The Apple: Crimson Petal Stories

By Michel Faber

These stories go deeper into the Victorian world and lives of the acclaimed international bestseller, The Crimson Petal and the White.

Michel Faber’s tale of love and lust in the Victorian Era, The Crimson Petal and the White, was hailed as “a Dickensian novel for our times.” Now a major BBC TV drama, the saga of a prostitute named Sugar and the man who longs to possess her captured hearts and left readers desperate for more (The Guardian, UK).

In The Apple, Faber returns to Silver Street to find it still teeming with life, and conjures further tantalizing glimpses of Sugar, Clara, William, Mr. Bodley and many other favorites. For both fans of the novel and newcomers to this rich and historically vivid world, The Apple confirms that “Michel Faber is a master of the short-story form” (The Times Literary Supplement, UK).

“This book will be read in a sitting. unless of course you are admitted to Accident and Emergency, having come over queer, huffing with laughter, or dizzy with envy at Faber’s talent. Or probably both.”—The Scotsman, UK

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Jul 9, 2006
• ISBN: 9781847674036

Michel Faber

Michel Faber's work has been published in twenty countries and received several literary awards. He lives in Scotland.

Book preview

Christmas in Silver Street

Close your eyes. Lose track of time for a moment – just long enough to be overtaken by a hundred and thirty years. It’s December 1872. Feathery snow is falling on that dubious part of London between Regent Street and Soho, a hodgepodge of shops and houses crammed between the opulent avenues of the well-to-do and the festering warrens of the poor. Welcome to Silver Street. Here umbrella-makers, scriveners, piano tuners, unsuccessful playwrights, dressmakers and prostitutes live side by side, each pursuing their trade under worsening weather. Snow makes everyone and everything look equal, as if God has lovingly applied a thin layer of white icing to rooftops, street-stalls, carriages, and the heads of beggars. Suffering and decrepitude are scarcely recognisable under such a pretty disguise.

On this frigid December morning, you have entered a brothel known as Mrs Castaway’s, and are peeking into an upstairs bedroom. What have you found? A girl called Sugar. She’s seventeen, and you are watching her inspect her tongue in a hand-mirror.

Do you know Sugar? If you are a man, there is a good chance you have known her in the Biblical sense. She’s a prostitute, and at this point in Queen Victoria’s reign the ratio of prostitutes to the overall population is 1:36, or one per twelve adult males.

If you are a respectable woman, you ought to pretend you never heard such statistics, and ought to hurry past Sugar in the street, fearful of suffering a stain on your reputation. But perhaps you are not as respectable as all that, for you have not passed by. You are here, watching Sugar inspect her tongue in a brothel.

Do not be scandalised by Sugar’s age. The age of consent for girls is twelve. In two years from now, it will be raised to thirteen. Sugar is an old hand at this game.

She sits in her rumpled bed, holding the mirror to her face. Her tongue, she notes, is grey in the middle, not bright pink the way it ought to be. She drank too much last night, and here is the evidence.

Last night was Christmas Eve, now it’s the morning after. December 25th, a day like any other. Sugar has the lamps lit, because her bedroom window is small and the sun is lost behind the grey swirl of snow. The fireplace spits and hisses; the floorboards creak by themselves. The old-fashioned erotic prints on the walls are, as ever, the only decorations; Mrs Castaway does not encourage her girls to deck their halls with boughs of holly.

To be frank, none of the shabby Georgian houses jumbled behind Silver Street is the best place to see evidence of Yuletide festivities; for that, you would need to go to the West End, or the suburbs. Only in the splendour of the Burlington Arcade can there be a wholesale celebration of gift-giving; only in the villas of the respectable can fairytales of Virgin Birth survive.

Sugar takes one last look at the inside of her mouth. How odd, she thinks, that red wine can turn a pink tongue grey. The miracle of the body’s perversity.

A knock at her door makes her jump. At this time of the morning, she knows it can’t be a customer. It must be little Christopher, come to collect the bed-linen.

