Tipping The Velvet

By: Sarah Waters

Narrated by: Juanita McMahon

Piercing the shadows of the naked stage was a single shaft of rosy limelight, and in the centre of this was a girl: the most marvellous girl - I knew it at once! - that I had ever seen.

A saucy, sensuous and multi-layered historical romance, Tipping the Velvet follows the glittering career of Nan King - oyster girl turned music-hall star turned rent boy turned East End 'tom'.©1998 Sarah Waters

Critic reviews

Intelligent, witty and stylish, the novel re-imagines a lost lesbian history through vivid sensual detail, evocative period slang (the title is a sexual euphemism) and a satisfyingly complex plot

Waters is an extremely confident writer, combining precise, sensuous descriptions with irony and wit. This is a lively, gutsy, highly readable debut

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. It's gorgeous

This could be the most important debut of its kind since that of Jeanette Winterson

An extremely confident writer, combining precise, sensuous descriptions with irony and wit in a skilled, multi-layered pastiche of the lesbian historical romance (Christina Patterson)

Erotic and absorbing... Written with startling power

Wonderful... a sensual experience that leaves the reader marveling at the author's craftsmanship, idiosyncrasy, and sheer effort

Compelling... readers of all sexes and orientations should identify with this gutsy hero as she learns who she is and how to love

Delectable... written in roguishly lilting prose filled with the sights, sounds and stenches of London street life

Glorious... an exceptional debut

Richly entertaining... Waters's debut offers terrific entertainment: swiftly paced, crammed with colorful depictions of 1890s London and vividly sketched Dickensian supporting characters, pulsating with highly charged (and explicitly presented) erotic heat

This lush tale fearlessly and feverishly exposes the political, social and sexual subversions of Victorian-era gender-benders: sapphists, libertines and passing women... Waters is a masterful storyteller... Nancy's search for love and identity is a raucous, passionate adventure and a rare, thrilling read

If you need your smut to be smart as well as steamy, Waters' 1998 debut might be right up your alley, so to speak. Imagine if Charles Dickens had been brave enough to centre lesbians and strap-ons in his work, and you're getting somewhere close to the brutal beauty and acerbic wit Waters conjures up on every page

Groundbreaking . . . the way Waters writes female desire is enjoyable, to quote one gay woman of my acquaintance, "regardless of persuasion" (Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett)

Entertaining

I remember reading this years and years ago, and I remember loving it. I had forgotten however how whiny the main protagonist is. And selfish. It is of course part for her story arc, but it does grate on my nerves when I listen to it again.

The writing however is outstanding. It's so vivid I can imagine every single scene as if I was there. The sex, or as we call it in the fanfic world, smut, is good. Almost on par with some of the raunchier fics I've read. And that's saying a lot.

Extra plus for having an inevitable, but satisfying ending.

Whiny protagonist or not, this is still a very entertaining and good book.

I kept listening

the narrator was good, the story was somewhat boring but it kept me listening. I guess I wanted Nancy to redeem herself somehow, it came at the end. overall I found Nancy to be selfish, and a user I wish I had liked her more throughout the story.