 Several reviewers compared Tipping the Velvet to Jeanette Winterson's Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit for a similar story of a woman's sexual awakening. Waters credits Winterson as an influence in lesbian writing, but states that the books are quite different and her writing is not like Winterson's at all. Waters suggests that reviewers have bracketed them together because Winterson was the only other lesbian author they could recall.