‘I’m ’ere for the sheets,’ says the boy, when she opens the door to him. He’s blond, blue-eyed and as innocent-looking as a shepherd’s lad from a Nativity scene. Not exactly dressed in rags, although his shirt and trousers would benefit from some mending here and there. Amy, his mother, is not the mending type. Her speciality is thrashing grown-up men until they whimper for mercy.

How old is little Christopher? Sugar can’t tell. Far too young to be a drudge in a brothel, but Amy has put him to work this way, and he seems grateful to have a purpose. Perhaps if he washes and dries a million bed-sheets, he will finally make amends for his original sin – of being born.

‘Thank you, Christopher,’ says Sugar.

He doesn’t reply, merely begins folding the dirty sheets into a stack he can carry away. Outside in the street, a fruity voice begins to sing:

On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me A partridge in a pear tree …

‘It’s Christmas, then,’ says the boy, lifting the pile of linen to his chest.

‘Yes, Christopher.’

He nods, as if confirming something he knows inside out, something he mentioned only for conversation’s sake. Chin resting on a wad of soiled linen, he walks to the door and is about to leave, then turns and asks,

‘What’s Christmas?’

Sugar blinks, momentarily stumped. ‘It’s the day Jesus Christ was born,’ she replies.

‘I knowed that,’ says the boy.

From outside: ‘Four collie birds, three French hens, two turtle doves, and a partridge in a pear tree …’

‘He was born in a manger,’ adds Sugar, to make the story more interesting for him. ‘A big wooden tub for animals to eat from.’

Christopher nods. Making-do and poverty is the way of the world, he knows.

‘… my true love gave to me, five gold rings …’

‘Some folk,’ observes the boy, ‘gives presents at Christmas. To each uvver, like.’

‘So they do, Christopher.’

The child shakes his head, like a little old man bemused by the pointlessness of giving someone sixpence in exchange for sixpence. He hugs the bedsheets tight to his chest and walks out of the room, craning his head sideways to make sure he doesn’t break his neck on the stairs.

‘Six geese a-laying,’ carols the voice from the streets outside, ‘five gold rings, four collie birds, three French hens …’

Sugar shuts her bedroom door; there’s a draught getting in. She throws herself back onto the half-stripped bed, irritable, wishing the day was over instead of scarcely begun. The pillow-cases smell of men’s hair-oil and spirits; she ought to have sent them downstairs with the rest of the washing.

The carol-singer loitering in the street outside Mrs Castaway’s seems indefatigable. Snow continues to whirl through the sky, the windowpanes rattle and creak, but still those damned partridges and turtledoves proliferate. Passersby must be tossing coins to this bawling nuisance; better they should throw stones.

After a few more minutes, Sugar can stand it no longer. She leaps up and gets properly dressed, putting on stays, fresh warm stockings, a demure black-and-grey striped dress with a quilted bodice, a smart purple jacket. She brushes her hair and winds it into a tight chignon, then pins a charcoal-and-purple bonnet to her scalp. She might be a fashionable widow in half-mourning.

By the time Sugar leaves Mrs Castaway’s and steps onto the snowy cobblestones of Silver Street, the snow has stopped falling, and the carol-singer has melted away.

* * *

Not all the shops are open, Sugar finds. A worrying trend. Are we heading for a future when everything shuts at Christmas? God forbid.

Still, there are enough establishments open for her purposes. The stationer’s has a full display of Christmas cards in the window, garlanded with tinsel, cotton-wool snow and robins made of fabric remnants. After long deliberation, Sugar chooses a card that performs an amusing trick when a paper tag is pulled – an angel whose wings flap. Such clever things they make nowadays; there seems no end to the ingenuity of modern manufacture.

In a confectioner’s a few doors along, she seriously considers buying a prettily packaged box of chocolates, but fears the assortment will not be to her taste. Instead, she bids the shopkeeper fill a paper bag with dark chocolate pralines, her favourites.

The poulterer’s shop is slightly disappointing by comparison. All the fine, plump birds which she recalls hanging there only a few days ago – chickens with rosettes pinned to their breasts, huge turkeys with comically dangling heads, clutches of ducklings – are gone now, gobbled up by the ovens of the prosperous. At this moment they’re no doubt filling the busy kitchens of respectable houses with the smell of roast meat and savoury stuffing. Here in the poulterer’s shop on Christmas afternoon, only a few scraggy birds remain. Sugar chooses the best of them, a chicken.

