 Donna Allegra and Christina Patterson in The Observer also praise Nan as a passionate and captivating character . Patterson and Mel Steel in The Independent compare her resourcefulness to that of Moll Flanders . Of her three Victorian @-@ set novels , Waters uses humour and " an attractive lightness of touch " most effectively in Tipping the Velvet , according to Paulina Palmer . Nan the narrator describes the irony of her " curious gaslit career " as a rent @-@ boy only to end up — in Diana 's words — as her " tart " . Waters had such fun writing the novel that she told Robert McCrum from The Observer in 2009 that if she had no obligations to meet stemming from her subsequent success as a writer that she would continue writing Nan 's story . 
