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    El lustre de la perla
    El lustre de la perla
    El lustre de la perla
    Ebook593 pages11 hours

    El lustre de la perla

    By Sarah Waters

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    La joven Nancy Astley vendía ostras en una pequeña ciudad portuaria en la costa de Kent hasta que un día llegó una compañía de variedades donde cantaba un joven encantador, Nancy se dejó seducir por su voz y por su gracia, y descubrió que en realidad era también una jovencita, como ella. La siguió a Londres como su asistenta, como su amante y como su compañera de actuación. Pero esto no fue más que el primer paso de una larga y muy peculiar educación sentimental. Porque en la Inglaterra victoriana, la transgresión, los «vicios» más secretos, surgían a cada paso que Nancy daba.

    LanguageEspañol
    PublisherEditorial Anagrama
    Release dateJan 1, 2004
    ISBN9788433932464
    El lustre de la perla
    Author

    Sarah Waters

    Sarah Waters nació en Gales, Gran Bretaña, en 1966. Estudió literatura inglesa en las universidades de Kent y Lancaster, y ha publicado artículos sobre género, sexualidad e historia en revistas como Feminist Review, Journal of the History of Sexuality y Science as Culture. En enero de 2003 fue seleccionada por la revista Granta en su lista decenal de los Young British Novelists.

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    Reviews for El lustre de la perla

    4/5

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    • 5/5
      While not the first book I've read by Sarah Waters, Tipping the Velvet is her wonderful debut novel. Like all of the books she has written so far, her first was nominated for numerous awards in addition to winning several. Waters well deserves these honors--she is a fabulous writer and one of the few authors that I will seek out and read anything that she has written.Nancy Astley is an oyster-girl from Whitstable in the late 1800s. She falls in love with Kitty Butler, a talented male impersonator, and ends up following her to London as her friend and dresser. She leaves her home and beloved family for the sensationalism of the music halls only to have her heart broken. Told in three parts, the novel follows Nan's sexual awakening and her experiences living in London--from the music halls, to the streets, and beyond--but ultimately it is a love story.Interestingly, Nan never seemed to really struggle with her sexuality (which is somewhat refreshing) while her family and those around her often did. However, while not accepted by society as a whole, there were some sectors where being a tom and other sorts of "deviancies" were not only accepted but were celebrated.Waters' writing is extraordinarily evocative and sensual. She doesn't shy away from provocative subjects and certain scenes are down right erotic. As I've come to expect, she has created an incredibly mesmerizing atmosphere--in this case, she explores the diversity of lesbianism in Victorian England in general and in the London area specifically. Though not particularly fast paced, and at times quite slow and fairly uneven, it still moved along rather enjoyably. The book was marvelous and I was far from disappointed. It is dangerous to pick up to read when you have other things that need to be done--once I had, I didn't want to put it down until it was finished.Experiments in Reading
    • 5/5
      I loved the progression of this story! I knew nothing about it going into it. Totally fabulous.
    • 4/5
      Tipping the Velvet is the story of Nancy, discovering her sexuality and eventually finding love. She leaves her family and settled life in a Victorian oyster kitchen to go to London with a music hall star. Head over heels in love, her heart is broken when she walks in on Kitty with her agent. The rest of the book chronicles Nancy putting herself back together again, and making a few poor choices along the way, until she finally finds True Love.I enjoyed this more than Fingersmith. In part because the relationships felt much more honest – the story is broadly ‘find out who you are and learn about what is bad for you, so you can appreciate a good thing when you get it’, or maybe ‘you can love truly and still learn to love again’. It was much more reassuring than Fingersmith’s ‘they’re both a bit shitty, but yay, they end up together’. It’s also a much more explicit book – if you were choosing a novel because you wanted lesbian erotica, I felt Tipping the Velvet delivered to the spec more. The treatment of the cruel rich lesbians of London is uncomfortable. They are awful – must relationships always end up awful with such a power imbalance? Is there any way Diana can be who she is and want what she wants without hurting people?The story is colourful and engaging – mashers and toms and gay girls. It is a lesbian novel – there is no framing that Nancy, with her love of girls, short hair, man’s clothing and spell as a rent boy is a trans man. She loves her Flo, and they are toms, and the other toms accept them and know them.It is a very romanticised book. It is hard to believe Flo’s kind heart wouldn’t have left her broken long before Nancy rocks up into her life. And I want to believe Victorian London had lots of happy, content, Socialist Lesbians, living with their partners and going to the pub, but it seems a little unlikely.It is a book about women, and so there is some mention of miscarriage – Kittle has lost a baby (mostly in a token mentioned-as-a-aside way, so we know she’s Not Happy Now), Nancy lies about a miscarriage to get Flo’s sympathy, and the woman Flo loved died in childbirth.There is a strong theme of not being ashamed of who you love – it is Kitty’s major flaw that she is, and Flo’s great strength that she is not. The final scene should be ridiculous – Everyone TM turns up at the same event, and Nancy Saves The Day by giving a speech – but actually, I really enjoyed it.
    • 4/5
      Debut novel by author Sarah Waters is a coming of age, LGBTQ book and while not as good as her book Fingersmith probably deserves it place in 1001 books you must read before you die because of its contribution to the novel in the aspect of LGBTQ. That being said, the book, self described by author as a Lesbian romp is “too much information” for me. I don’t need or want this much sexual detail in my reading but if you like that, this book will give you a lot of detail. The story is set in the late 1800s in London and features such things as the oyster industry, theatre, socialism/early feminism.
    • 4/5
      Wow, that was not what I expected! This book had three very distinct parts. I was immediately sucked into the world of Part 1, then, well...here was my general reaction:
      Part 1: Oo, intriguing! Yes, I love this writing. Ohohohh, music halls, romance!
      Part 2: What...Nancy, what are you doing, honey? Um...okay. Wow. Well, this took an interesting turn.
      Part 3: Ah-HA! This is taking yet another turn! Where's this all going to end up?