In the street, tempting the impetuous and the dirt-poor, hawkers are selling toys and trifles for children – balloons, paper windmills, mice made of sweet dough. Sugar buys several mice from a leering old man, bites the head off one, chews thoughtfully, spits it out.

With every step of her superior black boots, Sugar ventures deeper into the network of poorer streets hidden behind the thoroughfare. From a greengrocer’s barrow she buys a few carrots and potatoes, and walks on, swinging an increasingly heavy basket alongside her skirts. The farther she moves away from Regent Street, the more the opulence of the West End seems an absurd dream, punctured by the reality of squalor.

At last she finds a bakery whose stock-in-trade is not fancy cakes and pastries, but copious amounts of cheap bread. Its clientele is the poor wretches who live in the crumbling lodging-houses and hovels all about here. A queue of customers – ragamuffins, street vendors, Irishwomen – jostles in the doorway and spills out into the street; this baker not only bakes bread but cooks entire dinners for families who don’t possess an oven. Hours of roasting can be bought for a pittance, and, for an additional halfpenny, a generous ladleful of the baker’s own special gravy is thrown into the bargain.

Sugar waits for ninety minutes near the baker’s. She could have gone home and waited there, but waiting on the street is something she is good at. She takes refuge for a while inside a chandler’s, pretending to be interested in buying some stolen goods. When her toes have defrosted and the chandler is beginning to annoy her, she moves on. Three passersby offer to rent her affections; she refuses.

At the appointed time she returns for her Christmas meal. The baker greets her with a distracted smile; his brown beard is powdered white with flour. Ah, yes, the lassie with the chicken, he remembers now.

The dishes and bowls into which the piping-hot food has been transferred are chipped and stained, barely fit for a drunkard’s street-stall, but even so, the baker obliges Sugar to pay him a shilling, as a security in case she fails to return them. He can tell she’s never done this before; other customers bring their own pots and crockery.

‘Mind you come back tomorrow,’ he warns. Sugar nods, though she hasn’t the least intention of returning this miserable bric-a-brac. She can earn a shilling in ten minutes of lying on her bed.

‘Merry Christmas,’ she winks, as she balances her heavy-laden basket in the crook of her arm.

By the time Sugar has walked back to Mrs Castaway’s, the food has lost a good deal of its heat. This hiring of ovens is, after all, a service designed for labourers’ families waiting hungrily around the corner from the baker’s, not for prostitutes in Silver Street. Moreover, by the time Sugar has located Christopher and summoned him up to her bedroom, and the basket’s contents are finally unveiled to the astonished boy, the chicken is barely lukewarm. Nevertheless it releases a delicious smell, and the roast vegetables twinkle in their juicy dishes. It may not be a feast borne by servants in a halo of steam, but by the standards of Mrs Castaway’s on a snowy afternoon, it’s an exotic surprise.

Sugar carves a hunk off the chicken’s breast, another off the drumstick, and doles these onto a fresh plate along with some potato and carrot. She adds a big spoonful of the baker’s special stuffing, scrapes some gravy from the bottom of the dish.

‘Here,’ she says evenly, handing the plate to Christopher. ‘Merry Christmas.’

The boy’s face is inscrutable as he takes the food from her; he might almost be accepting a pile of washing. Nevertheless, he sits on a footstool and balances the plate on his knees. With his fingers, he begins to transfer the food to his mouth.

Sugar eats with him. There’s a vaguely muttony taste to the chicken, suggesting that two very different animals sat side by side during their sojourn in the communal oven. Even so, it’s good.

‘I should’ve bought something to drink,’ she mutters. Next to the bed, there’s half a bottle of red wine left over from last night; too potent for a child who’s accustomed to diluted beer.

‘I don’t need nuffink,’ says Christopher, popping another roast potato into his mouth.

