Rating: 
Summary: Incredible!!!
Review: From the moment you start reading it has you in its grasp. It seems to be talking to you in such a personal matter that it almost comes from within you. Once you get acquainted with the characters you fall in love with them. They are your closest friends, and you will even want to protect them. I got so into the reading that nearing the end of the story I stopped and did not pick up the reading for more than a week. Why? One of the characters did something that upset me tremendously. Like having a friend fail you in some important way. I was actually resentfull of him and wouldn't continue reading. It took me a while to make peace with him and get back to the story. No book had involved me in such a way before. I will definately include Mr. Faber in my must-read-authors' list.
Rating: 
Summary: Whew-I did it!
Review: Well, I finally did it-I finished this book! It wasn't a bad book-just LONG! I'm not one for 800 page books but this book had a very enjoyable plot about a prostitute's life back in the 19th century. The way this book described every detail was amazing-I was able to get vivid pictures of the characters and places-I felt like I was actually brought in to the storyline! When I say that this book is descriptive, it's not too be taken as a negative thing-yes, there's much more description than dialogue but you read it and find yourself just wanting to read more. I must say, however, that I don't know how some of you read this book over a weekend. I had to keep putting it down but when I was reading it, I found it enjoyable. I would get this book if you're up for a challenging, enjoyable and a different kind of read!
Rating: 
Summary: Not all it was cracked up to be
Review: After reading a number of favorable reviews, one claiming that Faber was "reminiscent of Dickens", I decided to give it a try. Faber is no Dickens. Faber did present a researched approach to nineteenth century England which was mildly entertaining - alhtough really why read an author writing about a historical period that has been so exhaustively written about already? -- Unlike Dickens the book was humourless... the morbid characters often lacked depth. The timing was off in places (could a young sentimental would-be author with no interest in his father's business really transform himself in one night into the contemptible business man he despises all after just one night with a prostitute?) And then magically within the year he has taken the reins of his once disaproving father's business? I didn't buy it... but the book did swing in to a nice page turner about 3/4 of the way through...alas all for a cheat of an oh-too-quick ending.
Rating:
Summary: Fascinating reading
Review: This book is great. Couldn't wait to get home from work and continue reading. Couldn't get my hands off it while on holidays. Took me 2 weeks to read it - considering that it's a quite big book and that also like doing other things except reading, one can imagine how fascinating this was.
Read it if you like old stories written in a modern way.
Read it if you believe in books that are able to make you sense an inexistent or forgotten world.
Rating: 
Summary: complete disappointment
Review: This book was a complete disappointment. The first few chapters were great, with an intriguing way of narrating this book the author makes the reader experience the characters life. However, this style is abandoned, and instead the author adopts the use of coarse language, which adds nothing to the essence of the book. Additionally by the end of the book it is completely obvious what is going to happen. I think the excerpt has all that the book has to offer - don't spend money on it.
Rating:
Summary: Steady Pace, Historically Interesting , Unfulfilling Ending
Review: This tome of a novel moves along steadily, though I did not consider it a "page turner" by any means. The writing was beautiful and the author's ability to manage the sheer length and complexity of the story line without becoming muddled is impressive. The historical accuracy and glimpse into another century was very enjoyable. However, the repetitious descriptions wore thin toward the middle. After the hundredth literary rendering of London's grime, a prostitute's douching process, Henry's indecisiveness -- can we not be left to take anything for granted? Must we cover the same ground, over and over again to get the point? The characters, with the early exception of Sugar, are utterly irritating and in the end, she herself seems to go slack and becomes void of any of the earlier charm that drew my interest. Even the sympathetic Mrs. Fox fails to connect, act, or accomplish anything in the end. In fact, the entire novel seems a very thorough study of impotence which symbolically culminates in the main character's literal impotence. Not one of the story's numerous threads is resolved to any degree of satisfaction. The much anticipated ending was entirely unsatisfying. I do not need tidy endings spoon fed, but would it have been unbearably trite for the author to have at least given us a gobbet of closure after having devoted ourselves to such a lengthy ordeal?
Rating:
Summary: An omniscient view
Review: This is a wonderful novel--clever, funny, realistic. The author writes from a position of omniscience, bringing the delighted reader along for the experience. The author gets inside the minds of the characters, and the reader nods his/her head at the realistic depiction of the "mind's eye" of each character. I, for one, was sorry for the book to end.
Rating:
Summary: I started out loving this, very compelling
Review: and then at about a hundred pages into the story, I found myself wanting to hit fast forward. it started out GREAT but it just began to dwell too long on details, and being that my attention span isnt so great,it lost my attention. I am going to pick it up again maybe now that things are calmer (bought it before the holidays, hectic time in my house) and now that things are less hectic, Im hoping it will flow a little faster for me now, because it was soo very well written, that Im hoping it was just that I personally was having a time concentrating, on anything at all. the beginning is very attention getting!
Rating:
Summary: Transported in Time...
Review: Just moments ago I finished The Crimson Petal & the White, and said goodbye to Sugar and the rest. What a world between those covers! Or, contrarily, to soak in a hot lavender-scented bath in front of the fire. I've read this book very leisurely.It was a history lesson and a social lesson, and it made me realize just how many definitions there are of "civilization". In truth, the people who inhabited Notting Hill were no more or less civilized than those who inhabited St. Giles Street. I'm surprised that a man wrote this, as it illustrates with glaring accuracy the plight of women and the pompousness of men. "Men love to wallow in sin; we are the sin they wallow in." "Men decide the laws to determine what a woman may and may not do. ...Most of all, poverty is law. If a man falls on hard times, a five-pound note and a new suit of clothes can restore him to respectability, but if a woman falls..." Some have complained about the abruptness of the ending, but I felt it was just. Sufficient information is provided throughout the story to present direct clues to the ultimate outcome of all the main characters. What goes around, comes around...
Rating:
Summary: Absorbing, authentic, believable and quite heartless.
Review: Words for this review are hard to find. Faber has penned a mostly brilliant piece here, rich in detail with fully developed characters that we come to know and care about despite their flaws. The first hundred pages are slow going but it quickly gathers momentum and the result is a gripping read. (Some spoilers follow).
My problem, and one that I apparently share with the majority of reviewers, is the ending. I wasn't expecting a fairytale ending, Faber's characters were far too realistic to suddenly flout convention altogether and end up living happily ever after, but I felt I deserved a conclusion, even a tragic one. Faber owed it, it should have been the crowning achievement of the novel to take this totally unsustainable relationship and conclude it. When I turned to that last page, I reread it four or five times, searching for some hint of the fate of the characters in which I had just invested a week of my life. When I found none, I felt as if my heart had been wrenched out and thrown on the ground. As I reflected on the book my sense of engagement and excitement was replaced by the growing realisation that it is in fact an extremely grim read with light rarely penetrating the dark. It may be accurate, reflecting the world even to the extent that it has no clear beginning or end, but ultimately it is a bleak, disturbing and disappointing experience.
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