Books You May Not Like -- The Crimson Petal and the White

I first heard of The Crimson Petal and the White while I was a part of the 36th Zombie Hunter Killer unit operating out of an abandoned mission in lower Mexico. Worst spring break trip EVER. We are on the offensive, huffing around the countryside looking for zombie lairs. Locals kept coming to us, babbling about a "Diablo rojo" that had cracked open the padre's skull like a ripe melon. Someone told us some crazy shit had gone done at the defunct Church's Chicken outside the village.

And there it was. A dilapidated Church's Chicken, one of the last monuments to a horribaly ill conceived international expansion by the minor fast food chain. It was dark inside. I saw (and smelled...ugh!) what remained of the padre, and in the darkness we heard a voice.

"Zombie Elmo loves your brains. Ha ha ha!"

It was high pitched. Chilling. We knew we were dealing with a seriously evil force.

"Zombie Elmo is going eat you! Mmm-hmm. Yes."

The ensuing battle was short but incredible, but that is not what we are about here. So let's fast forward about 15 minutes. Before we poured gasoline all over the place to set it on fire I noticed that the dead padre had a copy of The Crimson Petal clutched in his hand. I knew what it was about, and I found myself surprised that a padre would be reading it. It made me wonder who he was before a horrible red fuzzy zombie decided to eat him.

So, when I got back and saw the book in the library, it caught my eye. I read it and just this past summer I decided to read it again, desperate for a summer read after slogging my way thorough A Patriot's History of the United States.

It is, I am a little embarrassed to say, one of my favorite books. You follow the fortunes of Sugar, a british whore who hooks up with William Rackham, a minor perfumaries heir who is adrfit in life with a mad wife and a negelected daughter (who cuts a very, very sad character). Sugar is sooooo sweet (if you catch my drift) that he decides he must have her all to himself. He takes the reins of his family's business to afford purchasing her outright and setting her up in small, sumptuous lodging.

For her part, she desperately tries to become woven into the fabric of his life so that she will be indispensible to William, be it as a carnal oasis or an advisor on business matters.

It's not a very complicated plot line, not even really orginial one (there are lots of elements, I am told, borrowed from the Victorian novels of the past), and its not particularly action packed. But its writing is SO GOOD. Michel Faber toys with you, addresses you directly as he welcomes you to the dark, cold streets of London, and then very slowly works you into the story until you are inside the minds of the characters. He writes omnisciently, knowing all, and when the book ends he offers you one last parting shot that makes you feel about as used as a cheap whore from St. Giles...or, if you prefer, about as jaded and dazed as a patron shoved out the brothel's back doors, two shillings paid and seed spent.

And that hints at why you might not like this book: Michel Faber is writing in the 21st century, and has the latitude to be far more frank about what goes on behind closed doors than Dickens or Eliot ever did, and he uses that latitude liberally, sometimes cringingly so. If you don't like reading about pissing, shitting, or fucking (thankfully not all at once), then this book probably isn't for you.

And that's why I say I like this book with a good side of guilt. There is a lot going on (be it meditation on servant relations, the steady advance of technology, etc.), and the actual sex scenes are short way stations in the 800 page novel, but sex is very much under the skin of everything in this book.

And in that way, I'm not sure I buy the dust jacket's bold proclamation that it deserves to sit on the shelf next to The French Lieutenant's Woman, which is probably THE post modern victorian novel. John Fowles has way more issues woven into the story than just sex. Darwinism, the waning of the aristocracy, marriage, amateurism, upward mobility, time jostle side by side with lust on the page. And the actual lack of bedroom scenes in Fowle's book actually give it more erotic tension then Faber's nothing is off the table approach.

But I have tried to the The French Lieutenant's Women twice and I didn't make it. Faber's book is way more readable, and he gets props for that. If you are looking for a dark story set in an immaculately rendered Victorian backdrop, look no furhter. You've got it.