‘Here’s a card, too,’ says Sugar, and produces it. Observing that his fingers are otherwise occupied and greasy, she demonstrates the action of the paper angel’s wings by pulling on the tab. Christopher smiles broadly. She can’t recall ever seeing him smile before.

Outside in the street, a tuneless female voice begins to sing. It’s not ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas’ this time, nor even a festive song. Instead, this worthy woman, employing her considerable lungpower in the attempt to penetrate the walls and windows of Mrs Castaway’s, bawls:

For you upon this blessed morn,

Of Virgin Mother undefiled,

An Infant all Divine is born,

And God becomes a little Child.

Christopher’s smile broadens. He is almost unrecognisable, with deep creases in his cheeks, a twinkle in his eye, and a dark grease-smudge on his nose.

‘Have a sip of wine,’ says Sugar, handing him the bottle. ‘Not too much, though; it will turn your tongue grey.’

Christopher takes a swig from the bottle. Do not be scandalised: he’s had strong drink all his life, and wine is cleaner than water.

No palace hath He but a shed,

No cradle but a

Reviews for The Apple

[pingdjip · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

*spoilers*Een erg lekker dessert voor Crimson Petal-lezers. We krijgen wat we willen: ja, het liep goed af met Sophie en Sugar. En nee, het liep niet goed af met William. Ook fijn dat het in de verhalen toch net iets ambivalenter ligt dan ik het hier nu neerpen. Het verhaal over de afglijdende William roept, juist door dat afglijden, toch weer sympathie op. En Sugar had het niet makkelijk met de puberale Sophie. Anderzijds: juist dat we vernemen hoe goed Sugar gezorgd heeft voor Sophie-op-haar-lastigst maakt het misschien bijna hagiografisch. Het mooiste verhaal heeft het minst te maken, qua karakters, met Crimson petal, namelijk Clara and the Ratman. Het is een verhaal met veel ranzigheid, akeligheid, perversiteit - qua sfeer past het dus prima bij Crimson Petal. Maar het mooie is dat die rauwe sfeer aan het einde plotseling, maar wel overtuigend, wordt opgetild naar een ander niveau: een bijna tedere ontmoeting tussen twee karakters waarvan je dat niet verwacht had. De andere verhalen zijn ook mooi, maar toch vooral als voetnoot bij wat we al wisten uit Crimson Petal. Maar dan wel hele mooie voetnoten met allemaal kleine en grote verwijzingen naar het Grote Boek.

[jfearon_5 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

A wonderful follow up to The Crimson Petal and the White. The book moves around in time quite a bit, there are some stories featuring Sugar before the events of Crimson Petal, but others follow characters after the events of Crimson have finished. Well worth tracking down and reading, although more Sugar would have been nice.

[runaway84_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A delightful collection of seven short stories from the world of The Crimson Petal and the White. I had loved that novel so, that when I found out there were more glimpses into the Crimson Petal world, I just had to get it.The stories here are nothing spectacular and they don't reveal anything major about the characters. With the way the original novel ended, I'm sure people thought these stories would be a nice little wrap-up, as it were. They are not. They are, however, a sort of revisit of old friends and being introduced to a few new ones.Some of the stories take place before The Crimson Petal and the White and some take place after. Some a short time before, some a long time before; some a short time after, some a long time after.You get to drop in on the main characters of Sugar and William Rackman and others such as Clara, Mr. Bodley and Emmeline Fox.Overall, a satisfying collection of stories that would be entertaining to anyone who loved the original novel and know that they're not going to find anything too revealing here.

[sunjata_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Felt very slight after The Crimson Petal. I did enjoy the Clara story and the second Sugar prequel was a nice insight into how determined she was, not just for a man like William Rackham to appear, but for her to be ready to exploit it. The book overall was a bit meh, but most things would be having just read the first novel.

[apartmentcarpet · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Michel Faber's The Crimson Petal and the White created a detailed world and then ended abruptly without any closure to many of the story lines. While this book of stories, set in the same universe with many of the same characters, doesn't clear up everything, it goes a long way towards alleviating some of the disappointment. Most of the stories are set either before or after the events of the novel, and the most satisfying is written by Sophie's son as a very old man.

