The Crimson Petal and the White – Michel Faber

Where to even start with this book? It’s one that I’ve picked up a few times over the years – lured by the book cover, only to put it down again when I realised it was contemporary, but an enthusiastic write up from Kirsty made me want to read it, and so only slightly daunted by the length (833 pages) I started.

‘The Crimson Petal and the White’ has clearly been waiting for me since, well since 2002 when it was published, and possibly the whole of the twenty years I’m sure I read it took to write before that. Honestly I don’t think I’ve fallen into, and in love with, a book so hard since Angela Carter’s ‘Nights at the Circus’ and that was a good few years ago. There have been a lot of much loved books over those years but they’ve been friends – a basically platonic relationship, this has been a fairly intense affair. I read it in a week, which meant outside of work I didn’t do much but read this book, or talk about it. My, but I must have been fun to be around – the blonde has already given in under the pressure and bought her own copy, she’d better start reading it soon...

Having established that I liked the book (a lot) I now have the slightly harder job of trying to put my finger on where exactly the magic lies. This is the story of Sugar a distressingly experienced young prostitute, her lover, his wife and a wider ripple of other characters. The narrative is juggled between protagonists with quite dazzling dexterity – it changed perspective often enough to keep me turning pages avidly but never drifted off course. Sugar is determined to have a better life, William is determined to have Sugar, and Agnes (the wife) is determined to keep her place in society despite her precarious grasp on health and reality.

The plot is basically the way these characters lives change through contact with each other – it’s hard to say much more without giving away plot spoilers which I’m loathe to do but I won’t be spoiling the surprise if I say there’s plenty of sex (which avoids the pitfalls of being to gratuitously described), some death, some religion, plenty to make you think about the position of men and women in society, and quite a bit about the nature of prostitution - and that’s only the tip of the iceberg. Still there are plenty of books which offer all these things so what’s special about this one?

What really caught me from the first moment was the way the narrator pulled me in as a fellow voyeur (there must be a technical term for this device, please tell me what it is if you know) it felt appropriate for the nature of the book, and it also made me very aware of the physical presence of the book. Its weight and feel in my hands added to the barrage of smells, sights, and sound that pervade the story; it felt right. The second thing I realise I really liked is the emphasis on smell, and on bodily functions – normally something ignored in the books I read, but it’s ridiculously easy to empathise with a heroine who’s worrying about when she’ll next be able to pee. I appreciated too that Faber doesn’t try to write like a Victorian, he uses some slang terms which feel right, but nothing to distract or annoy the reader, just lovely words that fit together effortlessly and make you want to read on and on...

It might be that there are faults or moments of clumsiness in this book, but I was far too caught up in it to notice – it feels like a masterpiece. What I did notice was craftsmanship, the research must have been meticulous – every detail, and there are hundreds of them, rings true which is a remarkable achievement, it doesn’t feel laboured, just very well made. Every time I opened the book I was in Faber’s world, by the time I finished it, even after 800+ pages I didn’t feel like I’d had enough – which brings me to the finish. It’s an abrupt ending leaving a lot of unanswered questions, which in the normal way I might have found frustrating, but after feeling so deeply involved with the characters here it worked for me – what happened next is for the reader to imagine – I Imagine it turning out well for the heroine, not so well for the men in the book, but I’m okay with that.