The Crimson Petal and the White by Michel Faber: Book Review

The Crimson Petal and the White 
By Michel Faber
Published by Mariner Books, 2002

In 1870s London, England William Rackham is an up and coming nothing, who, even though the a son of the rich owner of a perfume empire, finds himself a bit lost in life. He enjoys the dandy life a bit too much even though he has a mentally ill wife, and his dad gives him only the barest minimum in the way of money in an effort to compel William to take over the family business. That burden would normally have fallen on his older brother, Henry, but the eldest wants to be a clergyman and has no interest in running a company. The problem is that William has no interest in the perfume industry either. He'd much rather hang out with his scalawag buds, and think of himself as an aspiring writer or artiste, even though he writes NOTHING. His beautiful young wife, Agnes, is suffering from a hidden brain tumor (Faber's narrator tells us this early on but the characters in the novel have no way of knowing about it). It makes her have major mental issues which compound the worldly handicaps of her already sheltered upbringing. She basically has no clue as regards to sex even though she birthed a daughter, Sophie, from her marriage to William. In fact, she pretty much ignores the existence of her own child. William, too, has little to do with his kid and leaves her care to his servants. He can't really decide what he wants to do with his life besides knowing that the perfume business isn't an option. A whore named Sugar is about to change all that.

Sugar is known throughout London as the prostitute that will do whatever a client asks, no matter how depraved or repulsive other whores might find it. Like William, she too is an aspiring writer, with the difference being that she actually WRITES! She wants to publish a novel based on revenge fantasies on all the men she has slept with in her career. And by so doing, reveal mankind for the revolting animals they really are, and society as a skeleton of moral hypocrisy. When she meets William, she seduces him not only with her body, but also with her mind. She sets herself up as his intellectual and carnal soulmate, so much so that William even decides to take over his dad's hated pefume business in order to take care of Sugar as the rich scion he essentially is.

In its most basic form, The Crimson Petal and the White is about sex. Sexual repression and sexual release. It's the book Charles Dickens would have written if he had been allowed to include not only human drama but also naughty bits that happen in the bedroom. Faber even imitates the omniscient narrators of old and makes witty asides about the past, present, and future of the characters. It's also about how dangerous and secret passions can become all too banal over the passage of time or when they become too domestic. A secret affair only holds its power and lust while it IS secret and you're in danger of being discovered. Once the cat is out of the bag, so to speak, it loses whatever forbidden fruit magnetism it had.

The book is pretty lengthy, clocking in at just under 900 pages, and the saddest thing is that after reading all those pages and savoring the beautiful language, you get to the end and are like "WTF? That's IT???" All the characters are left dangling in space with no resolution whatsoever. It's like a tv show that gets cancelled at the end of season with cliffhangers and you never find out what happened to the characters or plotlines. There's a book of stories called The Apple that supposedly sheds a bit more light on what happened to the characters after the end of the novel, but to me, shave off some of the 900 pages and add an ending. Dickens never left you hanging at the end of his books! Don't try to emulate 19th century novelists and then flub the end! I felt kinda pissed about it and considered swearing off reading any more of Faber's novels...but I guess after I cooled down I've become a bit more forgiving and will most likely read The Apple to give myself some closure. It just seemed a real ripoff to spend over a month reading a book and then the author just blows off wrapping up his work. I would say to avoid this novel if you want any sort of payoff at its finish. If it had an end I would have given it 4-5 stars. Without one, it's a 2 or 3 star book.

My Grade: C+