Sugar, of course, is the central character of the book, and she is fascinating and complex. One of my favourite characters, Caroline, makes her appearance in those first few pages of the book, and though she plays only a minor part in the rest of the story, she speaks one some of my favourite lines in the story, and continues to be one of my favourite characters till the end of the book.

The narrator takes our hand and leads us into 1870s London and we get a guided tour of the less fancied parts of the city and this continues for a while, and it makes us fall in love with the book. The start of the book is very fascinating. Reading a chunkster is always challenging and getting to the last page is always a huge accomplishment. Today, I turned the last page, and I’m happy to be on the other side. But that didn’t happen here – I got back and continued reading one sentence after another, fought with the mountain of pages everyday, till the tide turned one day, and I won.

I took a break one-third of the way into the book, and I was worried I may not get back to it, because this happens to me all the time, I take a break from a chunkster, and that is the end of it, and it ends up being half read. But, as often happens with big books, after the initial aura fades, the reader has to do the hardwork, the grunt work, read one sentence after another, keep the pages turning. Michel Faber’s prose was beautiful, there were many beautiful sentences, the first chapters were amazingly narrated (more on that soon). It was exciting to start reading and before I knew I was a hundred pages in. ‘ The Crimson Petal and the White‘ is a 900-page chunkster, the longest book I’ve read this year, the longest book I’ve read in a while. One things leads to another after that and Sugar’s life is transformed beyond recognition – I won’t tell you more, you have to read the book and find out what happened, yourself. He rents out a spacious house in a nice locality and Sugar goes to live there as this rich man’s mistress. He is so enamoured by her that he signs a contract with the woman running the house to release her for a big sum of money. Sugar is a nineteen year old prostitute who lives in 1870s London. It has been on my bookshelf for years and I am glad I finally took it down and read it. I was in the mood for a thick, sprawling novel into which I’ll be able to immerse myself and so I decided to read ‘ The Crimson Petal and the White‘ by Michel Faber.

The crimson petal and the white book