The Crimson Petal and the White

There's a great 500-600 page novel in these 900-plus pages. I enjoyed parts of it very much, but in his zeal to mimic the Victorian writers Faber commits the same mistake many of them made in going on and on endlessly. And Faber doesn't have the excuse of getting paid by the word. Pity, because much of this is excellent, but it wears out its welcome, hammering its themes home with relentless, verbose repetitiveness. It could have been great, but falls short due to its author's inability to just stop.