Nancy’s sister is seeing a boy who works at the theatre and he often gets them free tickets to see shows. She knows more about oysters than she knows about anything else.

Her family owns an oyster house and she has spent her entire life so far working there. Tipping the Velvet is the story of Nancy, a young girl from Whitstable, a small fishing village in England. I mean, there’s actual sex between two women happening, and considering that the series was out in 2002 that was a big deal.īut what is it about, you might be asking? I remember that one of my fist thoughts about the mini-series was that it was miles ahead of its time with its depiction of queer characters. I’ll come back to that comment later, but I do remember thinking ‘Wow, what a prude’ at first, because I didn’t think it could be that bad. Somebody at university had told me that they thought the book was ‘too pornographic’. In my defence, I wasn’t aware of the book until I had already heard of the series and was way too impatient and really wanted to watch it first. I fully read the book after watching the mini-series based on this book, which was very uncharacteristic of me. In my view however, her later books are better, albeit less transgressive. Indeed, 'Tipping the Velvet' sometimes feels like the book that Dickens or Collins might have written but would have never dared publish.Ī rollicking debut, then, and a good place to start exploring Waters' world. Here was an author who was evidently well-versed in the 19th century literary canon but equally knowledgeable about the naughtier writers of the period (Waters had researched 19th century pornography as part of her doctoral studies and the title is a term taken from Victorian sexual slang). Here was an author who confidently evoked the Victorian era without resorting to rosy nostalgia or gaslight clichés. Here was a new, exciting author with a surprising eye for detail and a talent for sumptuous descriptions of a bygone age. That said, it is easy to understand why critics were so enthusiastic about this novel when it was first published. Nor does it have the ambitious narrative structure of or the tantalising ambiguities of. As a picaresque novel, it lacks the tight plotting of. I started this book after having read all Waters's other novels except 'The Paying Guests' (which I read concurrently - watch this space for my review.) In the light of Waters's later works, I don't consider 'Tipping the Velvet' as one of her very best books.

The novel charts Nan's coming of age (and 'coming out') in the lesbian communities of late 19th century London. An unlikely friendship develops and Nan and Kitty are soon on their way to London together.

She becomes infatuated with Kitty Butler, a visiting male impersonator at the local theatre. The likeable first-person narrator in Sarah Waters's debut novel is Nan Astley, whom we first meet as a rather shy, eighteen-year-old 'oyster girl' in Whitstable.

Tipping the velvet author