The Crimson Petal and the White

"This goes back to my own notion of a crime novel: that it doesn’t have to be a detective novel or involve a murder in order to be crime fiction. The Crimson Petal and the White deals with prostitution, and it deals with fraud, and it deals with sexual violence—it involves lots of crime, so I would say it is a historical crime novel. The whole premise of the novel, which is set in this fabulously constructed 1870s London, is that Sugar—a witty, smart, resourceful prostitute—enters into a relationship with bumbling perfumier William Rackham as a means to try and trick him to use his wealth to escape her situation. Rackham is married to Agnes, who is this Victorian ideal of femininity, but she has been kept completely in the dark on sexual matters to the extent that she doesn’t know that she has a daughter, or supposedly doesn’t know, and everyone treats her as a mentally ill patient. When William eventually moves Sugar into his household and makes her a governess to his daughter, it all becomes far more complex and emotionally wrought. It’s a very dark, vivacious, funny, and surprising novel. It’s got an original style of narration that is brilliantly done. All the familiar tropes of Victorian high fiction are there: we’ve got the mad wife and the cut-above prostitute governess, but they’re presented to us with the mind and mouth of the 21st century. Yes, it is self-referential. Sugar, the prostitute, is writing revenge fantasy against all the men who have used her over the years. Everyone is writing their own story, essentially. Michel Faber is making us very aware that this is a story, and yet we get completely absorbed by it. The novel begins with the narrator beckoning us to follow him. It’s a very engaging and unique way of telling the story."