Rating: 
Summary: wonderful book
Review: I was very pleased with this book. It gave me some insight into a world that was alive many years before I was born. I loved the humor that was tossed into the mix. I felt like I was a part of the world in which Sugar lived. I also thought it was a great ending for the book. The story ended, but it seemed that it didn't, giving you the impression that the story continues even after the author quits telling it. I have to own a copy of this book.
Rating:
Summary: What You Want Victorian Novels to Read Like
Review: I'm not sure why this book is so polarizing. I found it easy reading, intelligent and engrossing. As big and long as it is, it is nevertheless a quick read. Faber has a great command of the language and knows how to keep his reader's attention with just the right titillating and sometimes grotesque details. You keep rooting for Sugar the whole way, and you find insights into Victorian culture and the Victorian mindset that you wouldn't get in too many places. What more do you want from a book?Many readers are disappointed with the ending, but I found it logical and appropriate, certainly not abrupt. I'm not sure what people are looking for when they complain about the ending. I guess they want a fairy-tale like "Beauty and the Beast" or "Pretty Woman," one where everyone lives happily ever after or an obvious tragedy like "Anna Karenina," with the main characters getting what they deserve. Instead they get something much more true to life. The ending is perfect. I certainly look forward to more from this writer. If you could combine Faber's prose with Ian McEwan's plotting and structure, Dickens' characters, Dostoyevsky's ideas and Sebold's lurid sensibilities, you'd have a masterpiece the publishing world dreams of: an intelligent but fun novel that sells like Harry Potter, one that people can't put down or stop talking about. But it all begins with the prose, and Faber clearly has that part licked. He also knows how to create interesting characters and how to hold your attention. Bravo for Faber! Give us more!
Rating:
Summary: My favorite read of 2003!
Review: This is a story about young prostitutes living in the seedier parts of London. It also tells the tales of a young man that works at his father's perfumery, the young self-involved wife, the elder brother that has aspirations to join the clergy, and the people that move in their social circles. The lives of William Rackham and his family change as the result of the actions of a young woman that William comes into contact with. Read the book to find out more - I don't want to ruin a good surprise! This book has surpassed "The Dress Lodger", in my opinion, in terms of character development and the literary prowess with which it has been written. It has been written from the point of view of a master of ceremonies presiding over a theater show, and the author was devilishly clever in perpetuating this motif. I could easily see it becoming a movie in the near future. Read it now so you can brag about it later! You are in for quite a treat!
Rating:
Summary: The type of person who will love this book
Review: ************
I wanted to write a different sort of review for this book. There are, as of this writing, 288 reviews written already, many which describe the content of the book beautifully. I wanted to add here some information about who might want to order it. If you are a person that loves to be kept up late at night by a novel you just can't put down, you will enjoy this book. It is long, as others have said, but it never is slow; in fact, I would love to read a sequel. I devoured this book and could not wait to find out what happened next. I was a little afraid that I would be offended by the explicit sexuality described by others, but I was not, as it was not gratuitous. Sexuality was simply a part of life for the characters in the book, as it is for us today. The sexual themes were different, as the main character is a prostitute, but there is a great deal of her life that any woman could identify with, maybe even---that most women today could identify with. I know I did. I was not particularly interested in this time period historically, nor am I a fan of Dickens---you can still enjoy the book having these characteristics. The time period, for me, was incidental, and reading about class and gender differences at that time in history caused me to think about class and gender differences in my own time and relationships between men and women now. This is simply a great, beautifully written story. It is entertaining, but not light in the sense that there are many layers of messages and meaning that are not superficial that one can think about as one reads. For me it was a deep book. I finished it a couple of weeks ago, and I am still thinking about it. I would encourage you to read it if you want to get lost in a lovely story and think about your life and how you relate to the opposite sex. About what immorality and morality truly is, even if you already think you know. I hate romances, and it is definitely NOT a romance...it is more for someone who wonders about romance..and love...and marriage...and men and women...for someone who thinks different unspoken things and wonders if anyone else thinks the same way. I know this sounds sort of mysterious, but that's how the book is too, and if it intrigues you, don't hesitate---get it and then enjoy!
******
Rating:
Summary: Nineteenth Century quality from a Twenty-First Century pen!
Review: I'm not really sure why I picked this book up in the first place, maybe the awards it won, or the promise of a devilish story. Because although I read all the 19th century classics in school, and liked them in a 3-star kind of way, I never would have read any I was not required to. The Crimson Petal and the White sets itself apart - though it is a 19th century tale told with 19th century English and 19th century style, it is written by a modern man and as such doesn't fall victim to naivete or politeness. Nothing is omitted or reworded to avoid readers muttering, "well I never!" Faber gives you the whole story, and what a great romantic tragedy it is! Despite the 900 pages, I breezed through it with great interest. I've already got other Faber books on my wishlist.
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Summary: i dont want it to end!
Review: i'm not normally one for doing a lot of reading, but with only 200 pages left, i want to ration the pages so that i dont finish it too quickly! it really is a fabulous book and beautifully written. it is easy to follow as you are not smothered with millions of insignificant charcters, but instead, become very well acquainted with the few which are there. it is of educational value too as the author has taken the time to fully research victorian london, and i have learnt alot about society of the time from this novel. anyway i wont ramble any longer, i can't wait to snuggle up in my bed to finish the rest of it!
