Tipping the Velvet

Rating:
Summary: Highly recommended!
Review: Oh, Sarah Waters, how I love thee! I've rarely read a book so fast. This one was 472 pages and I devoured in about five hours. I got it from the library, to be honest. I wish I'd bought it, so I could lend it, but who would I lend it to, considering what it's about? It's something of a historical novel, set in the late 1800's, about a girl born to a oystering family in Britain. Are you yawning? Don't. She becomes involved in the stage. Boring? Not just any stage... but masher shows. Masher means girls-dressed-as-gents, pretending gallantry, singing saucy numbers full of innuendo, swinging canes. Our heroine falls for one of these "masher" girls and in doing so slowly, and without any education or vocabulary, unearths her own lesbianism. The plot is just fantastically interesting, and erotic in places, and completely full of 1890's jargon, sights, and sounds. The sexual nature of the book's theme is both understated, almost accidental, and completely central. Women dressed as men, women passing as men... I've never seen a treatment so lavish and so practical. I'm already browsing Amazon looking for used copies of her other books. This one was the author's first novel and is highly acclaimed. I'm looking forward to reading the rest of her work. Sarah Waters! I've never heard of her before! I picked the book because of its interesting cover and the fact it was highly reviewed by The New York Times Book Review; I didn't even know what it was about. I love not knowing what a book is about, when I start to read it. I love trying to figure out where the author is going. I love not being able to guess or unpuzzle it too quickly. I avoid reading the inside covers, I don't read the summaries, or the back covers, sometimes I don't even read the content of the review - only check good/bad and the review's origin - I don't want to spoil it by knowing anything else. This book rewarded me. (P.S. I just found out that in Britain the book was so popular they made the whole thing into a BBC television mini-series! It's ordered on NetFlix already. I WANT IT. It's funny how something can exist for so long, and be so popular, and there's always the day you hear about it for the first time.)