      Where it ended up, I was pleased to find, was an ending that managed to weave the three disparate parts together. Not seamlessly, mind you, but in a satisfying way. I'm eager to read more of Sarah Waters' stuff- I've heard that this, her first novel, isn't her strongest work, but the writing and the believable Victorian setting had me hooked.
    • 3/5
      I really enjoyed Waters' The Paying Guests, which had mystery and suspense wrapped up in the romance. This novel does not, it's a romance. A historical romance, so there are some great scenes and descriptions of 1890s London, and the entire thing is very well written. But romance is one of my least favorite genres. The good writing and historical scenes got me through and gets this novel 3 stars, but that's all.
    • 4/5
      Interesting book but I really didn't like the main character. Maybe I was supposed to feel this way but she seemed selfish and weak.
    • 5/5
      Tipping the Velvet presents the life and times of Nancy Astly, an oyster girl, who falls in love with male impersonator Kitty Butler. After forming a friendship with Kitty, she follows her into the theaters of London, where she works as a dresser (helping Kitty with costumes) before becoming a performer herself. This beautifully told story is a sensual exploration of love and the ability of gender roles. Waters is a master of historical fiction and I loved this almost as much as I loved Fingersmith.
    • 5/5
      A tour de force
    • 5/5
      This was a re-read... it was the first Waters novel I'd read, and I read it because I saw (and loved) the film. But elements of the film and the book were getting a bit confused in my head, plus I'd run out of books by Waters to read, so I thought I'd read this one again.
      It's really an excellent book - it's both a convincing and touching narrative of a young woman's path to maturity and a true understanding of love, and an exciting tour through 19th-century London's demimonde. Erotic without being gratuitous, it's got scenes and characters that will stick with you for years.
    • 4/5
      A thoroughly enjoyable story, unencumbered by plot and with some great sex senes.
    • 4/5
      The first book of Sarah Waters that I have read and I'm not disappointed. Narrated by Nancy/Nan King/ Nance depends on who's referring to her. A oyster girl from Whitstable with an ordinary life until she goes to see a show and sees Kitty Butler, who she feels instant attraction to. She continues to go to the show daily to catch a glimpse of Kitty and eventually they meet and form a friendship and subsequently an intimate relationship when Nan moves to London with her. Being based in 1890's being a lesbian isn't really acceptable and they have to keep their relationship under wraps.Eventually, Kitty breaks Nan's heart and her journey really begins. She suffers heartbreak, and loss and has to get by by any means possible at times. I could really sympathize with the way Nan was feeling and how she came to the decisions that she did.I found this book hard to put down, unpredictable at times, sad at times, and also some happy moments. I was quite surprised at the end when the description of tipping the velvet was given. I read the book completely oblivious to the meaning!Read this book, it doesn't disappoint and its unlike any book I have really read.
    • 5/5
      This is the first Sarah Waters book I've read, despite having bought all her books. The research is great and the characters are vivid and lively. Wonderful novel, especially considering that it is her first book. What a fun, lesbian romp set in Victorian London. Love it!
    • 4/5
      I wish there were more books like this story out there. Stories about groups of people in past time periods that have previously not been written about are very interesting. We seem to have an uncountable number of books about rich debutantes and heiresses during the Victorian era but not many about working class oyster girls, performers and lesbians. And I am on the record saying I want more books about oyster girls, performers and lesbians -- of any era.

