Michael Faber’s The Crimson Petal and the White made me very grateful that I own a Kindle. The novel is 864 pages long, so lugging a physical copy around on the subway would have been a chore. My e-reader fit snugly into my coat pocket, making it easy to pull out my reading material when I got on the train and easy to stow it again when I arrived at my destination.

Because it’s such a long book, I was more aware than usual of the absence of paper pages as I was reading my digital edition. It’s a little bit weird, not to have to turn a page, not to be able to see the evidence of your progress through a novel in the form of a growing stack of pages on the book’s left-hand side and a diminishing number remaining on the right. Instead, with the Kindle you get a little indicator at the bottom of the screen that tells you what percentage of the book you’ve completed and how many minutes of reading are left before you finish the current chapter. These conveniences are nice enough, but to me they don’t quite replace the tactile pleasure of being able to physically flip through all the pages you’ve read, or to gauge how much further you have to go by measuring the unread portion of the novel between thumb and forefinger. That’s why I generally prefer physical books, even though our apartment is too small to accommodate all the books my fiancee and I have accumulated over the years.

But Crimson Petal is just too big a book to lug around, so I charged up my Kindle. And maybe it’s a good thing I did, because the more I read of this novel the more I started to feel like the book should be sticky and wet and dripping from its pages all sorts of substances I wouldn’t want to touch. Faber’s great skill as an author is in his descriptive power, and he uses it to full effect here, showing us 1870’s London in all its disgusting wretchedness.

The story is told to us by a third-person omniscient reader who often speaks directly to the reader in the manner of a tour guide. You might think this would make you feel like you’re being held at a distance from the action, but instead – for me, at least – it was a refreshing experience. The narrator serves as an effective bridge between the modern-day world and Victorian England, explaining little details of everyday life at that time that we are unlikely to know about or understand, and in my opinion, the unique narration actually enhances the reader’s ability to immerse himself or herself in the novel.

Crimson Petal‘s main character is a young woman named Sugar, who at the novel’s opening is a prostitute in one of London’s mid-tier whorehouses. Though she has a bad case of psoriasis that makes her skin permanently red and flaky, she is not unattractive – in fact, she has certain alluring qualities, along with a skill at conversation (and a willingness to do things in the bedroom that other prostitutes won’t) that has made her very successful in her world.

Enter William Rackham. The lazy heir to a perfume empire, William doesn’t have nearly as much interest in the family business as he does in less profitable pursuits – namely drinking, writing, talking about art, and womanizing. Though William is married with a daughter at home, he has no qualms about carousing with his friends all night or paying for a night with the occasional prostitute. One night he encounters Sugar, decides he must have her solely for himself as his mistress, and both their lives are forever changed.

Very little of what’s in this novel is pleasant. If I came away from it with one really lasting impression, it may be that I’m glad I don’t live in England in the 1870s. Even experiences that should be pleasurable for the characters – food, household pets, and especially sex – are darkened by sickness or the possibility of sickness.

The sex in this novel, in particular, deserves mention, both because there is a lot of it and because it is unlike the sex in any novel I’ve ever read. Faber is not a romance novelist, and he does not write romance-novel sex scenes. The intimate encounters in Crimson Petal are short and animal and pretty gross, to be honest. And they don’t end with the act. Ever wanted to know how prostitutes in the 1870s tried to avoid becoming pregnant? You will find several very detailed descriptions of the various ablutions they relied upon in these pages.

A number of minor characters also populate the story, many of whom are the stars of their own subplots. William’s wife, Agnes, who is prone to fits and appears to be mentally ill, is attended to by Dr. Curlew, a man whose strong opinions on the role of women in society is challenged by the way his own daughter steadfastly refuses to conform to that role. William’s brother, Henry, dreams of becoming a parson but is secretly in love with a woman; that woman, Emmeline Fox, spends her days trying to rescue prostitutes but is gradually becoming ill. William’s friends from university, Bodley and Ashwell, provide comic relief with their debauchery and their constant attempts to offend the more staid members of society. William’s servants, Clara, Rose, and Letty, are well-drawn and distinct characters with their own opinions on the goings-on at the Rackham house.

I’m mentioning all these characters by name for a reason: I remember all their names. It’s an uncommon thing for a novel’s supporting cast to be as memorable as it is in Crimson Petal. I found myself enjoying the time I spent with the minor characters almost as much as I did when I was with William and Sugar.

To me, good historical fiction should transport the reader to the era in which the characters live. The Crimson Petal and the White passes that test with flying colors. A small warning, though: this novel does not end happily, or even conclusively. Like being on a tour, eventually your time comes to an end, and the characters go on without you. I wish I had been able to stay in their world a little longer – but isn’t that just about the highest praise one could offer for a 900 page novel?