Rating: 
Summary: Crimson Petal & White
Review: For the most part I liked this book. The characters were well described and those of William and Sugar had nice character development. The plot kept me hooked and I spent every possible minute reading to find out what would happen next. I was very curious to see how this all ended as the plot was taking some really interesting twists and turns. I was bitterly disappointed in the way the book just suddenly ended during a particularly exciting development in the storyline. It was as if, after 944, the author just got tired of writing. What a major let-down after all that reading to get to this point. I understand that the author wants the reader to use his/her imagination to determine what happens next, but to do so at a major development is wrong. He could have at least had some closure to the storyline. Although the book kept my attention, I found that I could have done without the Henry/Mrs. Fox storylines. They were pretty boring compared to the rest of the characters and storylines. And the Agnes character was just too much to endure. I had no sympathy for her even though much of her actions were caused by her illness. I'm not sorry I bought and read this book. It definitely was a good historical fiction work.
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Summary: 19th-Century Themes, 21st-Century Sensibilities
Review: A couple years ago, I had the good fortune of being able to attend BookExpo America, where free advance copies of the hottest fall releases are offered to anyone who passes by a given publisher's booth. Of the many surprises I picked up on that trip, the best by far was Michel Faber's sublime The Crimson Petal and the White. Here's Ann Patty's (Executive Editor at Harcourt) note on the first page of the advance reading copy: "Dear Reader, "You hold in your hands the first great nineteenth-century novel of the twenty-first century. In my twenty-five years as an editor, this may be the most magnificent, courageous novel I have ever published. Magnificent because it can only be called a great novel, a tour de force, a novel that truly stands beside the Victorian classics. Courageous because it not only flies in the face of what most male authors of impeccable literary credentials would risk, but also because of the way it came to be written. Michel vigorously researched the novel soon after he graduated college as a scholar of nineteenth-century culture and literature; he wanted to write a novel as carefully constructed as Eliot's Middlemarch. The original manuscript took him six years to hand write, in the small neat script of an obsessive who couldn't afford to hire a typist. Never thinking he might find a readership, he filed it away in a drawer. Years and life went on. Yet the novel continued to compel him--in the ensuing fifteen years he overhauled and rewrote it three more times. His characters and perspective deepened and matured as he did, his guiding muse moving, as he did, from alienation and nihilism to love and hope. "If you are familiar with Michel Faber's highly praised first novel, Under the Skin, or his brilliant story collection Some Rain Must Fall, this novel will come as a further astonishment, since nothing (save the blazing talent) in those wonderfully strange and original first books could possibly have predicted The Crimson Petal and the White. When you begin to read it, you may regret that it is not even longer. It is a book to curl up with and live in for awhile. And life here is deeply enthralling, rich, provocative, and absolutely real." This praise is a tall order for a book to live up to, but The Crimson Petal and the White does not disappoint. It sucks you in with a unique narrative voice, which speaks directly to an assumed twenty-first-century reader from the anachronistic perspective of a nineteenth-century character. If you're like me, you look for a compelling first paragraph to make you commit to a book, and this one has a first paragraph that sinks the hook into you deeply (and it never lets go): "Watch your step. Keep your wits about you; you will need them. This city I am bringing you is vast and intricate, and you have not been here before. You may imagine, from other stories you've read, that you know it well, but those stories flattered you, welcoming you as a friend, treating you as if you belonged. The truth is that you are an alien from another time and place altogether." From that point on, I couldn't put the book down, and, as Ann Patty indicated, when the book ended on page 833 I actually wished that it were longer. You really must read this book. Once you curl up with it and live in it awhile, you won't want to come back. A final note: don't be intimidated by the comparison with Middlemarch, which I actually was never able to finish (in fact, my difficulty with Middlemarch was the reason I switched majors from English to Philosophy, since The Later English Novel was offered at the same time as Logic, a requirement, offered only every other year, for the Philosophy major). Though The Crimson Petal and the White is perhaps as "carefully constructed" as Middlemarch, the former will never be confused as a genuine nineteenth-century novel (and it definitely will not be confused with Middlemarch). Though it has nineteenth-century themes and a nineteenth-century setting, the book's twenty-first-century sensibilities (and distinctly twenty-first-century perspective on the nineteenth century) make it one of the best works of *contemporary* literature in recent years.
Rating: 
Summary: Destined to become a classic
Review: THE CRIMSON PETAL AND THE WHITE is a work of amazing proportions. The sheer scope of the novel almost is beyond comprehension to a reader, and I cannot begin to understand the genius of author Michael Faber in conceiving this story. The amount of detail that Faber provides about Victorian London, and the amount of research it must have required to assimilate so much information, must be absorbed in its entirety by the reader in order to be appreciated. The tale that Faber tells is Dickens-like in its complexity. The undercurrents at the beginning are reminiscent of Anne Rice. And his language can be almost Shakespearean. Woven together to form a unique and seamless chronicle, it becomes obvious that this is an author with a unique vision and a rare voice. His prose, apart from the story itself, demands reading and re-reading; there were many instances where his lyricism left me breathless. There is no doubt that THE CRIMSON PETAL AND THE WHITE will become a modern classic. It is an extraordinary piece of writing; indeed, it is the rare novel that actually can be considered literature.
Rating:
Summary: Well-done, rather unusual
Review: This book, approx 800 pages but never dull, is written in precise, colourful language, with apparently minute research to reinforce the various strata of 1875 London (Notting Hill and more degraded environments)life. The relatively few central characters always engross, and there is sufficient, personally pleasing ambiguity in the novel: we never know exactly what happened to Agnes;brother Henry is eliminated relatively early;we know neither Sugar nor Sophie's fate. All we can deduce is that Sugar, the prositute turned governess, assumes the role of avenging and saving angel through her vindictive novel and her arranging the basically decent though not entirely sympathetic Agnes's escape. When she, at the book's end,flees with Sophie, she does so because she cannot part with a young being who, despite difficulties, at least had/has a childhood, something Sugar was cruelly denied.
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