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jamesbeth 's review for:
The Crimson Petal and the White
by Michel Faber
It’s been said, and indeed, it’s impossible to ignore: this is a BIG book. It is. I’ve just finished this morning and had to start this review three separate times. It’s important for me to write it because I’m sad to have finished and need to say goodbye to the characters I came to love and hate, but it is hard to find my “thread” and stick to it.
Through the majority of this read, I was in Missouri visiting my family. My mother chose this visit home to suggest I “go through things” and take some of my pictures, notes, diaries and other keepsakes from college and high school. This made the perfect backdrop for pondering this novel. As I cringed at my own stupid diary entries, I found them mirrored exactly in Sugar’s contempt for her “novel,” pages she once considered profound and likely to make a sensation, within months become humiliating candidates for kindling. How inevitable and easy it is to change your mind…
Oh, and on and on it went: Agnes Rackham’s complete lack of interest in married life, but ability to find camouflage and pass “the hours” with societies silliness, if she just TRIES to stay focused on the distraction. Unfortunately, though, she lacks consistency because, as Agnes seems to know—none of it really matters all the much unless you need it to—and she, sadly, does, because everything else changes.
And then there’s Mrs. Fox, her contrasting figure, who goes too far the OTHER way, and lives her life in a form of hiding, not taking guests and unable to properly dress herself for need of a lady’s maid and over-dedication to her “cause.”
Wrapped around the absurd Mr. Rackham, who makes soaps and scent to keep ladies clean yet single-handedly defiles many in a more permanent and personal way, finds a sweet, naïve girl of 17--Agnes is married to a silly idiot, and, in turn, becomes a silly idiot on his arm. Though she seems more interested in faith and might have made a lovely nun, she’s married off too early and has that female ability to make herself THINK she’s getting what she wants. Naturally, her quail egg-sized brain tumor behind her left eye doesn’t help, and she’s in a constant state of ebb and flow—society Agnes says something lovely, and then seconds later the “other” Agnes lets out a growl: the ultimate metaphor, really, for any 23 year-old woman. Agnes cuts up her party frocks to make fabric birds in a fit of childish curiosity, then remembers herself and tries to act the part of Mrs. Rackham, wondering why in the world she’s done such an impulsive thing. Agnes relates to cats yet assumes her own pregnancy and labor was an exorcism of a demon. Her menstruation? An affliction she fears is the wraith of God for her sins.
And, all the while, as William Rackham’s wife goes back and forth, back and forth, leaving the readers to know what is forced to bend, bend, bend will eventually snap; we watch as William takes solace in his mistress, a girl of 19; a clever prostitute called Sugar, who’s alluringly uninterested and self-reliant. Naturally, we’re subjected to watch the true “fall and Rise of Sugar,” and she puts herself into a compromised position and willingly gives up her freedom for reliance on William. With this needy new state comes a surge of past times: spying on William’s family and friends, aiding him in business advice and reading his wife’s childhood diaries. Eventually, bored of her empty “rooms’ and waiting to take meals or go out for fear she might miss William, Sugar suggests herself as a governess candidate for his young daughter.
Hard to watch/read? Absolutely, yet a beautifully accurate sketch of the workings and trappings of the female mind. Nothing Victorian about that—it’s a modern is modern can be. What begins as an established sense of self falls victim to obsession, survival mode and so on.
It was a story of women, largely, but also a story of many, many things: nearly 1,000 pages worth, if you haven’t heard—and a wonderful, intriguing read.
Through the majority of this read, I was in Missouri visiting my family. My mother chose this visit home to suggest I “go through things” and take some of my pictures, notes, diaries and other keepsakes from college and high school. This made the perfect backdrop for pondering this novel. As I cringed at my own stupid diary entries, I found them mirrored exactly in Sugar’s contempt for her “novel,” pages she once considered profound and likely to make a sensation, within months become humiliating candidates for kindling. How inevitable and easy it is to change your mind…
Oh, and on and on it went: Agnes Rackham’s complete lack of interest in married life, but ability to find camouflage and pass “the hours” with societies silliness, if she just TRIES to stay focused on the distraction. Unfortunately, though, she lacks consistency because, as Agnes seems to know—none of it really matters all the much unless you need it to—and she, sadly, does, because everything else changes.
And then there’s Mrs. Fox, her contrasting figure, who goes too far the OTHER way, and lives her life in a form of hiding, not taking guests and unable to properly dress herself for need of a lady’s maid and over-dedication to her “cause.”
Wrapped around the absurd Mr. Rackham, who makes soaps and scent to keep ladies clean yet single-handedly defiles many in a more permanent and personal way, finds a sweet, naïve girl of 17--Agnes is married to a silly idiot, and, in turn, becomes a silly idiot on his arm. Though she seems more interested in faith and might have made a lovely nun, she’s married off too early and has that female ability to make herself THINK she’s getting what she wants. Naturally, her quail egg-sized brain tumor behind her left eye doesn’t help, and she’s in a constant state of ebb and flow—society Agnes says something lovely, and then seconds later the “other” Agnes lets out a growl: the ultimate metaphor, really, for any 23 year-old woman. Agnes cuts up her party frocks to make fabric birds in a fit of childish curiosity, then remembers herself and tries to act the part of Mrs. Rackham, wondering why in the world she’s done such an impulsive thing. Agnes relates to cats yet assumes her own pregnancy and labor was an exorcism of a demon. Her menstruation? An affliction she fears is the wraith of God for her sins.
And, all the while, as William Rackham’s wife goes back and forth, back and forth, leaving the readers to know what is forced to bend, bend, bend will eventually snap; we watch as William takes solace in his mistress, a girl of 19; a clever prostitute called Sugar, who’s alluringly uninterested and self-reliant. Naturally, we’re subjected to watch the true “fall and Rise of Sugar,” and she puts herself into a compromised position and willingly gives up her freedom for reliance on William. With this needy new state comes a surge of past times: spying on William’s family and friends, aiding him in business advice and reading his wife’s childhood diaries. Eventually, bored of her empty “rooms’ and waiting to take meals or go out for fear she might miss William, Sugar suggests herself as a governess candidate for his young daughter.
Hard to watch/read? Absolutely, yet a beautifully accurate sketch of the workings and trappings of the female mind. Nothing Victorian about that—it’s a modern is modern can be. What begins as an established sense of self falls victim to obsession, survival mode and so on.
It was a story of women, largely, but also a story of many, many things: nearly 1,000 pages worth, if you haven’t heard—and a wonderful, intriguing read.