      Tipping the Velvet can be generically described as a coming of age and self discovery book. It promises a happily ever after -- one perhaps not imagined but which is rewarding. Sarah Waters has a way with words. Her descriptions of sight and smell create atmosphere and absolutely textually enhance the story. The main character -- "Nan" - is one that I slowly began to root for and like but not a character I necessarily started off caring for. What struck me is how different the world I live in today is from even just the recent past. I cannot imagine having to abandon my family (perhaps) and be completely circumspect about my partner all because my partner was the same gender as myself. And of course I can't imagine that because I have never truly had to do that. Sarah Waters brings such sacrifices and unknown privilege to her readers but she does so in the guise of a beautiful and rewarding story. And yes, there are explicit scenes in this novel.

      An interesting aspect of the story is that to be free of the female gender role is to dress as a man and go out in public as a man. Women of this era lived highly restrictive lives and had very restrictive opportunities, but dressing as a man provided a freedom not only from male attention but from the restrictions imposed on females during this era. Being a woman as such a role was a defined during this era was by default limiting. Ms. Waters, plays with this concept. I have read one other book by Waters -- Affinity -- in both novels she effectively equate a woman's prescribed role and a woman's limitations in a society with a society's judgment of distaste for same-sex relationships.

      What really surprised me, is the acceptance by several characters of the same sex relationships. I have no framework from which to criticize their acceptance and I hope their was acceptance but I guess I am doubtful if such acceptance is historically accurate.

      But if you don't want to go heavy and think about societal analysis, you don't have to. Tipping the Velvet is beautifully written, interesting and yeah there is sex.
    • 3/5
      I finally got around to "Tipping the Velvet" and I'm not that crazy about it. It had a little too much, for me, the flavor of a Harlequin romance.This may be a bit unfair. I read "Affinity" (which I gave 5*****) quite some years ago and only just recently finished "Fingersmith" (which I gave four-and-a-half), so I've read these three books in reverse order. It would be surprising, of course, if Waters didn't improve from one book to the next.With that in mind, I'll give "Tipping the Velvet" 3***. Though it doesn't have the gothic twists of Waters's two subsequent novels, it's probably unfair of me to judge "Tipping the Velvet" by the standards of later work. As an historical romance, though, I wouldn't rate "Tipping the Velvet" anywhere near Isabel Miller's "Patience and Sarah."
    • 4/5
      Fun, light Victorian novel about Nancy Astley, a blue collar oyster shucker who leaves her small town to act on stage in London. The book portrays an interesting picture of Victorian England, just at the beginning of social reform for the working class. Nancy starts her stage career as a 'masher' - a woman who dresses in men's clothing, which was scandalous for the times. Nancy falls in love with her costar, another 'masher' named Kitty, and Nancy soon realizes that she is a lesbian. What I found interesting was that although some people disapproved of her relationships, she was accepted in many circles. Here we are now in 2009 - women can wear pants, women can vote, we have labor laws and yet we still have not advanced as far as accepting sexual differences. Overall a good light romance with a bit of social commentary.
    • 5/5
      This is a wonderful book. Part history, part romance, and all triumph. A beautifully told story of love, loss, and rebirth. Definitely making its way to my "favorites" list. Highly recommended.
    • 5/5
      Besides being decent historical fiction, Tipping The Velvet is pretty decent erotic writing. Set in the late 19th century UK, our heroine Nan, leaves her loving family in a seaside town for greater love and adventure in the big city. Nan goes through three phases: Normal, Weird, and Settled, which are like Dickens stage sets that describe particular social classes and subcultures. Tipping The Velvet is the most overtly erotic of a trilogy (Affinity & Fingersmith) which have little in common except the historical period, and heroines who discover the joys of womanly companionship.

