Rating: 
Summary: What a wonderful book!
Review: This book is an extremely well written novel.One of the best that I have read in years. The author's style is unique and compelling. I would recommend this big book to anyone who enjoys reading something a little out of the ordinary.
Rating: 
Summary: Don't read this if you don't want to know plot points
Review: First off...this has to be the first book in a series. We are left with way too many questions. What has happened to Agnes? Where is she? Will Sugar and the child be found by William? What about Mrs Fox and William's new love interest? I am disappointed that there are no answers to these questions. Anyone else feel that way? Also....I have a thought that Mrs Castaway might have been William's mother...and therefore she's Sugar's also....which means incest on top of all the rest? Hmmm...very interesting. I did love the book though.
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Summary: What the Dickens? Pretty woman meets Mephisto....
Review: This was my first encounter with a work by Michel Faber and both the content and the style of this book prove that he is a literary power to reckon with. While this book could be described as a novel in the style of Dickens, both the ending of the book and the inclusion of explicit sexuality turn it into a not too pleasing modern analysis of the Victorian era.While I disagree with those reviews that sharply criticize the ending of this book, it needs to be said that it is a little awkward to finish an "old fashioned" novel in a "post-modern" fashion. Even when a postmodern book concludes with a ditto ending, take Foster Wallace's masterpiece "Infinite Jest", people are up in arms, and as such comments on the Petals' ending are not completely unjustified. Even after having finished Anna Karenina earlier this year, reading this book was a true delight. I read that Hollywood will soon be turning this book in a movie that will certainly compensate a complete lack of meaning with a happy ending. In all, such a movie will be completely unnecessary. Those looking for a happy ending can simply pull Pretty Woman off the shelf. On top of that a "transplant" of the main part of the story to the Nazi era is already available: Brandauer in István Szabó's Mephisto. Yet lets forget about movies. Faber has created a vivid and vibrant novel with truly three-dimensional characters that will transport any attentive reader into the cruel universe that the writer so masterfully recreated. A rare bestseller of true literary stature: enjoy it whenever you can!
Rating:
Summary: Victorian England, good & bad
Review: This book has gotten a lot of press attention lately, almost all of it extremely positive. Having read it, I can understand the praise. I found this work extremely well written, and the research that must have gone into making it apopear authentic is so cleverly hidden that it's unnoticeable. The author presents us with a large Dickens-like cast of disparate characters, and we become totally involved with them from the beginning. We see the highs and the lows of Victorian society, and the good and the bad in people from all strata of society. We learn a lot about customs, mores and just everyday living from reading, and we develop likes and dislikes for various characters. It's the test of a very good novel that, at the end, no matter what it's length, we wish to continue reading about the folks with which we have come to identify closely. This was that kind of work, and it's a book that is well worth reading for everyone. I highly recommend it.
Rating:
Summary: a little overpraised, but different and interesting
Review: As far as the title goes, Tennyson wrote a poem beginning, "Now sleeps the crimson petal, now the white," and the book may be Faber's realistic answer to Tennyson's romanticism, the crimson petal being the life of prostitutes on the streets and the white the pale and effete upper society. The book has an intriguing beginning, but trails off in the middle as Sugar becomes a somewhat insipid copy of Jane Eyre. Then it gets good again towards the end. I didn't feel the ending left us hanging; William gets what he deserves, and Sugar and Sophie come out on top. The characters aren't too well fleshed out. William is hard to figure out, Henry is boring and it's never explained how Sugar, having been raised on the streets, is well-spoken and educated enough to pass herself off as a governess (or that her lover would consider letting her do so). The fact that, having been raped repeatedly since the age of thirteen, Sugar would enjoy and look forward to sex, strikes me as a male author's fantasy, although he does give us an excellent and sympathetic picture of the position of women. What the book does very well is to give us a feeling for Victorian society: the prostitutes, the servants, the male chauvinists and the helpless and pampered ladies of the upper class.
Rating:
Summary: Source of the Title
Review: For those who have been searching for the origins of the title.
The lines come from a poem of Tennyson's called The Princess. Faber's book,by the way, is quite wonderful, though calling it a masterpiece is a bit of a stretch. A question of fact. On p. 41 there is a reference to the Church of Our Lady of the Assumption. Was there such a church in Victorian England? The Catholic doctrine was only made official in the 1950's. (I know,I know, it's a minor thing)
Rating:
Summary: Definetly a new classic of the year
Review: I think it deserves its praise as "the best 19th century novel of the 21st century." The depth of all the characters were amazing and vivid, and I felt like I was reading a Dickens or Hugo (except in England) story. The intricate twists and turns of the plot and the change in character of the main players made those 800 pages read quickly. I've read many potential books deemed to be a classic but most fail to prove its worth. Except this one. This is a great read for any admirer of the classics!
Rating: 
Summary: Ambitious Failure
Review: The first pages of Faber's 800-page-plus opus are engrossing despite his "dear reader" affectation, which amusingly echoes a hooker's come-on to a john but which palls very quickly. As I continued deeper into the book, though, the characters seemed to shift annoyingly, and the storyline withered. I came to feel that the material -- as rich and abundant it was, and Faber's grasp of Victoriana is brilliant -- finally failed him. He struck me like a man attempting to carry a towering stack of books across a room and tripping as he got halfway across. As an author, as a creator of plot and character, he just wasn't up to the task he had set out for himself. Sugar's conversion to a governess was fundamentally unbeleivable (doesn't a man bringing a mistress into his house defeat the purpose?), as was William's transformation from aesthete to businessman in less than a year. Faber doesn't end his book so much as stagger to a close. Where are Sophie and Sugar going? To join Agnes? Who cares? To have this "baggy monster" hailed as a Dickens-level masterpiece is yet another example of how degraded our critical faculties have become.
Rating:
Summary: A Great Story!!
Review: I was so glad I bought this book. It was just terrific. Every page was filled with colorful dialogue and description which put you right in the story. I especially loved the way the author speaks to the reader. This is a must for anyone who wishes to really fall deep into a story. As for the ending which many critics write about, I wished for some more information yet I now have the opportunity to imagine what might have happened. Dear Mr.Faber is there a sequel??????? Please say yes and please don't wait 20 years. Thanks for a great book.
Rating:
Summary: How about that!
Review: Thank you Michel Faber for writing such a great book. If you want to read something different and creative...this is the book for you.
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