Messenger Boy

By Cat Perry, 4/7/2010

Wandering the bookstores a few months back, I got tingle somewhere in the back of my mind that begged to read just one more historical fiction, one that could pull me into some distant alley and then in front of a roaring fire with each line. It was winter; I needed something to forget the long, frigid nights here in New York City. So I picked up a copy of Tipping the Velvet (Virago Press, 1998). This was Sarah Waters’ debut novel, set in Victorian England in the 1890s, and has come to be regarded, by my standards and beyond, as an indisputably accomplished story of uncontainable love, fame, and falls from grace.

A young oyster girl, Nan, living in the charming and simple seaside town of Whistable, England, takes flight from her family, but it’s not to chase the city lights. Instead she just wants to be near one thing in particular that fills her with a mysterious happiness she’s never felt before: Kitty Butler, a charming “masher,” or male impersonator, performing at a theater a few hours’ train ride away.

Waters’ women take chances and follow their hearts to places they may not be ready for. And the themes of living without abandon and holding the heart in choking constraint prick through the novel. But Tipping the Velvet gently grabs readers’ collars, pulling our imaginations closer as fame is born and dies, hearts are soft in hardened in the foggy cobbled streets of London.

A recommended read, this one. With moments so vivid, so right on your lips  you won’t want to put it down.

Cat Perry

© Cat Perry 2010

BOOK REVIEWS 9/20/09

Young Sapphic women everywhere remember fondly their first time discovering Jeanette Winterson since her first novel, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, was published in 1985. The first time, they sneaked peeks of their crisp copies of her juicy novels of lesbians searching for and seizing the love they’ve always wanted. Not to mention that Winterson’s grasp of necessary details, uncanny capturing of character quirks and deft precision for making historical fiction approachable.

Reading her books is like being kissed for the first time behind the stage curtain at your sweet sixteen party. The surge of that one moment is redrawn again and again. Other works of hers include Sexing the Cherry and Art and Lies. And The Passion—which is gold-touched with fantasy, old-wives’ tales, war, and gender nonconformity—seemed like a great place to start.

The Passion is narrated by first, Henri, a French teenage boy who sets off to war for Napoleon along with thousands of other young men for promise of something beyond barn borders and dairy farms. But, as he finds out after many seasons spent jammed among thousands of dying and ailing soldiers, bright eyes, just like everything, will fade.

Winterson lures us to love this naive Henri, who as a youthful looking young boy Bonparte takes a liking to, juxtaposing Henri to other gruff, carnal, and sometimes obscene men. This scene is hilarious, gross, and a clear clip of Winterson’s irreverent style:

She pinched my cheek. She looked over at the cook, who was squatting on one of the pallets trying to get his c*#k out…her arms folded. Suddenly he slapped her across the face and the snap killed the talk for a moment.

I saw her lip curl and the red mark on her cheek glowed despite her rough skin. She didn’t answer, just poked her hand back and brought it out like a ferret by the neck.

“Into your mouth” [his fellow soldier said].

I was thinking of porridge.

Winterson’s writing is like life: sometimes hilarious in the face of disgust, sometimes flippant and tender. Enter the second chapter, “The Queen of Spades.” It’s the story of Villanelle, a tough, beautiful cross-dressing daughter of a boatman who grows up in the casinos and along the rivers of Vienna. Winterson draws her opposite of Henri in the female character: strong, certain, wise, and cynical. But despite Villanelle’s toughness, Winterson lets readers slip under her cumberbun and behind the white Oxford shirt to see her heart. But it’s not with whom you’d expect.

The paths of Henri and Villanelle cross unexpectedly, miles from nowhere. Familiar, strong, and without pretense, Winterson’s imagination does it again with this incredible read.
© Cat Perry 2009