      In each of the three books, Waters does a fantastic job of scene setting, and subculture description: Affinity is memorable not only for the the Millbank women's prison, but also for the spiritualist subculture, not to mention excellent evil characters, and good/evil reversals of fortune. Fingersmith has yet another flavor - a Dickensian tale that Charles never imagined, and certainly could not put to paper and publish even if he had. To me, Sarah Waters is filling in blanks - lesbian lacunas -- that Dickens skipped in his tales of orphans, thieves, and skanky characters from the 1800's.

    • 4/5
      Sarah Waters' "Tipping the Velvet" is a really great novel following a young oystergirl named Nancy Astley who falls in love with a male impersonator and follows her to London. The book is very sexually explicit so if you find lesbian love scenes bothersome, you'll want to avoid reading this one.The characters are really well drawn and realistic. I found the book really compelling and hard to put down. My only complaint was that it fizzled a little by the end, as Nancy's transformation into a political activist seemed a bit forced. A minor quibble, really. Overall, though, this was just a really interesting read.
    • 4/5
      I give this 4 1/2 stars and wouldv'e given it 5 if it werent for the 3rd part of the book.
      Otherwise, I felt that this 'coming of age' in london as a woman who likes women and dresses like a man pretending not to be a "tom" but being a "tom"....
      I can identify with young Nancy, she goes to a stage show and sees a woman dressed as a man singing and she becomes enamered.. I felt the same way watching Marilyn Monroe in Gentlemen Prefer blondes (although Marilyn didn't dress like a man) She is lucky enough to get invited back stage and meet the lady she idolizes on stage and somehow ends up being her private maid. Nancy leaves her crowded home where she shares a bed with her sister, to traveling around sharing a bed with her idol. Not to go into specifics, but the 3 major women who play romantic parts in Nancy's late teens to late 20's are definitely different.
      But which one should she pick to be with?
      I found Part 3 long.... I didn't find Flo engaging at all. The more she revealed about herself, the more I disliked her and I dont think she really loved Nancy. But she was the safest choice in the end I guess as the crazy rich woman only wanted to own her and Kitty only wanted to hide her and Flo wanted her to like Her causes and support HER. Poor Gal.
      I did enjoy the book, but it could have been made shorter in some parts.
    • 5/5
      Tipping the Velvet was my first step into the worlds of LGBT and Sarah Water's literature, and it certainly will not be my last. Through the pages of this novel there is the painting of spectacular scenes, marvellous (though not always admirable) characters and a journey with Nan King, a girl turn (wo)man who at times deserves a good shake but always manages to find herself in captivating situations. This is certainly the best novel I have read in a long time, perking my interest from page one with Sarah's wonderful prose. My only complaint is that at times it was predictable, but even so it's daring characters and mesmerizing world far overshadowed such a flaw. That being said, many of these characters are not always lovable - so if you're looking for a fluffy do-gooder book, you may want to look elsewhere. Though without a doubt it is a treasure in my minds eye and I would certainly recommend it to most who haven't yet tried it.
    • 4/5
      If I could give this 3.5 stars I would.

      It is a near perfectly written novel. It has the correct plot devices, structure and the writing uses perfect English with perfect construction; it varies sentence length and type and mixes description, dialogue and action.

      It is emotionally flat. It fails to engage the reader.

      I could never find myself into the story, living it with the characters. I always remained conscious of the fact that I was reading a story. When a character, mostly the main character, had an experience, I knew it was a character in a novel, an invention of the author, and not someone I could care about. It's like seeing a play or going to the cinema and never being able to suspend your disbelief sufficiently to emotionally engage with the story. Even the descriptions of sex, which should be the easiest scenes to interest a reader, remained distant and cold.

      Another problem is character shift. It's a saw that character shift is the hallmark of bad melodrama. It indicates that an author has either been given the chore to write a script to a predetermined plot (often the case in soap operas) or has voluntarily chosen to do this. It appears that rather than allow the characters to develop, there was a knowing choice ahead of time as to what the plot would be and that the main character would be forced into that plot even if that meant having her do things that were "out of character." Good writers start with plots but change them if they discover the character just wouldn't go where the writer wishes they would.

