(no subject)

[cleolinda]

Sorry for going on about this, but I still can't understand why someone would end a book this way. If he really wanted to end it on an ambiguous note, all he had to do was stop at, say, the scene where Sugar's packing her things and she's all like, "Screw him! I saved all that money! I can set myself up somewhere! I'll be fine!" And then she tries to pick up her bags and they're heavy and she starts crying. End it there. Fine.

The problem is that Faber goes and starts a fresh plot twist--kidnapping Sophie whaaaat?--and then just abandons it. I don't know if he thinks that's deep or what. "See! This book is like an interrupted tryst with a prostitute! I don't even know your name! Hope I satisfied your desires and stuff!" WHAT? Okay, look, man: we sat with you for 800+ pages. We deserve better than that. It reminds me of a writing exercise we did in fourth grade--we were supposed to make up stories from pictures in The Mysteries of Harris Burdick and one boy, sort of nervous-eager about what must have been the first story he ever wrote, got his protagonist into the basement after a paragraph with aliens possibly waiting outside (or something like that), and finished it up with, "Did he get out or did the aliens get him? YOU DECIDE!" Yeah, no. In fact, Sugar running off with Sophie is such a harebrained plot twist that it wouldn't surprise me if Faber just couldn't think of a way out of it.

Shockingly, I think that no matter what they do to the movie version, it has to be better than this.

(Sister Girl's observation: "The Crimson Petal and the White what? Shouldn't that have been your first clue? He can't even finish the title!")

Here's the weird thing: I absolutely adore the first half or so of the book, and even after things start getting tough for Sugar again, I love the historical detail. It totally puts Black Ribbon to shame like a hundred times over, despite what I tried to do with it. (As opposed to putting BR to shame just a couple of times over, which is what most published books do.) The weird part is that, while I was mulling over this, I suddenly realized how I needed to fix a flailing plot point in chapter four (Why do they go to the chemist's?) that then patches up a much larger point in the whole series. Woot.

(Mmm. Sister Girl just made a fresh chocolate cake.)

Comments

[slammerkinbabe.livejournal.com]

"The Crimson Petal and the White" is a quote from... oh, shit. Uh, I think Tennyson? Maybe? Some Victorian. Oh, good Lord, so much for my B.A. in English and all that. But it's from... some poem... that... somebody wrote. Oh, and I think Faber thinks it's a gritty-erotic euphemism. Eh.

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

I figured it was some kind of quote or allusion... I just figured Sugar was the crimson petal and Agnes was the white, if you actually had to assign the symbolism to something. But yeah, there's that whole erotic euphemism thing also.

[jennilee.livejournal.com]

"...YOU DECIDE!" Yeah, no.

LOL. Your indignation is amusing. :)

So! Should I read it or not? ;)

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

Honestly, I loved the first 828 pages. If you know that there's not going to be an ending and you can live with that, I would definitely recommend it.

[http://users.livejournal.com/bellereve_/]

Heh. Can't even finish the title.

Ooooh, cake. Yum.

[rockgeisha.livejournal.com]

I adored the book through the bulk of it and the fact that I am a redhead who was involved in a situation kinda like the book (except for that whole, you know, Victorian prostitute angle) didn't hurt. Then came the ending. It suuuuucked. It sucked out loud. It sucked on toast. It sucked in three very distinct ways--so hard, so bad and wicked bad.

Have you read Under the Skin? I liked that ending a lot better even though it, too, was kind of a cop-out.

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

See, I was thinking about getting Under the Skin after Amazon recommended it. Of course, people in the reviews started comparing it to Animal Farm (the hell?), and I'm already a little suspicious of this guy's ability to write an ending. How long is it?

[rockgeisha.livejournal.com]

According to Amazon, it is 320 pages. I have it around here somewhere but I was too lazy to locate it. I read it in a couple of days--embarrassing confession, possibly TMI: I read it while sunbathing topless and got so into it that I got a sunburn on my boobs.

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

That should so be a blurb on the back of the book.

[supiluliumas.livejournal.com]

I felt the same way at the end of The Little Friend by Donna Tartt. No resolution to any of the plot angles, simply a clumsy denouement in a water tower and a stint for the main character in the hospital.

Then again maybe that was the point and I'm just not literary enough. I can live with that.

[ex-krazycat651.livejournal.com]

*scrolls past spoilers*

So I should expect throwing the book across the room when I finish it, then? Good to know.

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

Yeah, you'll be fine up until the last five pages, when you start to realize what's happening (or is not going to happen). I need to clarify to people that I would definitely recommend, like, the first 828 pages of the book.

[fuchsoid.livejournal.com]

Have you read The French Lieutenant's Woman? The historical detaijl is equally fascinating, and the ending is even more annoying. They handled that fairly well in the film, but I read it years ago and I can still remember how angry I was the by the ending(s).

