Rating: 
Summary: Depressed, boring, passive, weak women
Review: I've been listening to the book on tape, and am giving up. The characters are totally self-absorbed, shallow and uninteresting. A story may develop as time goes on, and Zoe may find some gumption and energy by the end of the book, but Brookner takes too many pages for me to persevere. Sorry.
Rating:
Summary: Anita's Most Depressing Novel Yet!
Review: I've read most of Brookner's novels. I've recommended her work to others, but I cannot recommend this book. Her characters are often passive but the two women in The Bay of Angels excel at inertia. Brookner's beautiful style doesn't compensate for how very depressing this novel is. The women in this book can't seem to DO anything.
Rating: 
Summary: The Bay of Angels
Review: In my opinion I did not believe "The Bay of Angels" was a good book. It's content skipped around too much or too little. The author would get stuck on one subject that wasn't interesting too long and would make all the interesting parts of the book really short. "The Bay of Angles" was about a girl named Zoe, her father died when she was young and her mother re-married when Zoe was old enough to be on her own. I would not recommend this book to people who don't know much about Europe and who do not have an attention span for books.
Rating: 
Summary: Descent into Depression
Review: Self absorbed and boring lives muddle along in a fugue of depression. Beautiful prose that does not move the reader along nor offer any hope. I couldn't tell you the last time I was so uninvolved with characters. Still having difficulty reconciling the writing with the storytelling.
Rating:
Summary: A bittersweet fairy tale
Review: This unusually good novel by Brookner features a quiet, timid woman who lacks humor, yet touches us with her insights. Raised on fairy tales, the heroine of BAY OF ANGELS loves her quiet life in a London flat, but when her mother remarries, she begins to realize that the mediocre degree she earned will define her career, and that Prince Charming may not materialize for her in the unstable '60s as he did for her mother. Caring for her depressed mother after her second husband dies proves another trial, yet our intrepid heroine survives and learns from it. In a sense she takes control of her life and learns to redefine fairy tales. A satisfying read.
Rating:
Summary: Terrible
Review: This was terrible. Ruminations disguised as a novel. This is my second Anita Brookner novel (after Hotel du Lac). I know plot is not her forte, but this entire novel felt like the underpinning for a novel, not the novel itself. (Plus, the woman is rescued from her depression by -- tara, tara!-- a MAN, of all things. And only in the very last chapter. Is there anything more clichéd than this?) I slogged through it a sentence at a time: took me two excruciating weeks. I kept hoping for SOMETHING to rescue the book, but alas, there I was at the last page, and it ended with a clunk.
Rating: 
Summary: Angels and drama from the best writer around
Review: This writer has got to be the best wordsmith around. In each novel the sentences stand alone, dynamic, fresh and gleaming in intensity. The story is important, the characters are profound but these are often upstaged by the absolute pleasure of reading such sharp writing. I can't be the only person buying the latest novel of Anita Brookner every year as soon as it hits the shelf.Much has been said about Brookner's lonely women and feminist approach and I will leave that to others who are better informed than me to remark upon. What I look for in every novel is the dramatic turn which never fails to be exciting. In THE BAY OF ANGELS, there are several but the most outstanding is the moment when Zoe returns to reclaim her stepfather's house in Nice and finds it already occupied, cocktails in hand, by his greedy relatives. The attitudes and survival tactics of the women who share the clinique with Zoe's sick mother are searing. Best of all is the moment by the sea when Zoe's reflects on the angels flying up from the bay and inward to land where they will reinforce the already celestial commercialism of earth. A friend of mine in London once remarked to me that he sometimes sees Anita Brookner early in the morning on the Kings Road heading towards Waitrose supermarket. I was astounded, "doesn't anyone stop her," I asked imagining that she would be beset with fans. "No," said my friend, "nobody knows who she is." I would prefer to think that London is so vast that it renders one anonymous and invisible which is often the very dilemma ensnaring her characters.
Rating:
Summary: Man, What a Dreary Little Book
Review: What a tiresome trudge it was to get through this slim book. In a mere 220 or so pages the writer manages to repeat the same boring, navel gazing tosh several times over. The Bay of Angels has nothing of any interest to say and the ennui filled mood of the characters and plot did nothing positive for me. Anita, your characters need to get a life! (I would have liked to give this book zero stars.)
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