Of all Sarah Waters’ books, Tipping the Velvet is my favourite. The characters live and die in the pages, the story is beautifully written and it’s tight with emotional journey. I’ve reread it several times, each is wonderful.
The main character, Nan, is like one of my family at this stage. We see her go from a young woman first experiencing love and emotional intimacy, and Waters doesn’t hide Nan from society for being gay, she brings her into the light. It’s set in England in the late 1800s and the history is rich, the story is fantastic. I really, really love this book.
'Piercing the shadows of the naked stage was a single shaft of rosy limelight, and in the centre of this was a girl: the most marvellous girl - I knew it at once! - that I had ever seen.'
A saucy, sensuous and multi-layered historical romance set in the 'roaring' 1890s, Tipping the Velvet follows the glittering career of Nan King on her journey from Whitstable oyster-girl to music-hall star to cross-dressing rentboy to East End 'tom'.
This was one of those gems picked up from a shelf in a bookstore, chosen from the title and the cover, and then such a thrill to realise how good it was.
It’s a memoir drawn in cartoon form and it’s a real work of love, the stories, the relationships, good and bad and sad and funny, are all desperately real. I really enjoyed it. I found myself weeping over a cartoon, and then laughing ten pages later. It’s a very sensitive portrayal of a life well lived.
Cartoonist Kate Charlesworth presents a glorious pageant of LGBTQI+ history, as she takes us on a PRIDE march past personal and political milestones from the 1950s to the present day. Peopled by a cast of gay icons such as Dusty Springfield, Billie Jean King, Dirk Bogarde and Alan Turing, and featuring key moments such as Stonewall, Gay Pride and Section 28, Sensible Footwear: A Girl’s Guide, is the first graphic history documenting lesbian life from 1950 to the present. It is a stunning, personal, graphic memoir and a milestone itself in LGBTQI+ history. In 1950, when Kate was born, male…
Big Swiss came (as it were) as a recommendation from a friend and fellow writer. In her text she said, "it’s brilliant, it’s filthy". She was right.
The story is about a woman who transcribes therapy sessions, and who meets and hooks up with one of the women whose sessions she’d been writing up. It’s great fun, a bit weird and different – I’ve never read anything like it.
It’s another view to the relationships between queer women and it explores their sexuality with humour and tenderness.
** SOON TO BE A MAJOR HBO SERIES STARRING JODIE COMER **
'Made me laugh and think too much (the right amount?) about sex and death and honesty.' MONICA HEISEY 'Utterly addictive. . . I laughed so hard it ached.' GILLIAN ANDERSON 'Juicy, salacious and compelling. Trauma shouldn't be this fun.' SARA PASCOE
Greta liked knowing people's secrets. That wasn't a problem. Until she met Big Swiss.
Big Swiss. That's Greta's nickname for her - she is tall, and she is from Switzerland. Greta can see her now: dressed top to toe in white, that adorable gap between her two…
Sparkle McCavity, young drag queen and employee of Miss Merkin, is missing, presumed kidnapped, or even worse. Naturally, Merkin turns to reluctant sleuth and friend to the community Fi for help, but clues and suspects are worryingly thin on the ground―and the drag king Stan the Man is proving somewhat distracting. When Merkin’s niece is then found murdered, spiked on a light pole in nightclub TRASH, it becomes clear that Fi’s friends are in danger. Again.
With Detective O’Hara becoming convinced that the most likely suspect is Miss Merkin herself, tensions begin to build among the friends. Could one of them really be responsible? After a strangely spooky séance, Fi’s best friend Robyn disappears. Fi and her friends must double their efforts to save Robyn and Sparkle before it’s too late.