Oh, and the title is Tennyson, from the longer poem Maud, I think.

[alpheratz.livejournal.com]

I read that book! I loved it, until I reached the ending, which really is bloody annoying. Glad to know that it was handled well in the film - I'll watch it.

[pisica.livejournal.com]

I've met Michel Faber and we're on the same internet list of Victorian research stuff that he mentions in the thank-you list. This is entirely irrelevant but anyway I don't think you're the first person to be annoyed by the book. I read the first 50 pages and said 'this is brilliant! I have to put it aside until I can savor it' but then someone else said that the first 50 pages were the best. It's still on my bookshelf....

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

the same internet list of Victorian research stuff

Okay, now I'm intrigued, because I want his list of sources BAD. Particularly whatever he used to get such detail on what individual streets like Church Lane or Regent Street were like.

[pisica.livejournal.com]

It's a list called Victoria-L; you can find the archives here (http://www.victorianresearch.org/discussion.html). I wasn't on the list when he was doing all his research, but I imagine his list of sources would be as long as TCPATW when it's all said and done.... :)

[futureperfect.livejournal.com]

I feel I need to read this book now!

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

Well, if you're prepared for THE EXTREMELY ABRUPT WAY IT JUST CUTS OFF, you might be able to take it more in stride than I did. ;)

[elbiesee.livejournal.com]

Seeing at the last 'book' I finished was Bridget Jones' Diary (Yeah, I know), maybe I should delve into a piece of literature to wake up the ol' brain cells.

But perhaps not this one.

Any recommendations?

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

Well, this one was fine until the end. The book I read before this was Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, which was both great and a lot shorter. I'm pretty bad in that I'm so busy 1) reading books for research or 2) reading books for class that I don't tend to keep up with current stuff, but a good friend tells me that Jasper Fforde's Tuesday Next series is great. I think the first one is The Eyre Affair.

*butting in*

[karintheswede]

The first book in the Thursday Next series, The Eyre Affair, is fantastic. Very funny and extremely literary. I ended up reading ten novels by Dickens because of it.

Re: *butting in*

[elbiesee.livejournal.com]

Ooh, Charlie Dickens. Perfect to fill in the time between now and college football season.

Think I'll pick up A Tale of Two Cities, since I was force-fed it as a high-school senior and was too worried about the color of petticoats (in case it was a test question) to get into the story. I think I'll enjoy it this time.

[zaki.livejournal.com]

I loved that book, right up until the ending. Exactly! WTF?!?!

Actually, there were many, many WTF moments in that book, but that's kinda what made it fun. I really enjoyed how you think maybe possibly it might turn out a little like Jane Eyre, what with the mad wife and the lowly nanny and the rich lord, but then the author kinda socks you in the chops and laughs at you a lot.

If it hadn't been for the totally WTF ending, it'd be on my favorites list.

[malsperanza.livejournal.com]

I read Crimson Petal a while ago, and am working from mem here, but I think the stealing of Sophie is not meant as a new plot twist, but a culmination. The book is both a pastiche of the great Victorian novels that revolve around the problems of women in society--Brontes, Austen, some of Dickens' best stuff (eg Great Expectations, Little Dorrit), Hardy (esp Tess), etc.--*and* a critique of the worldview of those books. It is a postmodern reconsideration of the questions posed by those authors about women in love, in the social and political economy, in the family. I don't usually throw the word "postmodern" around, but in this case I think it fits--an ironic revisiting of the core issues.

So Faber takes the sentimentalized trope of the prostitute or waif with heart of gold and/or aspirations, and says, What would that life really have been like? Here's the sex: explicit, aggressive, unpleasant. Here's the diseases and the poverty. Here's the grit. And he asks the same questions about the family and a whole series of Victorian tropes. Well and good, and he ain't the first or the best author to take on the idea. (I personally LOVE the ending of the French Lieutenant's Woman. Like Fowles, Faber is aiming to mark the transition from Victorian lit to Edwardian.)

One of the prime tropes of Victorian and Edwardian novels is The Child--specifically the Little Girl, beginning of course with Little Nell ("One must
have a heart of stone to read the death of little Nell without laughing" ~Wilde) and embracing Jane Eyre and so on. The Little Girl is a revolting stick-figure representing innocence (except in Henry James novels); rarely does the child have any interior life at all.

In Crimson Petal, Sophie does not break out of that mold. But Sugar, in stealing her, violates the expectations of the Victorian ending, or rather, defies it. She steals her own ending, so to speak. The lack of closure is meant--I think--to be a revision or defiance of the Victorian resolution of the woman's story, which ends either in marriage or in utter dissolution and disaster. Sugar literally flees that ending, and takes the kid with her. It's a feminist act--perhaps too obviously so, for it is jarringly out of sync with the rest of the book.

