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May. 20th, 2009 02:36 pmI finished Sarah Waters's Tipping the Velvet on Monday night. Although I remained caught up in the plot, I lost much of my affection for the book as it went on. I read it because I was looking for something that would be fun and not terribly taxing, and it met both of those requirements, but I think it's significantly inferior to both Affinity and Fingersmith.
Tipping the Velvet tells the life story of Nancy Astley, who begins as an oyster girl in Kent but soon ends up in London, where she undergoes several dramatic reversals of fortune and experiences much of the seaminess that London had to offer in the 1890s. In my opinion, the strongest part of the book is the section dealing with Nancy's love affair with Kitty Butler, when the two of them work the music halls as a pair of male impersonators. Waters does a wonderful job of depicting the theatrical lifestyle that Nancy and Kitty lived, and of giving life to the community of actors and theatre people among whom they found themselves. Nancy and Kitty achieve a certain degree of fame, and there's a great moment when Nancy describes their fans: young girls, most of whom simply like the act and are amused by the sight of two women in trousers, but, Nancy observes, "for every ten or twenty of such girls, there would be one or two more desperate and more pushing, or more shy and awkward, than the rest; and in them I recognised a certain--something." There was something quite compelling for me in the idea of the secret communication between these women, happening underneath and around and through the broader discourse. Also compelling for me was the way Waters conveyed the strength of Nancy's unconventional gender expression--so significant to her that she must act on it, despite the fact that she has no vocabulary to define it or to consider why it matters to her.
The biggest problem with the book came from the development of Nancy as a character. Or perhaps I should say the non-development. Nancy seems to lack any sense of perception, and to be unwilling to engage at all critically with any of the situations she finds herself in. She relates to the world quite passively, and doesn't seem bothered by this in the slightest. Perhaps it's just because this is quite different from my own outlook, but I found that her attitude--"Things happen to me! Oh my!"--got old quickly. It seems that each new phase of her life erases the previous ones, and within days or weeks of making any particular change, she is molded into an entirely new form and her previous existence is nothing more to her than a passing pleasant or unpleasant memory. In the first part of the book, I wanted to take Nancy under my wing and tell her that it was okay to fall in love with a woman, and okay to prefer wearing men's clothes; as the book went on, I just wanted to shake her.
There are other little inconsistencies too--why, for instance, is it so easy for Nancy to adapt herself to the social expectations of Diana Lethaby's world, but so difficult for her to do the same thing once she moves in with the Banners?--but I chalk most of the book's problems up to the fact that this was Waters's first novel. They seem quite forgivable in that light. Nevertheless, I would suggest that anyone interested in Waters start with Fingersmith instead.
And now I have started reading The Blackwater Lightship by Colm Tóibín. I've read The Master twice, but have read nothing else of Tóibín's at all. It is strange to read something else by him, especially something with a contemporary setting and an entirely fictional cast of characters.
Tipping the Velvet tells the life story of Nancy Astley, who begins as an oyster girl in Kent but soon ends up in London, where she undergoes several dramatic reversals of fortune and experiences much of the seaminess that London had to offer in the 1890s. In my opinion, the strongest part of the book is the section dealing with Nancy's love affair with Kitty Butler, when the two of them work the music halls as a pair of male impersonators. Waters does a wonderful job of depicting the theatrical lifestyle that Nancy and Kitty lived, and of giving life to the community of actors and theatre people among whom they found themselves. Nancy and Kitty achieve a certain degree of fame, and there's a great moment when Nancy describes their fans: young girls, most of whom simply like the act and are amused by the sight of two women in trousers, but, Nancy observes, "for every ten or twenty of such girls, there would be one or two more desperate and more pushing, or more shy and awkward, than the rest; and in them I recognised a certain--something." There was something quite compelling for me in the idea of the secret communication between these women, happening underneath and around and through the broader discourse. Also compelling for me was the way Waters conveyed the strength of Nancy's unconventional gender expression--so significant to her that she must act on it, despite the fact that she has no vocabulary to define it or to consider why it matters to her.
The biggest problem with the book came from the development of Nancy as a character. Or perhaps I should say the non-development. Nancy seems to lack any sense of perception, and to be unwilling to engage at all critically with any of the situations she finds herself in. She relates to the world quite passively, and doesn't seem bothered by this in the slightest. Perhaps it's just because this is quite different from my own outlook, but I found that her attitude--"Things happen to me! Oh my!"--got old quickly. It seems that each new phase of her life erases the previous ones, and within days or weeks of making any particular change, she is molded into an entirely new form and her previous existence is nothing more to her than a passing pleasant or unpleasant memory. In the first part of the book, I wanted to take Nancy under my wing and tell her that it was okay to fall in love with a woman, and okay to prefer wearing men's clothes; as the book went on, I just wanted to shake her.
There are other little inconsistencies too--why, for instance, is it so easy for Nancy to adapt herself to the social expectations of Diana Lethaby's world, but so difficult for her to do the same thing once she moves in with the Banners?--but I chalk most of the book's problems up to the fact that this was Waters's first novel. They seem quite forgivable in that light. Nevertheless, I would suggest that anyone interested in Waters start with Fingersmith instead.
And now I have started reading The Blackwater Lightship by Colm Tóibín. I've read The Master twice, but have read nothing else of Tóibín's at all. It is strange to read something else by him, especially something with a contemporary setting and an entirely fictional cast of characters.
