Sarah Waters
Tipping the Velvet
(Virago)

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Synopsis

Nan is captivated by the music hall phenomenon that is Kitty Butler, a male impersonator extraordinaire treading the boards in Canterbury. Through a friend at the box office, Nan manages to visit all her shows and finally meet her heroine. Soon after, she becomes Kitty's dresser and the two head for the bright lights of Leicester Square where they start an all-singing and dancing double act. At the same time, behind closed doors, they admit their attraction to each other and their affair begins.

Biography

Sarah Waters was born in Wales in 1966 and lives in London. She has a Ph.D in English Literature and has lectured for the Open University. She won the Betty Trask Award for Tipping The Velvet and the Somerset Maugham Award and Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year for Affinity. Fingersmith was shortlisted for both the Orange Prize 2002 and for the Man Booker Prize 2002, and won the CWA Historical Dagger prize.

Contributors Testimonials

Tipping the Velvet is a delicious journey through the seedier underbelly of Victorian life – prostitution, sexual exploitation and poverty. Sarah Waters is a wonderful writer and consummate story teller who knows exactly how to captivate an audience. Her observations are startling, her skill with the plot refreshing and her characters always take you rollercoaster of emotions. It’s easy to like naïve Oyster girl Nan Astley for her innocence, her boldness, her love of sexual adventure and her pursuit of love. We can sympathise with the heartbroken Nan as her life falls apart through the deceit of lover Kitty or the banishment by Diana her sexual keeper (and nobody can write about deceit and betrayal like Waters). But she also makes it equally easy for us to dislike the selfish Nan for her failings and cruelties towards other people. With Tipping the Velvet, and her subsequent novels, Sarah Waters has succeeded in making the lesbian ‘period drama’ genre into a mainstream literary experience which now excites and thrills a vast audience.

Vicky Powell