of London. What wasn't seen by polite society or talked about-lesbians, rent boys (male prostitutes) women being kept by other women, cross dressing and plane of gay men.
Nancy Astley is a young girl working in her family's oyster house in Whitstable when her life is changed by an act at a nearby theater. ... Read More
Tipping the Velvet: A Novel | | | |
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