Review: The Crimson Petal and the White

Michel Faber, The Crimson Petal and the White (Canongate Books 2003)

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40200.The_Crimson_Petal_and_the_White?ref=nav_sb_ss_1_31

1874 London. William Rackham, heir of Rackham Perfumeries, chafes under the economies of his father, who has long bemoaned his son’s mediocrity. William lounges after dinner, perusing gentleman’s pornography, which impels him, after a discussion with the doctor about committing his wife to an asylum, to seek out the whereabouts of Mrs Castaway’s establishment and a certain prostitute named Sugar.
His wife, the always-ill Agnes, ‘considers herself the miraculous survivor of a million horrific onslaughts’, stays abed all day with curtains drawn. No one has ever told Agnes about menstruation, and, convinced the internal bleeding is a sign of early death, she starves herself to keep it at bay. Sugar knows, ‘they’re keeping her doped because she says things they don’t care to hear.’ When clear-headed, Agnes sews dresses and practices polite conversation in front of the mirror in readiness for the Season.
William’s brother Henry, who eschewed the directorship to become a clergyman, pursues a chaste courtship of widow Mrs Fox but secretly desires to ravage prostitutes.
Life looks up for William. Finally permitted by Rackham Senior to take over the directorship, he redecorates and hires more servants. He purchases Sugar for his exclusive use, and she now utilises her extra time writing a novel, ‘the first book to tell the truth about prostitution’, in which the protagonist violently murders all her johns. William even purchases for her her very own house in Priory Close.
With too large gaps between his visits to Priory Close, Sugar becomes afraid William will reject her and begins to surreptitiously follow him, and Agnes. In fact, aside from the private dinner and balls, Sugar is doing the Season, sitting a few rows behind the Rackhams wherever they go, and she becomes enamoured of theatre and music.
Then, she contrives a way of getting ever closer to William. She admits to a friend, ‘I’m so full of schemes and plots, nothing interests me if it doesn’t concern the Rackhams.’ Her final revenge against the johns is brilliant.
Verbose, Victorian, voluptuous—a delicious slow read. It is written in second person. The unknown but all-knowing narrator speaks to ‘you’. (‘Are you bored yet? There will be fucking in the near future.’) There is a brilliant first line: ‘Watch your step.’ The narrator suggests ‘you’ work your way up the London social ladder by means of successive introductions, while making biting comments on each character’s levels of sophistication or morality.