Tipping the Velvet [Paperback]

The heroine of Sarah Waters's audacious first novel knows her destiny, and seems content with it. Her place is in her father's seaside restaurant, shucking shellfish and stirring soup, singing all the while. "Although I didn't long believe the story told to me by Mother--that they had found me as a baby in an oyster-shell, and a greedy customer had almost eaten me for lunch--for eighteen years I never doubted my own oysterish sympathies, never looked far beyond my father's kitchen for occupation, or for love." At night Nancy Astley often ventures to the nearby music hall, not that she has illusions of being more than an audience member. But the moment she spies a new male impersonator--still something of a curiosity in England circa 1888--her years of innocence come to an end and a life of transformations begins.

Tipping the Velvet, all 472 pages of it, is as saucy, as tantalizing, and as touching as the narrator's first encounter with the seductive but shame-ridden Miss Kitty Butler. And at first even Nancy's family is thrilled with her gender-bending pal, all but her sister, best friend, and bedmate, Alice, "her eyes shining cold and dull, with starlight and suspicion." Not to worry. Soon Nancy and Kitty are off to London, their relationship close though (alas for our heroine) sisterly. We know that bliss will come, and it does, in an exceptionally charged moment. A lesser author would have been content to stop her story there, but Waters has much more in mind for her buttonholing heroine, and for us. In brief, her Everywoman with a sexual difference goes from success onstage to heartbreak to a stint as a male prostitute (necessity truly is the mother of invention) to keeping house for a brother and sister in the Labour movement. And did I mention her long stint as a plaything in the pleasure palace of a rich Sapphist extraordinaire? Diana Lethaby is as cruel as she is carnal, and even the well-concealed Cavendish Ladies' Club isn't outré enough for her. Kitting Nancy out in full, elegant drag, she dares the front desk to turn them away. "We are here," she mocks, "for the sake of the irregular."

Only after some seven years of hard twists and sensual turns does Nancy conclude that a life of sensation is not enough. Still, Tipping the Velvet is so entertaining that readers will wish her sentimental--and hedonistic--education had taken twice as long. --Kerry Fried --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

With a title that's a euphemism for cunnilingus and a plot awash with graphic lesbian sex, this lush tale fearlessly and feverishly exposes the political, social and sexual subversions of Victorian-era gender-benders: sapphists, libertines and passing women. Set in 1890s London against a backdrop of music halls and socialist demonstrations, Waters's debut (published to acclaim in England) is an engrossing story of a "tommish" woman battered and buoyed by the mores of the times. At 18, Nancy Astley is a fishmonger in coastal Whitstable, working with her sister and parents in the family oyster parlour. Smitten by male impersonator Kitty Butler, Nancy attends every show at the Canterbury Palace until the star notices her. A stunned Nancy finds herself Kitty's companion and dresser, and sexual tension keeps the pages turning as she becomes first Kitty's sweetheart, then her partner ("two lovely girls in trousers, instead of one!") in a wildly successful stage act. Kitty's shame over her sexual preference sends her into marriage to their manager, Walter Bliss, propelling devastated Nancy into a series of erotic excursions and a struggle for survival, first passing as a young man and hustling, then as wealthy widow Diana Lethaby's kept "tart," finally as the housekeeper for union organizer Florence Banner. Waters is a masterful storyteller, tantalizing the reader as Nancy endures melancholy squalor, betrayals, the lustful motives of swindling gay-girls and imperious ladies. The circumstances by which Nancy finally finds true love are unpredictable and moving. Amid the gentlemen trolling Piccadilly Circus for trysts with "renter" boys and the wealthy female guests of the Cavendish Clubs "Sapphists Only" parties, Nancy's search for love and identity is a raucous, passionate adventure, and a rare, thrilling read. Agent, Judith Murray.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

When 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 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

This delightfully saucy debut novel recounts the unconventional life and times of Nan King, a Victorian-era lesbian bold enough to embrace and to eventually celebrate her unorthodox sexual orientation. When she falls in love with an artful male impersonator, Nan follows her secret paramour to London and becomes part of a popular cross-dressing music hall act. After her irresolute lover decides to marry her manager in order to safeguard her reputation, a devastated Nan flees, retreating to the seamy London netherworld inhabited by a variety of vividly drawn mashers, renters, toms, and mary annes. Barely surviving a series of sexual missteps and misadventures, a wary and jaded Nan stumbles into a relationship that eventually blossoms into true love. A humorous and remarkably honest period piece that pays homage to women who courageously crossed the boundaries of conventional Victorian behavior and sexuality. Margaret Flanagan --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Echoes 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. Nancy Astley has been plucked away from her close-knit family of fishmongers in seaside Whitstable and whisked off to London as (unofficial) ``dresser'' to music-hall entertainer Kitty Butlerthe girl what dresses up as a feller and the first love of stagestruck Nancy's young life. Before she's 20, shes become the coquettish Kitty's lover and also her stage partner, ``fellow'' male impersonator ``Nan King.'' All is bliss until Kitty protects her reputation by escaping into marriage, and the abandoned Nancy finds work posing as a male street prostitute (or ``renter'') and undergoing undreamt-of sexual permutations and indignities as the girl/boytoy of lustful widow Diana Lethaby (at the latter's posh mansion, Felicity Place, and among jaded members of the militantly sapphic Cavendish Club) before seeking, losing, then reclaiming true love with selfless ``charity visitor'' Florence Banner and finding her own voice as a fledgling Socialist. Marred only by a jerry-rigged conclusion in which the repentant Kitty is in effect punished for having concealed her sexuality, Waterss debut offers terrific entertainment: swiftly paced, crammed with colorful depictions of 1890s London and vividly sketched Dickensian supporting characters (Nancy's kindly parents recall the genial fisherfolk of David Copperfield), pulsating with highly charged (and explicitly presented) erotic heat. And Nancy's conflicted feelingsbetween the ``desperate pleasures'' to which she's drawn and her equally strong desire to become ``a regular girl . . . againare quite movingly delineated. A perfect fictional equivalent to such eye-opening standard works as Frank Harris's My Life and Loves and Steven Marcus's The Other Victoriansand a rather formidable debut. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

'...a sexy and picaresque romp through the lesbian and queer demimonde of the roaring Nineties...' -- Independent on Sunday

'A delightful novel which sets a new standard for lesbian historical fiction, and should entice new readers to the genre' -- EMMA DONOGHUE

'This could be the most important debut of its kind since that of Jeanette Winterson' -- DAILY TELEGRAPH

WATERS/TIPPING THE VELVET

Sarah Waters was born in Wales in 1966. She has a PhD in English Literature and has published articles on lesbian and gay writing and cultural history. She has worked in bookshops and libraries and has taught for the Open University, though has given up full-time academic work in order to concentrate on writing fiction. She is currently working on her third novel.