![]() ![]() ![]() Here was an author who was evidently well-versed in the 19th century literary canon but equally knowledgeable about the naughtier writers of the period (Waters had researched 19th century pornography as part of her doctoral studies and the title is a term taken from Victorian sexual slang). Here was an author who confidently evoked the Victorian era without resorting to rosy nostalgia or gaslight clichés. Here was a new, exciting author with a surprising eye for detail and a talent for sumptuous descriptions of a bygone age. That said, it is easy to understand why critics were so enthusiastic about this novel when it was first published. Nor does it have the ambitious narrative structure of or the tantalising ambiguities of. ![]() As a picaresque novel, it lacks the tight plotting of. I started this book after having read all Waters's other novels except "The Paying Guests" (which I read concurrently - watch this space for my review.) In the light of Waters's later works, I don't consider "Tipping the Velvet" as one of her very best books. The novel charts Nan's coming of age (and "coming out") in the lesbian communities of late 19th century London. An unlikely friendship develops and Nan and Kitty are soon on their way to London together. She becomes infatuated with Kitty Butler, a visiting male impersonator at the local theatre. The likeable first-person narrator in Sarah Waters's debut novel is Nan Astley, whom we first meet as a rather shy, eighteen-year-old "oyster girl" in Whitstable. ![]()
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