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This is Sarah Waters� first novel and is a very straight(ha)forward tale of the life of Nancy Astley from age 18 to age 26 as she makes her lesbian progress from Whitstable, Kent to Bethnal Green, London, from oyster girl to music hall star to toy boy (ha) and beyond. I see other reviews have duffed up Tipping the Velvet on account of it’s not got the pyrotechnic plot of Fingersmith or The Paying Guests. This is like complaining that A Hard Day’s Night is rubbish because it is not anything like Sgt Pepper.

So this is a tour of lesbian London, 1890s-style. There is love, there is heartbreak, there are songs, laughter and dildos. I have read some reviews which have lavished praise over TTV because of its saucy sex scenes. But these reviewers can not have rented the movie Blue is the Warmest Colour, or spent the idlest 20 seconds googling. TTV is quite saucy, but society has moved right ahead with lesbian erotica in the 20 years since it was published.

And thirdly, I read reviews which say that our heroine Nancy is horrid, self-centred, stupid and totally uncaring of other people’s feelings. Why, sure she is, but who says a novel’s protagonist has to be nice? I don’t see the same criticism being levelled at The Bible.

What I did notice, which I thought was more than a little corny, was that in the final long scene all Nancy’s past inamoratas pop up one by one so that our heroine can finally come to terms with all the aspects of her wayward life and be able to move into the new century with gladness in her heart. Well, you have to wrap up your 500 page first person lesbian novel somehow, but the ending was pure Notting Hill/When Harry Met Sally/The Graduate and rather grisly.

But still, the ins and outs (ha) of this long Sapphic peregrination with its nervewracking Nancy, conflicted Kitty, dreadful Diana and Fabian Florence hardly ever flags. Hey, it’s a good read!

3.5 stars.