Crimson really needs to be read

THE things I do for that Lucy Mallows. So there we all were, just before Christmas, crowded around the latest dispatch of books publishers wanted us to review. The usual suspects were there, everything from general interest to travel guides.


THE things I do for that Lucy Mallows. So there we all were, just before Christmas, crowded around the latest dispatch of books publishers wanted us to review. The usual suspects were there, everything from general interest to travel guides. But lurking somewhere deep in the bottom of the box was a thick white paperback. A very thick white paperback.


Intimidatingly thick, in fact. This wasn't a book for reading, it was a book for pressing flowers or propping up a rickety coffee table. And this was only the advance reading copy. Lord knows how big the real thing, complete with hardback cover, would be?


No one wanted to read it, especially over Christmas.


Never mind the excess baggage, it was the near 900 pages - with not a single picture to lighten the load - that worried us. No book that long could possibly be entertaining, and it is not as if we are professional reviewers paid by the publishers. No, this felt more like the holiday homework assignment from hell.


But Lucy already had three books tucked under her arm and a look that said "No, no, for the love of


God no." So that was that settled. I got it.


The book in question, The Crimson Petal and the White by Michel Faber, was garnering quite a bit of attention at the time. Soon afterwards it had made the New York Times bestseller list and was heading


for its third reprint.


More than 20 years in "its conception, research, writing and revising" it was said to rival "the finest Victorian novels for breadth, depth and sheer reading pleasure". It could certainly rival them in size.


And despite all that, the ever so slightly broken nose where I fell asleep and dropped it on my face and the over developed arm muscles strained just trying to keep the damn thing upright, I have to admit that I actually thoroughly enjoyed it.


Faber's story is deceptively simple. It charts the progress of Sugar, an unusually intelligent 19-year old prostitute, through the ranks of society and, simultaneously, the rise of William Rackham, dissolute second son and unwilling heir to the Rackham perfume empire. The author employs the unusual technique of, quite literally, taking the reader by the hand and escorting them through London's bustling Victorian filth, making them a close-range observer to the narration.


He has also produced some remarkably well rounded characters, each with their own peculiar failings and strengths. William is vain and irritable, but capable of genuine love, if not always of showing it.


His somewhat pompous, pious elder brother, Henry, a priest in the making, battles with his desires, constantly testing himself. Sugar is scheming and manipulative, but has to be so to survive.


Agnes, William's wife, a staggeringly uneducated lady, very much the product of her time and upbringing, is a walking nervous breakdown waiting to happen.


Perhaps most laudably, Faber maintains interest right until the end and is still capable of springing surprises right up to the final pages. But I won't give anything away. A book this well researched and this well written, sustained over so many pages, deserves to be discovered afresh.


I would not have picked up a 900 page book I had never heard of before, much less read it cover to cover. But I am glad Lucy made me do it.





The Crimson Petal and the White


Michael Faber


Canongate Books


UK hardback price, GBP17.99


Available from Bestsellers




22.05.2003