Tipping The Velvet by Sarah Waters

Tipping The Velvet by Sarah Waters

Nan is captivated by the music hall phenomenon that is Kitty Butler, a male impersonator extraordinaire treading the boards in Canterbury. Through a friend at the box office, Nan manages to visit all her shows and finally meet her heroine. Soon after, she becomes Kitty's dresser and the two head for the bright lights of Leicester Square where they start an all-singing and dancing double act. At the same time, behind closed doors, they admit their attraction to each other and their affair begins.

The heroine of Sarah Waters's audacious first novel knows her destiny, and seems content with itHer place is in her father's seaside restaurant, shucking shellfish and stirring soup, singing all the while. "Although I didn't believe the story told to me by Mother--that they had found me as a baby in an oyster-shell, and a greedy customer had almost eaten me for lunch--for 18 years I never doubted my own oysterish sympathies, never looked beyond my father's kitchen for occupation, or for love." At night Nancy Astley often ventures to the nearby music hall, not that she has illusions of being more than an audience member. But the moment she spies a new male impersonator--still something of a curiosity in England circa 1888--her years of innocence come to an end and a life of transformations begins. * Tipping the Velvet, all 472 pages of it, is as saucy, as tantalising, and as touching as the narrator's first encounter with the seductive but shame-ridden Miss Kitty Butler. And at first even Nancy's family is thrilled with her gender-bending pal, all bu *
Club isn't outré enough for her. Kitting Nancy out in full, elegant drag, she dares the front desk to turn them away. "We are here," she mocks, "for the sake of the irregular." * Only after some seven years of hard twists and sensual turns does Nancy conclude that a life of sensation is not enough. Still, Tipping the Velvet is so entertaining that readers will wish her sentimental--and hedonistic--education had taken twice as long *
Kerry Fried, Amazon.com * 'An unstoppable read, a sexy and picaresque romp through the lesbian and queer demi-monde of the roaring Nineties. Imagine Jeanette Winterson on a good day, collaborating with Judith Butler to pen a sapphic Moll Flanders. Could this be a new genre? The *
INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY * 'She is an extremely confident writer, combining precise, sensuous descriptions with irony and wit. Thisis a lively, gutsy, highly readable debut, probably destined to become a lesbian classic’ *

Sarah Waters was born in Wales in 1966. She has a PhD in English Literature and has published articles on lesbian and gay writing and cultural history. She has worked in bookshops and libraries and has taught for the Open University, though has given up full-time academic work in order to concentrate on writing fiction. She is currently working on her third novel.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781860494482
ISBN 10	186049448X
Title	Tipping The Velvet
Author	Sarah Waters
Series	Virago Modern Classics
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Little, Brown Book Group
Year published	1998-02-05
Number of pages	480
Prizes	Winner of Betty Trask Awards 1999, Short-listed for Betty Trask Award 1999
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable