come back so they can continue their affair in secret. Realising how much shame Kitty continues to feel, how much of herself was compromised during their affair, and that her truest happiness is where she is now, Nan turns Kitty away and joins Florence. Literary elements Style The greatest literary strengths in Tipping the Velvet, according to reviewers and literary scholars, are the vibrant portrayal of the districts and streets of London, and Waters' ability to create sympathetic and realistic characters. Her use of synaesthesia in lush descriptions particularly interested Harriet Malinowitz in The Women's Review of Books. For example, Malinowitz cites the scene when Nan first meets Kitty, removing her glove to shake Kitty's hand. Very much an oyster girl, Nan's hands are covered with "those rank sea-scents, of liquor and oyster-flesh, crab-meat and whelks, which had flavoured my fingers and those of my family for so many years we had ceased, entirely, to notice them". Nan is mortified that she smells like a herring, but Kitty assuages her fears, kissing her hand and telling her she instead smells like a mermaid. Malinowitz includes this and other descriptions of sights, sounds, and smells in Victorian London as examples of elements that are "breathlessly and wittily detailed". Although Waters was born in Pembrokeshire, Wales, she considers herself a London writer because of her intense affection for the city, due in part to her immigration to it. Specifically, Waters is moved by walking through London and seeing remnants of many historical eras: "It's ... almost like it's peopled with ghosts—again, jostling up against each other or passing through each other. I find that very exciting". Her love for the city is apparent to many reviewers. In the Lesbian Review of Books Donna Allegra writes, "[S]he summons the era's attitudes and ambiance projecting them onto the screen of the reader's mind with Dolby wrap-around sound such that you feel you're vacationing on all points between Chelsea and the East End". Miranda Seymour in The New York Times remarks on the "breathless passion" of the narrator's voice as being absolutely convincing, citing as an example Nancy's statement to her sister at the start of the book about why she continues to visit Kitty Butler:... It's like I never saw anything at all before. It's like I am filling up, like a wine-glass when it's filled with wine. I watch the acts before her