[girlunderglass · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I cannot get enough of Faber's characters. If he wrote 10 more books about Sugar, William, Agnes, and their world I would read them all. My favourite of the book's short stories was the last one, titled "A Mighty Horde of Women in Very Big Hats". The 60-page story manages to do for me what history books have failed to: it makes me visualize the whole stretch of time from the Victorian era to the Edwardian one. Faber makes you grasp the historical realities of the time in one quick gulp, a feat not even Dickens accomplishes. The man is an extremely talented writer and I will definitely look for more of his novels.

[shelbycat_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I admit i have an addiction to novels set in the Victorian Era hence my love of Michel Faber's Crimson Petal & the White and now The Apple. As soon as i opened my little hardback version and started to read i knew i would be sat stationary for the next few days immersed in more stories about Sugar and her contemporaries. I was right, i don't think i even set the book down once until i'd finished the entire thing, i probably forgot to breathe at times, i was enjoying it so much! The unfortunate thing is there hasn't been another set of stories for me to read since, i literally cannot wait for another set to arrive in my recommended list on amazon. If you're not sure about buying this book i would say do it! That way you can read a little book of short stories and once you enjoy it you still have the massive Crimson Petal and the White to move onto.

[michaeldwebb · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The Crimson Petal and the White was one of my favourite books of recent years - certainly the most beautifully written, and this book is a collection of short stories about the characters, set both before, and after, Crimson Petal.Again, the writing is simply wonderful, but I guess you really have to have read Crimson Petal for them to make much sense. Pretty much the only thing wrong with this book is its length. It very short, and will be read in a couple of hours. I want more!I guess my only concern is whether it's better to actually be left to imagine what may have happened to the characters? Does it put too much closure by finding out more? Probably not, as Faber only hints at events.If you haven't read Crimson Petal, read that first, and you'll probably not be able to resist picking this up afterwards.

[mikefarquhar · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The Apple by Michel Faber is another one about which I have mixed feelings. This book is a collection of short stories which feature the characters from Faber’s magnum opus, The Crimson Petal and the White, a book I absolutely loved a few years back. At the time, one of the criticisms levelled at the book was that the ending was too abrupt, and that people wanted more. Now, I happened to think the ending worked perfectly, but I can see why others felt that way. Given the strength of that feeling, and the fact that Faber had put a huge amount of work into creating the world his characters lived in, with much content that didn’t make it into the final book, this collection of short stories was probably inevitable.Given that, this collection feels a bit lazy. The writing still has its characteristic strengths - and it is very east to lose yourself once more in Faber's version of Victorian England - but this feels more like a collection timed to capture those who loved Crimson Petal just in time for Christmas. I don’t have a real problem with that, but I’d rather have seen a new and fresh Faber collection, rather than a loosely linked series of back stories; particularly given that I wasn’t dissatisfied with the original book in the first place.Again, a decent enough book, but one for those who’ve already read Faber’s work, not for people new to him.

[rolhirst · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Just before the recent TV adaptation aired, I reviewed Michel Faber's excellent novel The Crimson Petal And The White and predicted..."For all its excellent cast (including the always watchable Chris O'Dowd, Richard E. Grant and - yay! - Scully), sparkling script, grubby period detail, kinky costume drama romping and acres of naked flesh and naughtiness... it's not a patch on the novel."Well, I couldn't have been more right. As enjoyable as the TV version may have been, I still walked away unsatisfied. The pictures are always better inside your head.Thankfully, that's when I discovered The Apple, a short collection of stories which return us to the world of The Crimson Petal, offering tantalising glimpses into the past and future of our favourite character's. So we learn how Sugar spent Christmas Day while she was still living in Mrs. Castaway's whorehouse, discover how a common housefly destroys Bodley's libido, and find out how young Sophie grows up to become a champion of women's rights. And while William Rackham grows old and bitter, Clara, his former maid takes to the street to survive and ends up involved in a darkly comic dalliance with The Rat Man, who insists she let one fingernail grow without being cut or chewed...Imagination, revelation, wit, warmth and sparkling prose. If you enjoyed the novel, or even the TV adap, I'd recommend you track down a copy of The Apple.

