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“Have you ever tasted a Whitstable oyster? If you have, you will remember it…��
- Sarah Waters, Tipping the Velvet

Sarah Waters�� Tipping the Velvet is the gay Victorian epic you didn’t know you needed in your life. From its unsubtle opening come-on, to its sort-of pedantic ending, this is Charles Dickens with a twist. That twist �� I don’t think this is a spoiler �� happens to be a really specific description of a strap-on dildo.

In my reading life, I don’t think I’ve come upon something like this before. Likely, I wouldn’t have, but for a bit of luck.

By way of background, I’m a straight white male living in the conservative heartland of America who likes reading about the Civil War and drinking cheap white wine chilled with ice cubes. Just so we understand each other, I drink that wine out of a huge plastic wine glass that can almost be classified as a novelty.

Thus, when Sarah Waters sits down to write her novels, I am likely not the intended audience for which she spins her yarns. Possibly, I am the furthest thing from it. Nevertheless, great fiction transcends all bounds. In other words, despite being classified as “gay fiction,�� this is really just great fiction, a premium example of sublime storytelling.

My first experience with Waters was at the end of 2014, with her novel, The Paying Guests. Intrigued by the marvelous reviews, and the promise of a little of the between-the-sheets action for which she is famous, I picked it up. Despite being far less risqué than I might have imagined �� or hoped, if I’m being honest �� it was an engrossing reading experience. This led me, by happy accident, to circle back to Waters�� first novel, Tipping the Velvet.

Tipping the Velvet is a huge, messy, fun saga, the aforementioned Dickens spiced with some of Michael Faber’s The Crimson Petal and the White, and more than a dash of My Secret Life. Imagine Pip from Great Expectations, except Pip is a headstrong lesbian who leaves his family, and Magwitch is a rich widow in the market for a cross dressing sex slave. That just about explains this sprawling, picaresque take on the classic coming-of-age story.

Set in the 1890s, Tipping the Velvet is narrated in the first-person by Nancy “Nan�� Astley, a young woman born and raised in Whitstable, Kent, where she works in her family’s oyster restaurant. (Waters gets points for many things. Subtle symbolism is not among them). When Nan opens her story, she has just begun to fall in love �� from afar �� with Kitty Butler, a masher who sings popular tunes while dressed in men’s clothing at a nearby theater. Nan goes to watch Kitty every chance she gets. Eventually, Nan becomes her dresser. Later they become friends. Soon enough, like every plucky, Victorian-era protagonist, Nan leaves home to follow Kitty to the big city. She gets on stage. She becomes Kitty’s lover. She meets with some success.

And at some point, there is a bump on the road, and Nan’s real adventure begins.

This is a book that I almost gave up on. Like The Paying Guests, it starts slowly. And I mean real slow. The most fundamental part of a story is conflict, and Waters, who is a deliberative writer, carefully setting the stage and piling on details, keeps the road smooth for a long time. (Just over 150 pages, more or less). But once Nan’s newfound life gets a little shakeup, the rest of the novel’s pages move at a much quicker pace.

There are unforgettable supporting characters, unique set pieces (there is a bacchanal that trumps every party-scene in War and Peace), and a wonderfully recreated London, full of gritty, tactile details. Take, for instance, a description of a boarding room that Nan comes to inhabit:

The room to which she led me was cramped and mean and perfectly colorless; everything in it �� the wallpaper, the carpets, even the tiles beside the hearth �� having been rubbed or bleached or grimed to some variety of gray. There was no gas, only two oil-lamps with cracked and sooty chimneys. Above the mantel there was one small looking-glass, as cloudy and as speckled as the back of an old man’s hand. The window faced the Market…All I really saw, however, was the bed �� a horrible old down mattress, yellow at the edges and blackened in the middle with an ancient bloodstain the size of a saucer �� and the door. The bed, for all its rankness, seemed at that moment wonderfully inviting��

Tipping the Velvet is crammed with descriptions like this, from dance halls and back alleys to swank mansions and late-19th century gay bars. (Which is why it can be just as exasperating as it is thrilling). It is a London vaguely familiar from other novels, but peopled with a heretofore hidden gay community. It can be a bit exhausting, all the detail. Once the story starts careening, however, as it does around the halfway point, it becomes impossible to put down. The plot rambles propulsively from one extreme episode to another. I don’t want to spoil all the surprises, except to repeat there is a dildo, and it is given a word-painting that really imprints the thing in your mind.

Since I know you are wondering: There is sex within these pages. This should not surprise, since the title is slang for cunnilingus. Some of the sex is mildly graphic. Most of it, however, is contained within one extended sequence late in the book. You’ll know what part I’m talking about when you get there. Believe me, you’ll know.

Nan is an engaging narrator and an incredibly drawn character. I’ve often found first-person narrators to be under-written ciphers, a vessel through which to view the novel’s world. Not here. Nan is never overshadowed by the fascinating supporting cast she keeps running into. She is complex, and often unlikeable (often really unlikeable). She abandons her family, and essentially forgets about them. She tries to drag people out of the closet, kicking and screaming. She is sexually aggressive and utterly selfish. At times, she doesn’t seem worthy enough to warrant our continued attention. In the end, though, the roundedness of her personality, the good and the bad, makes her arc all the more moving. Nan has a lot of different experiences �� singer, prostitute, housekeeper, activist �� and she earns every bit of happiness she garners.

There are things I didn't love here. The plot is so expansive and digressive that it can feel directionless. This, coupled with the slow beginning, is enough to try one’s patience. Towards the end, Waters also gets a little preachy. Nan gets caught up in the labor movement, and we are treated to a slew of harangues that abruptly curb Nan’s hedonistic impulses. I bought the conversion, but just barely, and mostly because Waters had stored up some goodwill with me. Waters also hits certain themes hard, particularly the need to be true to your own identity. Tipping the Velvet is kind to those “toms�� who boldly and openly live their lives, while pitying characters �� such as Kitty �� who want to keep their sexuality a secret. It’s a rather cruel dichotomy, especially given the setting.

Ultimately, I was rewarded by sticking through to the end. I’m always searching for the mythical “novel to get lost in.�� I did not expect to find it in a lesbian bildungsroman, but that is exactly what happened.

I’m not in school anymore. There aren’t any teachers telling me what to read. I pick my own books, except when my book club picks them (and if I don’t like it, I don’t read the book, and pretend I did). I have a definite literary wheelhouse �� a comfort zone. Of course, if you do the same exercise with the same muscle over and over, you plateau. Every once in a while, I try to shake things up, to dip outside what I obviously like and try something different. Sometimes that leads me to struggle with the canonical classics. Other times, it leads me to Sarah Waters. Reading Tipping the Velvet, with its new spin on old motifs, is like wandering a familiar city and finding a brand new part of town.