      The author uses traumatic/dramatic events to justify the sudden changes in character but, while you might get away with this for one change in a novel, one huge transformation, it doesn't work when uses multiple times. Even once, it's better for the trauma to be a trigger to development than to have it suddenly alter a person overnight, so to speak.

      So, a perfectly written, plotted and structured novel that remains distant and aloof. It has some interest in its period descriptions and may be important for other social and political reasons but is disappointing because the author is highly skilled an educated and should have turned out a better piece.

      Immediately after this, I read E. Annie Proulx's The Shipping News, a book that violates all the rules. Her sentences and punctuation would enrage an English teacher, the structure is all wrong and so many other things are wrong that it's hard to catalogue them but Proulx's novel works; it engages the reader and makes you care about the characters and the story. By every common metric, Sarah Water's novel is better but it falls flat. It appears Proulx benefitted from her lack of literary education (not that she had none but not an excess).
    • 4/5
      In Victorian England, Nancy Astley loved going to the music hall in nearby Canterbury. When a male impersonator called Kitty Butler starts performing there and completely entrances Nancy. Soon Nancy goes backstage to meet Kitty, it seems the attraction is mutual, especially when Kitty asks Nancy to come to London with her to be her dresser. It takes awhile to blossom, but the romance between the two is sweet, until, of course, it isn’t. Nancy finds herself on her own in London and makes some questionable decisions for the sake of survival (and fun) until she finally ends up on the doorstep of an austere socialist. While I’m sure the history is fudged a bit for the sake of plot, it’s still fun to see all the different aspects of lesbian culture that Nancy encounters throughout the book, from the music halls to the upper classes to the working classes. Sometimes I rooted for Nancy, other times I wanted to shake her and ask why she was being such an idiot, which makes for a compelling character. All the characters came vividly to life in this book and I found myself wanting to know more about each of them. I listened to the audio book, narrated by Juanita McMahon, who does an excellent job giving voice to the wide variety of characters in this book. If you’re looking for a queer historical romance novel, Tipping the Velvet is a great place to start.
    • 5/5
      Nan is one of my favorite literary characters. Sarah Waters' plot twists are fantastic. You just know something is coming, but its not what you think it will be. The BBC mini-series is very good as well.
    • 4/5
      "Being in love, you know......it's not like having a canary, in a cage. When you lose one sweetheart, you can't just go out and get another to replace her."'Tipping the Velvet' is a coming of age novel that follows the life of Nancy Astley, a young oyster girl living in Whitstable with her family who enjoys trips to the local music hall. When one night Nancy sees Kitty Butler, a male impersonator, perform, she falls hard for her. So when Kitty invites Nancy to join her in London as her personal dresser, Nancy quickly accepts. For a while, the two live an idyllic life but when Kitty betrays her, Nancy descends into the seedy underworld of London lesbians and the budding Socialist movement. It’s a journey that ultimately brings Nancy out of other people’s shadows and into her own spotlight.There is a lot of sex in this novel. Nancy is a very sexual woman and her time with Diana, a woman who has hired her as a sort of in-house prostitute, is particularly explicit but Waters succeeds in never making it feel too gratuitous. There are echoes of Charles Dickens about this novel and like him Waters brings Victorian London to life, as both a boy and a woman. We visit the heights of elegance and the depths of poverty but more impressively Waters explores differing aspects of Victorian womanhood; the rich but abusive Diana, the socialist Florence to the various women that Nancy encounters along the way. In fact there are only three male characters who have any real bearing on the story. Waters also explores the spectrum of female homosexuality. Kitty is a fiercely closeted woman who marries a man just to prove that she’s not some “tom”, a Victorian slur for a lesbian. Alice, Nancy's sister, is disgusted that Nancy is in love another woman and disowns her, Diana and her circle of friends seem to view their homosexuality as a sort of refined choice, rather than a state of being. When Nancy finally finds true love, it’s with Florence, a woman who is comfortable with her identity as a lesbian. Yes, it's very sexual and I must admit that there were a few occasions when I would have liked to have seen it toned down a little, but Nancy is a likeable character and the story, as it explores what it means to be a woman, especially a gay woman, during the Victorian age, is very well written. As a first novel it's quite a feat.
    • 4/5
      The likeable first-person narrator in Sarah Waters's debut novel is Nan Astley, whom we first meet as a rather shy, eighteen-year-old "oyster girl" in Whitstable. She becomes infatuated with Kitty Butler, a visiting male impersonator at the local theatre. An unlikely friendship develops and Nan and Kitty are soon on their way to London together. The novel charts Nan's coming of age (and "coming out") in the lesbian communities of late 19th century London.I started this book after having read all Waters's other novels except "The Paying Guests" (which I read concurrently - watch this space for my review...) In the light of Waters's later works, I don't consider "Tipping the Velvet" as one of her very best books. As a picaresque novel, it lacks the tight plotting of Fingersmith. Nor does it have the ambitious narrative structure of The Night Watch or the tantalising ambiguities of The Little Stranger. That said, it is easy to understand why critics were so enthusiastic about this novel when it was first published. Here was a new, exciting author with a surprising eye for detail and a talent for sumptuous descriptions of a bygone age. Here was an author who confidently evoked the Victorian era without resorting to rosy nostalgia or gaslight clichés. Here was an author who was evidently well-versed in the 19th century literary canon but equally knowledgeable about the naughtier writers of the period (Waters had researched 19th century pornography as part of her doctoral studies and the title is a term taken from Victorian sexual slang). Indeed, "Tipping the Velvet" sometimes feels like the book that Dickens or Collins might have written but would have never dared publish. A rollicking debut, then, and a good place to start exploring Waters' world. In my view however, her later books are better, albeit less transgressive.
    • 4/5
      I had a lot of fun with this book and enjoyed how easy it was to read. The story was engaging and I couldn't put it down easily; I'd read for an hour and completely lose track of time--I've missed that. It was sprawling and reminded me of all the good part of The Crimson Petal and the White (which if you remembered I hated) but with a character whose emotional development actually mattered to me and seemed so much more authentic.

