tasseomancer 's review for:

The Crimson Petal and the White by Michel Faber

5.0

---

This was never going to be a “happy” book, the narrator tells you from the start. Told from third-person perspective through the eyes of five women and two men, but mainly those of the jaded and keenly intelligent sex worker Sugar, as they navigate through the filth and starkly stratified social classes of Victorian London, this is the story of how men use women to their own ends. Although written twenty years ago it feels as relevant and fresh now because of ongoing political changes in the US involving the reproductive rights of women and the threat that women’s bodily autonomy is facing. In Sugar’s world, only women who are sex workers own their own bodies, but those bodies are still at high risk because of the men they cater to. And wives like poor Agnes have even less freedom, confined to a failing body and a religion she despises. The only truly “free” woman is Mrs. Fox because she is widowed and owes her life to no man. The ambiguous ending feels right given the myriad of characters and their motivations. Beautifully researched and written. Some of the language makes my 21st Century sensibilities flinch but would have been period-accurate.