For me this *idea* works fine, but the handling of it was so abrupt and clumsy that it simply did not persuade. The problem in my view was not plot twists or lack of resolution, but Faber's incapacity to set up the unresolved ending properly. Having mimicked the Victorian novel throughout, stylistically and formally, he then threw all that out the window in order to make a political point. It didn't work. I think it was purely a lack of skill, not a failure of ideas.

If you want a rec for a Victorian-pastiche novel that I think works much more completely, try Charles Palliser's "The Quincunx," which is a riff on Dickens, Sheridan Le Fanu, Wilkie Collins, Galsworthy. Part family saga, part mystery. Infinitely clever--perhaps too clever in places. I liked it much better than Faber. A wholly satisfying read, and equally impressive as to research and detail.

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

For me this *idea* works fine, but the handling of it was so abrupt and clumsy that it simply did not persuade.

See, this was my problem. I was willing to believe that there was a good chance that Agnes might still be alive in a convent somewhere--I know that William thinks he's positively ID'd her, but it's on such slim evidence that I'm not sure he's done anything but convinced himself. And Faber, as many times as he steps in to tell the reader of things ("Take a good look, because you'll never see them again"), doesn't confirm or deny the identification, which I think is interesting. It's ambiguous, and I can live with that.

What I can't live with is this idea that Sophie and Sugar run away, because, in a world so carefully documented and researched, this is extremely unusual. Or rather, I can live with the idea just fine; I just need Faber to tell me if William tracks them down and retrieves Sophie, and Sugar does or does not escape at that point, which seems to me like the most feasible resolution, or if Sugar and Sophie make a new life together. And a new life together is so completely odd, in practical terms, that I need Faber to tell me how they accomplish it. That's what pisses me off--that's why I feel like he's totally stopped the book too soon. If Sugar had run off without Sophie and William were just trying to hunt Sugar down and fell and hurt his leg, etc., I could live with that, because I could at least imagine what might happen to Sugar by herself afterwards. But the whole "I'm going to run off with a famous industrialist's kid and hey, no one's going to notice or anything" thing just doesn't wash with me.

[malsperanza.livejournal.com]

*squints*

Yeah, all true, sadly. I thought the book was overrated, before the problems with the ending. I think the ending's ambiguity is meant to provoke Modern anxiety. It's unlikely that Sugar and Sophie could make a life for themselves, but they have vanished into the realm of Story, etc. Instead, it just reads as if author had lost interest. I thought William was only half a character at best, and without a fuller sense of his reasons for being such a cad, he flattened the story every time he showed up in a scene. Twirling his mustaches.

[crucifiedoenone.livejournal.com]

I remember back in the fifth grade we were forced to read a book which had a 'shocking' twist in it in and we were forced to make up an ending to it... I hated that so so much.


Anyways, I love your "movies in 15 minutes" things... charmingly funny.

[sasayaki.livejournal.com]

You've actually got me wanting to read this book now, except for the ending part, but that longwinded guy pretty much made it seem like it could be okay. Did you write a letter to the author about the ending? I wonder if anyone ever does that. :/

--//Jan

Victorian books

[(Anonymous)]

Someone asked something about Victorian something or other, so here's my answer. (I hate how you can't see other people's comments while you're typing your own.)

Modern books, Victorian Setting: You want Elizabeth Peters. Also Jack Finney.

Not quite Victorian, but involves Prostitutes: Fanny Hill, 1749. Basically porn, but very old porn, and the descriptions of organs are not the usual cliches:

"Her sturdy stallion had now unbutton'd, and produced naked, stiff, and erect, that wonderful machine, which I had never seen before, and which, for the interest my own seat of pleasure began to take furiously in it..."

http://eserver.org/fiction/fanny-hill/

-Andy Perrin

Re: Victorian books

[sherbert362.livejournal.com]

I recommend "Lady Chatterley's Lover" too.

I um....LOL.

[sherbert362.livejournal.com]

I just borrowed that book from the library and you have persuaded me not to read it...is that okay? I got it because I liked the summary on the bookjacket...hmmm....*mulling this over*

Re: I um....LOL.

[(Anonymous)]

More than ok. It's not literature. If you know it's porn going into it, and are prepared to giggle (and realize that feminism was a long way off in the 1700s) then it's not so bad. Actually, the female characters are reasonable strong-willed.

-Andy Perrin (I'm male and young and hormone-filled, just so you know where I'm coming from.)

Re: I um....LOL.

[sherbert362.livejournal.com]

LOL. I believe you are probably right. The guy took 20 years to write it, he must have sunk a lot into research...tee hee. I read a lot of romance novels (for fun) to supplement my other reading, so I guess you could say you are not the only hormone-filled young person. Though I am a girl and that places me in a reasonable capacity to simply giggle.

[pjrampolla.livejournal.com]

Thank you. :)