The Crimson Petal and the White

First of all, I don't usually get into sort of psuedo Victorian. They tend to be a little over blown and pretentious, but I have to say, the Crimson Petal and the White is actually a pretty good read. The only thing I would say is wrong with the book is that it begins with a narrator but this narrator disappears about half way through the book.

The story is set in the 1870's in London, England. One of the first people you meet is Sugar, she is the most accomplished prostitute in London. It is from her POV the story begins. She meets a man called William who likes her because she is a thin, flat chested little female barely 20 and he makes her his mistress and sets her up "in Keeping" near his family home. William is like Mr. Rodchester in Jane Eyre who has a wife who is more than a little nutty, who was born Catholic and at seven told she was no longer going to be Catholic because her widowed mother had remarried a Protestant. The woman is so simple she doesn't even know what her period is and thinks she is dying and flies off the handle at a moment's notice and is under the care of a doctor who masturbates her til she has an orgasm and then she falls asleep. They have a child they routinely forget about. She sees Sugar and in her fugue she thinks Sugar is her guardian angel sent by St. Terese the Little Flower to protect her.

Eventually though, Sugar is brought to the house to care for the daughter. Sugar is a very literate very intelligent sort of woman who helps the husband with his business and tutors his daughter but overlooks the fact William will never marry her and forgets she is just a whore after all.....This leads to a lot of things that are both thrilling and a little anticlimatic.

All in all, the book is less a story of Sugar and more an indictment of the Victorian Era and sets the stage for later stories of Jack the Ripper and of course the later Feminist movement in England....Give this dense tome a read. It takes a little warming up to...but you will like it..