Order from a Major Online Bookstore
Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine
Save Your Time And Money
| AnyBook4Less.com | Order from a Major Online Bookstore |
|
| Home | Store List | FAQ | Contact Us | | ||
| Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine Save Your Time And Money |
||
 |
Title: The Crimson Petal and the White by Michel Faber ISBN: 015100692X Publisher: Harcourt Pub. Date: 16 September, 2002 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $26.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.94
Rating: 5
Summary: Solidly Satisfying
Comment: I highly recommend this book. It was solidly satisfying and well written, filled with realistically ambiguous characters evolving under the confluence of past experience, present action, societal norms, and random fate. The author portrays every character, even the most lowly, with compassion and understanding. Virtually every character is both hero and villain, saint and sinner, free will and destiny. A unique read.
Rating: 4
Summary: a little overpraised, but different and interesting
Comment: As far as the title goes, Tennyson wrote a poem beginning, "Now sleeps the crimson petal, now the white," and the book may be Faber's realistic answer to Tennyson's romanticism, the crimson petal being the life of prostitutes on the streets and the white the pale and effete upper society. The book has an intriguing beginning, but trails off in the middle as Sugar becomes a somewhat insipid copy of Jane Eyre. Then it gets good again towards the end. I didn't feel the ending left us hanging; William gets what he deserves, and Sugar and Sophie come out on top. The characters aren't too well fleshed out. William is hard to figure out, Henry is boring and it's never explained how Sugar, having been raised on the streets, is well-spoken and educated enough to pass herself off as a governess (or that her lover would consider letting her do so). The fact that, having been raped repeatedly since the age of thirteen, Sugar would enjoy and look forward to sex, strikes me as a male author's fantasy, although he does give us an excellent and sympathetic picture of the position of women. What the book does very well is to give us a feeling for Victorian society: the prostitutes, the servants, the male chauvinists and the helpless and pampered ladies of the upper class.
Rating: 2
Summary: An Inventory of the 1870's London, not a Novel
Comment: This voluminous work is a jumble of well researched Victorian England (specifically London and its vicinity) of the 1870's and an EXCUSE to hang a story with flat two dimensional characters and no insightful vision. Certainly not a brilllinat novel some reviewers rate it to be.....They call it Dickensian!! They need to read Charles Dickens again.
Everything in "The Crimson Petal" is paper thin; people - rich or poor; men or women and the gender relations; social issues; class structure - its hierarchy within the upper as well as the lower rungs; controversies emanating from Darwinism -- religion vs science; men vs women; evils of industrialization; eminent nineteenth century writers and their works; fashions - among rich and poor; places -- grand mansions or street corners, social customs; linguistic variations; smells; sights; fashions; carriages -- the list is endless.
Yes, it is an exhaustive inventorty of Victorian England with no particular perception to hold it together. There is not a trace of any depth in depicting any of the million details or issues. Michel Faber hides behind his vague shadow of the narrator who aimlessly guides the reader, or leaves him in the lurch for no reason at all,through the maze. An exhaustive inventory without any undrlying significant perception of any depth, "The Crimson Petal" is a poor excuse for a novel.
The only reviewer I agree with is Paul McGrath who painstakingly exposes the limitations of this so called novel.
 |
Title: The Lovely Bones: A Novel by Alice Sebold ISBN: 0316666343 Publisher: Little Brown & Company Pub. Date: June, 2002 List Price(USD): $21.95 |
 |
Title: Atonement: A Novel by Ian McEwan ISBN: 0385503954 Publisher: Doubleday Pub. Date: 12 March, 2002 List Price(USD): $26.00 |
 |
Title: Middlesex: A Novel by Jeffrey Eugenides ISBN: 0374199698 Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux Pub. Date: 04 September, 2002 List Price(USD): $27.00 |
 |
Title: Life of Pi by Yann Martel ISBN: 0151008116 Publisher: Harcourt Pub. Date: 04 June, 2002 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
 |
Title: The Little Friend by Donna Tartt ISBN: 0679439382 Publisher: Knopf Pub. Date: 22 October, 2002 List Price(USD): $26.00 |
Thank you for visiting www.AnyBook4Less.com and enjoy your savings!
Copyright� 2001-2021 Send your comments
