Tipping The Velvet - Critical Reception

Critical Reception

Tipping the Velvet was critically acclaimed upon its release and Waters' writing style highly praised. Harriet Malinowitz wrote that the story is an "utterly captivating, high octane narrative" and Mel Steel of The Independent wrote, "Could this be a new genre? The bawdy lesbian picaresque novel? Whatever it is, take it with you. It's gorgeous." Kirkus Reviews also praised it, writing "Waters' debut offers terrific entertainment: swiftly paced, crammed with colorful depictions of 1890s London and vividly sketched Dickensian supporting characters", comparing the depiction of Nancy's parents to the fishing community in David Copperfield, and adding that it "pulsat with highly charged (and explicitly presented) erotic heat". John Perry in The San Francisco Chronicle stated that it "has the qualities of an extravagantly upholstered armchair. Tricked out in gaudy fabric and yards of fringe, it offers a sensual experience that leaves the reader marveling at the author's craftsmanship, idiosyncrasy and sheer effort." Perry did acknowledge, however, that modern optimism was probably the impetus driving Waters' vision of a lesbian past.

Christina Patterson called Waters "an extremely confident writer, combining precise, sensuous descriptions with irony and wit in a skilled, multi-layered pastiche of the lesbian historical romance." Renee Graham's review in The Boston Globe characterised the novel's style as "plush and inviting—delicious, even". In The New York Times, Miranda Seymour drew attention to the scene when Nan dresses up as Hadrian's lover, the page Antinous who was drowned in the Nile, for a masquerade benefiting Diana's friends in a hedonistic bacchanalia that ends violently with Nan cast out of the house into the cold, highlighting it as a passage of "startling power". Although Seymour was disappointed with the ending, she wrote, "If lesbian fiction is to reach a wider readership—as much, though far from all, of it deserves to do—Waters is just the person to carry the banner."

Several reviewers compared Tipping the Velvet to Jeanette Winterson's Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit for a similar story of a woman's sexual awakening. Waters credits Winterson as an influence in lesbian writing, but states that the books are quite different and her writing is not like Winterson's at all. Waters suggests that reviewers have bracketed them together because Winterson was the only other lesbian author they could recall.

The popularity of her first novel cast a standard for Affinity to follow, which Waters consciously made darker, set in a women's prison with a character who connects with spirits of the dead. Waters found it daunting to follow the success of Tipping the Velvet and reviewers marked the differences in the main characters: where Nan adventurously seeks out and states her desires, Margaret in Affinity is compelled by desire, but internally struggles with it.

Tipping the Velvet won the Lambda Literary Award for lesbian fiction in 2000, and the Betty Trask Award, given to Commonwealth citizens who have produced their first novel before reaching the age of 35. The Library Journal chose it as one of their Best Books of the Year for 1999, and the New York Times included it on its list of Notable Books of the Year.