[millhold_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Very good! Tied up a lot of storylines from [The Crimson Petal and the White]. Excellent storytelling.

[eyejaybee · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

A pointless exercise in self-aggrandising pap

[rockstarninja_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I liked the book, however I wish it had more stories that had to do with his previous work Crimson Petal and the White.

[mooingzelda · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This little collection offers a glimpse into the histories and futures of some of the characters from the brilliant The Crimson Petal and the White. It answers some questions about the novel's ending, but not fully, to retain that air of mystery. Faber's writing is on point as usual, but I could easily have gobbled up a collection twice the size of this one! I'd love a follow-up to this particular follow-up...

[cassandra2020 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Having recently finished reading Crimson Petal, I couldn't wait to read the follow up short stories in The Apple and I wasn't disappointed!

Just a handful of stories sees us re-visiting Sugar in her life pre-Crimson, Clara, Mr Bodley, William and, indirectly, Sophie all post-Crimson. So good to see what had become of them and interesting to see if they matched my own hopes and perceptions (largely they did!). My only detraction from the book was that I wanted more. After the weighty tome that was Crimson Petal, this was lightweight and I read it in less than a day (part during the evening, the rest on the train to work the next day). Hugely enjoyable, but left me wanting more.

Will now have to dig out more of Michel Faber's writing to see whether his other work lives up to these two books.

[sparrowbytherailstar · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I only just discovered Faber's follow up of sorts to The Crimson Petal and the White, years after I finished the original book. After reading the former, and left wanting more, I was thrilled to discover The Apple, but a little disappointed by it's novella-length.The Apple is a compilation of short stories, which serve as either prologues or epilogues to some of the characters in The Crimson Petal and the White. The stories are just as fantastic and engaging as the first one was, but aside from the story of Sophie's son, very short. They're less story, and more glimpses- though this is something Faber does best; making you feel a bit like a voyeur, just chancing upon the daily going-ons of strangers.It's this style of writing that left a lot of unanswered questions and what if's with the novel; The Apple does follow up with some of them, but still leaves a lot of questions unanswered and a lot of open road, should Faber ever decide to return to these characters (a girl can dream).If you didn't read The Crimson Petal, The Apple might seem disjointed- but most short story collections are so. If you read The Crimson Petal and liked it- or read it and didn't really know if you liked it, but still made it through the whole thing- you owe it to yourself to read The Apple. It won't consume nearly as much time (to my dismay), but might provide some closure.

[devenish_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Seven short stories of which several are connected to the marvelous 'The Crimson Petal and the White'. 'Christmas in Silver Street' describes an early episode in the life of seventeen year old Sugar.'Clara and the Rat Man' is a surprisingly touching tale of a prostitute and her ugly client.'Chocolate Hearts From the New World' turns upon a letter from a slave owner to a lady missionary.'The Fly,and It's Effect upon Mr Bodley' takes place in a brothel and tells of Mr B's change of mind.'The Apple' is another story about Sugar,and her state of mind at the time.'Medicine' is a continuance of the life in old age and mental illness of William Rackham.and the wonderfully entitled 'A Mighty Horde of Women in Very Big Hats,Advancing' gives us possibly the most information about what happened to the young child taken away at the end of 'Crimson Petal' by Miss Sugar. This last tale is absolutely wonderful and can be read as above or as a stand-alone story about childhood.

[maryintexas39 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

more, more, more!

[beamis12 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

As with all short stories, I enjoyed some more than others. Have never read his Crimson Petal book, but I will now as I am intrigued, since he used the same characters in that novel in these short stories.

[arewenotben · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Pointless extension of The Crimson Petal and the White, picking up major and minor characters after or before events from the original book. Well written, but the more rigid chapters lack the fluidity of the main book and I didn't feel like these were stories that were desperate to be told.

Like watching a great 3 hour film then having 30 minutes of deleted scenes/alternate endings - its nice to still be in that world but they don't really add anything to the characters or original story. Definitely don't read if you haven't read Crimson Petal..., hard to recommend if you have.