Tipping the Velvet: A Novel
"Lavishly crammed with the songs, smells, and costumes of late Victorian England" (The Daily Telegraph), this delicious, steamy debut novel chronicles the adventures of Nan King, who begins life as an oyster girl in the provincial seaside town of Whitstable and whose fortunes are forever changed when she falls in love with a cross-dressing music-hall singer named Miss Kitty Butler. When Kitty is called up to London for an engagement on "Grease Paint Avenue, " Nan follows as her dresser and...
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A classic picaresque, Tipping the Velvet chronicles the adventures of Nancy King, who begins life as an oyster girl in the provincial seaside town of Whitstable and whose fortunes are forever changed when she falls in love with a cross-dressing music hall singer named Miss Kitty Butler. When Kitty is called up to London for an engagement on "Grease Paint Avenue," Nan follows as her dresser and secret lover. Before long, Nan dons trousers herself, and the two male impersonators become a celebrated pair of the stage. But when Kitty betrays her, a solitary, heartbroken Nan reinvents herself as a butch roue - a sort of Moll Flanders in drag - navigating her way through London's seamy and flourishing gay demimonde as she pursues her thrilling and varied sexual education.The Independent on SundayAn unstoppable read, a sexy and picaresque romp through the lesbian and queer demi-monde of the roaring Nineties. It's gorgeous.
\ BUST MagazineTipping the Velvet is a luscious turn-of-the-century English tale of lesgians, lust, kept girls, Socialists, oyster-shuckers and of course...love. It's a feast for the imagination, and just when we think wek now where the story is going, Sarah Waters takes us in a more seductive and tantalizing direction.\ \ \ \ \ Barcelona ReviewThe novel is a bit long and drags at first - my biggest complaint - but it picks up and develops into a fun, racy romp of a read, giving a backstreet, late-19th century portrait of London - with nice period details - such as you'll never enounter in Dickens.\ \ \ Bethany Schneider...this big, bawdy English novel is no chronicle of upper-class perversities. Full of historical detail and lesbo adventure, it's a story of working-class guts and sexual bravado that should keep you satisfied for a week—or at least one good all-night reading stint...this is a rare treat.\ — OUT Magazine\ \ \ \ \ Beth AmosThe life of 18-year-old oyster girl Nancy Astley is boringly ordinary. As one of several children born to fishmonger parents who manage to eke out a meager but pleasant enough living in the seaside village of Whitstable, Nancy's future looks to be staid and predictable. But then she travels to a music hall in a nearby town and catches the act of a young cross-dressing performer by the name of Kitty Butler. \ Intrigued by this attractive young woman who dresses, dances, and sings "as a feller," Nancy returns to the music hall several more times, finally catching Miss Butler's attention. A friendship quickly develops and before long, Nancy has become Kitty's dresser, helping her to change costumes between acts. Though Nancy is keenly aware of her desire to make her relationship with Kitty more than mere friendship, she bides her time, unsure of Kitty's own preference.\ When a talent agent discovers Kitty and offers her a debut in the London theater district, Nancy's role as Kitty's dresser becomes official and, at Kitty's invitation, Nancy tags along. The two girls are mesmerized by the bright lights and city life, and when Nancy eventually joins the act as a second male impersonator with the stage name Nan King, both their professional and their sexual lives soar to new heights.\ But Kitty isn't comfortable with her life as a Tom, and in an effort to hide her true sexuality, she decides to closet herself by agreeing to marry her male agent and abruptly ending her relationship with Nan. Brokenhearted and devastated, Nan blunders off in a depressive funk, taking nothing but a little money and her stage costumes with her. With no means of generating any income, Nan dons her male persona and hits the streets to make a living as a "renter," providing oral sex to men who take her for a boy prostitute.\ For a while Nan accepts the daily degradations, but eventually it starts to wear on her. Just as she feels she has reached the lowest point in her life, salvation arrives in the form of one Diana Lethaby, a rich widow with a voracious and somewhat twisted sexual appetite. When Diana invites Nan to become her live-in girl-toy, Nan jumps at the chance. For the next year or so, Nan willingly gives up any semblance of independence in exchange for a life of decadent sex and opulent luxury, the likes of which she has never known.\ It doesn't last, however, and in fact disappears in the blink of an eye when Diana tosses Nan out into the street over a sexual transgression. Destitute and desperate, Nan manages to seek out the home of social worker Florence Banner, a woman Nan met briefly just before being taken in by Diana. With Florence, Nan struggles to find her true self, to establish some semblance of a normal life, and to put her past behind her.\ Unexpectedly, it is with the plain-faced, hard-working Florence that Nan has the chance to find real love, but her feelings and commitment will be sorely tested by the sudden reappearance of several faces from her own past and a lingering ghost from Florence's past that threatens to keep them apart.\ Waters depicts her characters and settings with colorful flair and vivid imagery. From the simple, hardworking values of an English fishing village to the bawdy, flamboyant lifestyles of the performers in London's theaters, Tipping the Velvet paints a sensuously lavish picture of the smells, sights, denizens, and desires of late Victorian England and its growing lesbian culture.\ -- Beth Amos\ \ \ \ \ \ The Independent on SundayAn unstoppable read, a sexy and picaresque romp through the lesbian and queer demi-monde of the roaring Nineties. It's gorgeous.\ \ \ \ \ Library JournalWhen Nancy Astley falls for Kitty Butler, a cross-dressing cabaret singer, she has no idea just how far she'll go from her roots shucking oysters in a seaside resort in Kent. Waters's rowdy debut novel strikes out for a woman finding her independence in turn-of-the-century England, while painting a colorful portrait of the time. (LJ 3/15/99) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.\ \ \ \ \ Miranda Seymour...[B]uoyant and accomplished....an erotic and absorbing story set in late-Victorian England....If lesbian fiction is to reach a wider readership — as much...of it deserves to do — Waters is just the person to carry the banner.\ — The New York Times Book Review\ \ \ \ \ Kirkus ReviewsEchoes of Tom Jones, Great Expectations, and anonymous confessional pornography resound throughout this richly entertaining first novel from England: the picaresque tale of its lesbian heroine's progress through several levels of both polite and refreshingly impolite Victorian society.\ \
