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Tipping the Velvet: A Novel | 
 enlarge | Author: Sarah Waters
Publisher: Riverhead Trade
Category: Book
List Price: $15.00
Buy New: $6.00
You Save: $9.00 (60%)
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Rating:  162 reviews
Sales Rank: 18123
Media: Paperback
Pages: 480
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 8 x 5.1 x 1.1
ISBN: 1573227889
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.914
EAN: 9781573227889
ASIN: 1573227889
Publication Date: May 1, 2000
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Amazon.com Review
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.p ITipping the Velvet/I, 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 Iis/I 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 Ioutre/I 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." p Only after some seven years of hard twists and sensual turns does Nancy conclude that a life of sensation is not enough. Still, ITipping the Velvet/I is so entertaining that readers will wish her sentimental--and hedonistic--education had taken twice as long. I--Kerry Fried/I
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...brbr"Glorious...a sexy, sinewy sojourn of a young woman in turn-of-the-century England."--iThe Boston Globe/i brbr"Erotic and absorbing...If lesbian fiction is to reach a wider readership, Waters is the person to carry the banner."--iThe New York Times Book Review/ibrbr"Wonderful...a sensual experience that leaves the reader marveling at the author's craftsmanship, idiosyncrasy and sheer effort."--iThe San Francisco Chronicle/ibrbr"Amazing....This is the lesbian novel we've all been waiting for."--iSalon.com/ibrbr"Compelling...Readers of all sexes and orientations should identify with this gutsy hero as she learns who she is and how to love."--iNewsday/ibrbr"Echoes of iTom Jones/i, iGreat Expectations/i...Waters's debut offers terrific entertainment: pulsating with highly charged (and explicitly presented) erotic heat."--iKirkus Reviews/i (starred review)
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| Customer Reviews: Read 157 more reviews...
 Turn of the Century, London, Lesbians...yes, that's what I said... November 23, 2008
Barb Mechalke (in the lovely Finger Lakes Region of Upstate New York)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
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. br / br /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 boy performing on stage. Nancy is so taken with Kitty that she returns to the Canterbury Palace night after night to see Kitty's act. It's there that Kitty finally notices her and they begin their friendship. Eventually Nancy leaves home to travel to London as Kitty's dresser. Nancy has a secret no one must know, she's in love with Kitty Butler. br / br /The path that Nancy Astley takes is a hard and winding road peppered with many interesting people with a variety of sexual appetites. And if you hadn't read the various product reviews you would not know where Nancy ends up and from where she tells us her story. I didn't know and I constantly wondered; did she go back home to Whitestable or end up in gaol...? I had no idea, I only knew that she wasn't dead because she was telling me her story. br / br /Nancy is in love with someone who feels shame and self-loathing for their orientation, she fears being discovered for who and what she is, she endures the pain of judgment from a family member who can't accept her sexual inclination and she suffers further discrimination from individuals within a group that is already ostracize by the greater society. br / br /Sarah Waters' characters have a way of staying with you after you are done reading about them. She writes love, heartbreak and sorrow as few authors can and manages to weave in a variety of other issues a well, overall this story is a thoughtful commentary on society, Victorian or contemporary, the issues have hardly changed in a hundred or more years. br / br /I found the subtle references amusing; 'Kitty', the oysters, the fish smell, the pussy willow tree... though there is much that is not subtle and if you are easily offended you may not appreciate this novel.
 Great storytelling July 18, 2008
wolfgang731
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
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 Diana and her coven of sadistic sisters in Sappho. The story moves at a swift clip and just when the reader thinks he has it all figured out, there's a nice turn of events that both surprises and delights. Sarah Waters's ability to create a sense of time and place is truly admirable; the drudgery of Dickensian London coat the pages as did the saline tinged odors of a coastal fishing village As I previously stated, this is a novel for anyone who enjoys great storytelling, be you female, male, Lesbian or straight. Quality is quality, regardless of anything else. Pick it up, you'll really enjoy it.
SUBVERSIVE, SHOCKING AND SINFULLY GOOD July 16, 2008
Nelson H. Wu (Virginia)
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 of a late 19th-century English country girl who starts out shucking oysters and eventually makes it big in the city as part of a cross-dressing stage act before arriving at a moment of spiritual awakening and an epiphany of social awareness. Along the way, the narrative hits all of the romance genre's usual plot points -- early heartbreak, plenty of misunderstandings in the middle passage, a final reunion -- but in writer Sarah Waters's hands, "Tipping the Velvet" comes to life with vivid period details and achingly real emotions. You can almost taste those Whitstable oysters! And if you're not sure what sex act the title refers to, you'll find out soon enough!
An engrossing tale June 25, 2008
Brittany Adams (Clovis, New Mexico)
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!
Charming and completely absorbing of a search for love through the sexual underbelly of London that meanders down many roads May 26, 2008
Lilly Flora (Portland, OR)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
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. br / br /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. The act is a woman named Kitty Butler who is a masher (a girl dressed as a boy) and Kitty brings about feelings that Nancy's never before experienced. Soon the two become friend and when Kitty's act garners more attention and moves to London, Nancy goes along as a dresser, now knowing the true nature of her love for Kitty. br / br /But London life is anything but simple. Though happily Nancy discovers that her feelings are reciprocated by Kitty the others woman's caution and paranoia of discovery are quite at odds with Nancy's desires to love in the open. Things are only complicated when Walter, Kitty's agent who is quite in love with her, determines that Nancy, in gentleman's dress, is just the thing the act needs for success. br / br /But things eventually change. Nancy finds herself in drastically different circumstances doing what she can to survive and exploring London's sexual underbelly. Can this once simple girl from Kent ever find what will make her happy-love that doesn't have to hide in the shadows? br / br /This is an extremely good book but it's far different from the first novel I read by this author, "Affinity." Both are first person but that's were the similarity ends. Where "Affinity" alluded to sexual orientation and history of certain characters, "Tipping the Velvet" is explicit in the extreme. If you're not comfortable with very descriptive sexual descriptions of pretty much ever kind (all consensual though) of sexual act then this isn't the book for you. Even the title refers to-well, that's explained eventually. br / br /Nancy is a charming narrator and character-just a girl trying to find her place in a world that isn't ready to except her as she really is. Overall this is a charming novel about a search for love that in the end crosses lines of sexual orientation and should appeal to a wide audience. While I can't say it's the best book I ever read, it is absorbing enough to read in two sittings and it certainly is in the list of books I would re-read. br / br /Four stars. br /
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