Rating: 
Summary: ???Dont Understand the Title????
Review: Dear friends here, I am a non-native speaker of English,
but I am very intererested in the book. I have a serious question to ask. If anybody can answer it, I will be very grateful and pleased. The question is: I dont understand the meaning of the title: TIPPING THE VELVET. I know what "tip" is, and I know "velvet", but I dont know what is the connotation of TIPPING VELVET. I think this image must be very important, and I am sad that I dont get it. Please teach me if you can.
Rating:
Summary: Realistic Portrayal
Review: The other reviewers were not joking when they said they couldn't put it down. Indeed, when really analyzing the traits of the main character I must contragulate Waters on, more than anything, making Nan so likable given her glaring flaws. For a protagonist so utterly devoid of loyalty (except to the memory/obsession with Kitty) to get so under the skin is a major feat.
SPOILERS:
She abandons her family and never looks back. She abandons Mrs. Milne and Gracie, again admitting to be happily free of them. Then manipulates her way into the life of somone she literally does not even know, based on one momentary chance encounter. And yet, through all of this there is something likable about Nan that keeps the reader engaged. What that is, I don't know. Maybe Waters has captured more than a grain of real life lesbian or just plain human drama in that a creature as young and lovely as Nan can get away with murder and still be sought after and worshipped by every woman in town. One thing that Waters may have used to her advantage in drawing the reader to empathy with Nancy is the narrator's voice -- Nancy at 40-something, often criticizing and wondering at her own bad behavior. Very effective in that we know she must have outgrown her immature selfishness. Another realistic and humorous element toward the end... A lot of people might think it would be totally contrived for Nan to have run into every single one of her old girlfriends in one spot -- but, alas, that is more likely than one might think. The intertwined relationships among the London lesbian "scene" are only two stone throws from what it's like today in any big city in the western world -- I'm sure of it. Good reading, great sex scenes -- again, very realistic and integrated well into the story -- for the story's sake. Great read!
Rating:
Summary: love it
Review: i loved this book. i finished it in three days. sarah waters is amazing. there simply is no other adequate word for her storytelling ability other than amazing. this book completely satisfied me.
Rating: 
Summary: Sensuous...
Review: I first stole a peek into the pages while my girlfriend was reading it. It was the words, the characters, the setting and when all put together, it forms a beautifully weaved tale of a woman's journey as she discovered her sexuality. A path so often laden with ups & downs. With her sensitive detailing to each places & characters, I felt I have watched the entire story like a motion picture in my head.
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Summary: A lush Dickensian smorgasbord of a first novel!
Review: Glorious storytelling. Of epic proportions, but I did not want it to end and wept when it did. This is a truly amazing tour de force performance. Cannot wait to see the BBC mini-series starring Diana Rigg's daughter! If you enjoyed this erotic romance you will also love the gorgeously written award-winning Canadian novels "Fall on your Knees," "Leaving Earth," "After Image" and please try the erotic and romantic XWP uber novels of L.J. Maas, LA Tucker (soon to be published--"The Light Fantastic") Melissa Good, Sharon Bowers, Lori Lake, S.X. Meagher, etc. Some of the best writing for women by women I've ever read.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderfully enchanting
Review: Tipping the Velvet is one of those rare books that you want to continue reading forever. The characters are so full of depth that you find yourself easily drawn into the world that Sarah Waters is describing.
Packed with romance, adventure and a damn fine plot. Tipping the Velvet will keep you reading until dawn.
A dramatization of the book was made for the BBC in England and with any luck it will be released stateside one day. Until then the book is able to vividly call forth images into my head and I'm sure the head's of anyone else lucky enough to have read it.
Rating:
Summary: Amazing story about imperfect people
Review: Every once in awhile you find a book you just can't put down and when it ends you wish it hadn't. This is one of those stories. The characters were flawed they were imperfect, they were real. Some of them you hated some of them you loved. And at the end you truly understood the decisions the main character made throughtout the story. Definitly a story I will read again. Oh yeah one more thing this is a not a book you want to read if you're squeemish about sex. Just warning ya.
Rating:
Summary: Very readable
Review: No need to add really to the chorus of approval for this great novel other than to say how fantastically readable it is. Nan is such an engaging narrator that I defy anyone to read the first ten pages of this book and not want to read on. I think I fell not a little in love with Nan myself. I can't remember meeting someone so engaging and sympathetic in print; a brilliant creation. I enjoyed the villians too, especially the sadistic Diana Lethaby, a sort of, fin de siecle, Wildean. "Mercy Croft" (The Killing of Sister George). And what set-pieces! My favourite was the fancy dress party when Nan gets her own back on Diana's vile friends with some of the best put downs since All About Eve. Nan has a scene with Diana, someone rolls their eyes and says "What a bore". Quick as a flash Nan responds "What a bore" she turns to her "Look at you, you old cow, dressed up in a satin shirt like a boy of seventeen. Dorian Gray? You look more like the bleedin' portrait, after Dorian has made a few trips down the docks!" I laughed so loud when I read this everyone in my subway train turned to stare; I bet that shut her up! I wish Oprah would choose this for her book club as I think it would cheer a lot of people up. It is also genuinely inspirational and is as much a celebration of the human spirit as Moll Flanders or Jane Eyre....
Rating: 
Summary: bawdy.
Review: I only give this book 2 stars on account of it's merit within the first, say, 50 pages. It's premise is good enough- Nancy King, "oyster girl", born in lovely, rustic Kent and unexposed to the world. She loves the theatre and it is at one such show, actually intending to see some other comic act, that she stumbles across Kitty Butler, a dazzling 'masher'- a petite, pretty little thing dressed up as a boy. Dazzled and intrigued, and girlishly slightly besotted with Kitty, Nan follows her to London. < The book stays rather consistently intriguing, though it's quality starts to drastically deteriorate once relations between Nan and Kitty turn erotic. . The descriptions are tasteless and not in the least bit skillful.
Winterson, a feminist writer as well and an excellent one, may i add, has described lesbian relationships in her novels as well, but far more tastefully. She has a poetic cadence and focus in her writing, which truly lends her writing a beautiful artfulness. Waters, however, seems carried away in her sapphic euphoria. Her racy passages read like tasteless, crass pornography. They lack grace.
And as Nan downspirals from wide-eyed ingenue to an outright sex maniac, you feel repulsion at how unrealistic she and the characters around her are. Is everyone in London truly a 'tom' or for the men, a secret 'mary-jane'? Waters seems to be, in creating a swaggering, sexual Nan King, creating her own fantasy London- of cigarettes and drag dressing and crudely described encounters with dildos. The book reaches it's worst point when Nan finally hooks up with Florence, the kind woman who takes her in, and -surprise! surprise! Also turns out to have homosexual inclinations.
Rating:
Summary: What a Read!
Review: I've read my share of "lesbian" fiction and with the rare exception, find it mostly predictable, maybe a step up from trashy romance novels, and honestly, just not my thing. This one I have not been able to put down. And while I rarely hope for a movie, I'd love to see one from this book. But the characters and scenes are such works of art in themselves, I wonder if it could be done. Great read!
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