A review by thisotherbookaccount
The Crimson Petal and the White by Michel Faber
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I refuse to believe that I have lost patience for chunky books, but this book is seriously testing this belief of mine.
I was introduced to Crimson Petal and the White as an alternative — or successor, if you will — to Fingersmith by Sarah Waters, one of my favourite books of all time. Both are set in Victorian England and both feature the rise of street urchins (or, in this case, a prostitute) up the social ladder.
The key difference between the two, though, is that CPATW is overwritten, it’s too long and far too aware of its need to be ‘literary’ — without actually offering anything new beyond a Dickensian tale with a whole lot of dicks.
I’ve chipped away at this book for about a week, and I am only just a hair over one-third through this massive tome. Faber’s verbosity is tuned to 11 in this book, and I am convinced that, if you were to remove every other word in this book, you could still follow the plot just fine. In fact, at one point, I started skipping paragraphs and I could still follow what was going on with the characters. While I appreciate the recreation of Victorian England and how immersive the atmosphere is, it got way too much by page 200. Victorian England was FILTHY in the 19th century. We heard you the first thousandth time, Faber.
There also aren’t anything special in CPATW. Sugar, the protagonist, is different from the other prostitutes because she reads. OK, sure, but how she managed to move up the social ladder does not involve anything beyond seducing the right horny customer and getting him to buy things. Like prostitution, this is a tale as old as time. You don’t have to go through a 800-page doorstopper to be retold the same story.
For the story, Faber has also created a cast of characters, each written as protagonists of their own stories. I understand that these side characters are there to give, and I apologise, character to the society, but they go on tangents that ultimately end up nowhere.
Judging by the summary of the book, I am glad that I am bailing out now. The rest of the book does not in any way justify its overbearing length and word count.
I refuse to believe that I have lost patience for chunky books, but this book is seriously testing this belief of mine.
I was introduced to Crimson Petal and the White as an alternative — or successor, if you will — to Fingersmith by Sarah Waters, one of my favourite books of all time. Both are set in Victorian England and both feature the rise of street urchins (or, in this case, a prostitute) up the social ladder.
The key difference between the two, though, is that CPATW is overwritten, it’s too long and far too aware of its need to be ‘literary’ — without actually offering anything new beyond a Dickensian tale with a whole lot of dicks.
I’ve chipped away at this book for about a week, and I am only just a hair over one-third through this massive tome. Faber’s verbosity is tuned to 11 in this book, and I am convinced that, if you were to remove every other word in this book, you could still follow the plot just fine. In fact, at one point, I started skipping paragraphs and I could still follow what was going on with the characters. While I appreciate the recreation of Victorian England and how immersive the atmosphere is, it got way too much by page 200. Victorian England was FILTHY in the 19th century. We heard you the first thousandth time, Faber.
There also aren’t anything special in CPATW. Sugar, the protagonist, is different from the other prostitutes because she reads. OK, sure, but how she managed to move up the social ladder does not involve anything beyond seducing the right horny customer and getting him to buy things. Like prostitution, this is a tale as old as time. You don’t have to go through a 800-page doorstopper to be retold the same story.
For the story, Faber has also created a cast of characters, each written as protagonists of their own stories. I understand that these side characters are there to give, and I apologise, character to the society, but they go on tangents that ultimately end up nowhere.
Judging by the summary of the book, I am glad that I am bailing out now. The rest of the book does not in any way justify its overbearing length and word count.