“Faber apparently got a lot of mail over the ending of 'The Crimson Petal and the White'.
If you've read it, you'll know why.
So much mail that he seems to have decided to pull out some old, rejected ideas he'd doodled with, and publish them in an anthology of 'short stories'.
In truth, they're more extended scenes and character studies than what your correspondent would call 'short stories', and his claim that at least one of the collection is as good as a novel is clearly not based in reality.
In a long letter to his fans at the start of the collection, he says that he wants to keep certain things a secret. Like how a number of major characters ended up after the 'conclusion' of 'The Crimson Petal and the White'. He promises that he will keep these things secret forever.
"...the essential mysteries of The Crimson Petal ... are left intact"
And then he tells us what happened, and destroys those mysteries.
For mine, this is a cash-in publication, produced purely to exploit the lingering interest of readers of the 'parent' book.
Which is a pity, since the parent book was so terribly good.
Even the layout of the text on the page makes this look like it's a few scraps, thrown together for a quick buck: the side gutters on the edition i read constitute no less than 56mm (28mm either side) of a 150mm page.
Top and bottom gutters are 75mm of a page only 235mm high.
That's a lot a blank paper that you're paying for, dear Reader.
And the font is about size 14.
All in all, this was a disappointment, coming as it did on the coat-tails (or petticoat tails?) of a much superior novel.”