Michel Faber's epic new bawdy and bold novel is a lusty romp
through Victorian London. Full of sex, moral collapse and
redemption, THE CRIMSON PETAL AND THE WHITE is a grand experience.
Faber writes in prose worthy of Victorian England, with a dry humor
simmering just beneath the surface. He pens with the propriety of
the era --- and with detailed eroticism and sometimes flagrant
prurience.

The story opens on the streets of 1874 London. Caroline, an aging
prostitute just finished up with her business, makes her way
through the filth of a seedy district where she hands the reader
off to 19-year-old Sugar. A pretty, clever but boyishly built
woman, Sugar makes her reputation by never saying "no" to a
customer's request.

William Rackham, Society gentleman, perfume baron, and king of an
industrial empire rivaling Pears Soaps, has a "special" appetite,
and Sugar's willingness to do anything his vulgar heart desires
wins him over. Her ambition takes her far. William's ribald
enchantment with the prostitute leads him to purchase her
exclusivity and shower her with every comfort he can think of. In
exchange, she's open to his every whim, available at his
leisure.

At home, ensconced in their substantial mansion, Agnes, William's
ailing wife, continues on a downward spiral. Subject to fainting
spells and fits of obscene ranting, she worries everyone and
irritates her husband. Mother to Sophie, a child she ignores
completely, Agnes sinks deeper and deeper into her madness. One
day, however, she rallies and sets out to make a resurgence into
the year's social Season. Soon, she has William too busy to make
his trysts with Sugar as often as he'd like.

Sugar, not to be denied her ascent from the gutter, devises
ever-more-creative ways to attract William's attentions. In a lapse
of good judgment --- which William seems to have no great abundance
of --- he accedes to Sugar's pleas to hire her as daughter Sophie's
live-in governess.

In the middle of all this, William's brother Henry, an aspiring
clergyman with too-frequent thoughts of an impure nature about his
lady friend, Emmeline Fox, embarks on a mission to help prostitutes
out of their plight. Emmeline, meanwhile, has her own thoughts
about Henry, few bordering on chaste. Just when the whole cast
seems too dark and unhappy, William's friends, Messrs. Ashwell and
Bodley, a pair of irreverent authors and inveterate drunks, thrust
themselves onto the pages. They demand the reader's attention long
enough to banter nonsense back and forth, then disappear for a few
chapters.

The characters --- and there are plenty of them --- undergo some
surprising changes. But in the end, about a year has passed. Much
upheaval has entered their lives, some good, some bad, and they
live on with the consequences --- or rewards --- of their
choices.

To behold a volume the size of THE CRIMSON PETAL AND THE WHITE may
appear a daunting challenge, especially recalling Dickens' sagas of
a few years earlier. But Faber's audience will undoubtedly be so
swept up in the tale that, by the novel's somewhat abrupt end, they
will look to the page after the last and wonder: Where's the
rest?