      For some reason or another Water's writing sort of tired me in the beginning (the comparisons to Dicken's are correct--both for the good and bad), but the more I read the more her writing seemed to flow for me. I also had a problem with the ending, which I found uncomfortably ambiguous due to some of the character's personalities not really speaking to me and one of the characters (in my opinion) fatal flaws just glaring in any "happy ending" we're supposed to get. It pains me to say this, but I liked the ending in the 2002 mini-series adaption so much better.

      Go find a copy of the series right now--very cheesy but has so much heart I didn't totally feel in the novel...
    • 4/5
      I experienced the curious situation where I didn't care for many of the characters (until closer to the end), but I wanted to find out what happened to Nancy, so I stuck with it. It was a little clunky at times, but I chalk that up to being Waters' first book. The atmosphere was lush enough that I'm interested in seeing how she developed her style in subsequent novels.
    • 5/5
      In Tipping the Velvet, oyster girl, Nan King, falls in love with Kitty Butler, a girl playing a boy in a music hall act. Nan is swept away to London where the two perform together and carry on a covert love affair, The two are desperately in love but too afraid of being discovered to last. Abandoned by Kitty, Nan finds herself alone in gritty Victorian London with nothing but a broken heart and a trunk full of male clothes from the act. As a boy, Nan works the streets. At loose ends, she takes up with all manner of characters, and the story reveals the dirty underbelly of Victorian London as Nan embarks on a number of troubling sexual "adventures." This book, too, is the richest of historical portrayals and Nan is a remarkable character. Her story from its beginnings with a sweet and exciting love affair to her search for love and belonging in all the wrong places and on to the redemption that seemed unreachable but perhaps is not, is totally compelling.
    • 5/5
      A fabulous romp through Victorian London's sapphic world. All about a young girl who grows up with her family's Whistable oyster restaurant and is entranced by the music halls. All about how our first loves are more about finding ourselves as much as finding our life partners. Nancy is a wonderful heroine, she is innocent and unknowing at the start of the story, falls in love with the theatre as much as Kitty and follows her to London. She meets the depraved rich on one hand and the socialist unionist movement on the other and finds her own way. This is the first Sarah Waters book that I've read, it won't be the last.
      The slang term 'Tipping the Velvet' has a meaning that was quite unexpected.

    Book preview

    El lustre de la perla - Jaime Zulaika

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