Tipping the Velvet (Tipping the Velvet - Sarah Waters)

Member Name: Katy_roberts85

Product:	Tipping the Velvet - Sarah Waters
Date:	17/09/09 (22 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: realistic compelling read

Disadvantages: none

Written by Sarah Waters this is her first novel and it details lesbianism in Victorian England. First published in 1998.

18 year old Nancy, a Kentish oyster maid visits the local music halls and sees Kitty Butler, a masher act (a woman dressed as a man). She is hooked from the very first time and goes back time and time again to see the performance. Eventually she is asked to visit Kitty in the dressing rooms and their friendship develops.

From here we are taken through a whirlwind of her developing romance with Kitty. Betrayal, prostituion, slavery and the ultimate happy ending.

Waters creates a vivid, convincing world that is obsessively compulsive to read. Waters has done a lot of reasearch on the lives of lesbian women in the Victorian time with representations of the different clases of prostituion and sexual slavery that was prolifc in the underground sexual lives of closeted lesbians.

At times the novel is quite graphic. it is full of sex, debauchery and seduction but is really gripping. It deals with the broader issues of class, gender and sexuality.

This novel was selected by both the New York Times and The Library Journal as being one of the best books in 1998 and has been adapted by the BBC for the small screen.

Summary: Easy read, compelling, innovative story