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Summary: Falling Angels
Review: I was so disappointed with this book! I loved her earlier book, Girl with the Pearl Earrings and expected to enjoy this one too but I did not. The characters in her earlier book were so real that I found myself caring very much what happened to them. The characters in this book were all self-absorbed and unlikable. I was fasinated by the art, the descriptions, and history in Girl with the Pearl Earrings but this book just did not measure up to it.
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Summary: Captures the change in era
Review: I enjoyed this book both as entertainment and as a window into the not-so-distant past. The book opens in 1901, and it is told as a first person narrative by the two young girls, their mothers, occasionally their fathers, and the gravedigger's son. It is striking how Ms. Chevalier captures the changing attitudes of what was "acceptable" in the early 1900's, and the Negative impact of women's sufferage on the children. This book was a very refreshing change from other historical novels.
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Summary: Anglophile female study in grave setting
Review: I was fascinated by this book. Chevalier's talent at presenting a story line via first person narratives is showcased here with turn of the twentieth century London as its base. The characters who tell us their stories are sectioned into the years 1901-1910, from the mourning of Queen Victoria to the mourning of King Edward. And their mostly upper middle class status sets the tone, a little rivalry between families whose grave sites end up side by side. Interestingly enough, the daughters of these two couples, the Waterhouses and the Colemans, become true friends. And from their day of first meeting as they gather in the cemetery in remembrance of Victoria, the girls, quite opposite in nature, are drawn to one another, despite their mothers' obvious distance. The whole plot centers on the trips Maude and Lavinia (Livy) and her little sister Ivy May make to the cemetery. It is their center of recreation. And it is there that Jenny, the Coleman maid who escorts them on their excursions, becomes entangled in a life-changing affair, while Maude and Livy become best friends of a most unlikely mate close to their age, Simon Field, the gravedigger's son. Simon's class rank is so far below that of the girls, of whom Maude's family ranks higher than Livy's, yet he is the best pal of these young girls. And it is Simon who will go to heroic measures to assist the girls in their hour of greatest need. The psuedo liberation of the upper class' sexual mores is an underlying theme in Kitty Coleman's life. And it is Kitty who becomes embroiled in the Suffragette movement of upper class women, adding color and suspense to the plot. Each voice of the various characters rings true to the person speaking, balancing the points of view of several generations and class ranks starting with the very strict and Victorian rank of Mother Edith Coleman, who wishes to control the behavior of her son's wife as well as his household. The spoiled and seemingly lazy Kitty contrasts dramatically with the straight laced Gertrude Waterhouse, who finds Kitty's rank a point of competition, yet who comes to truly mother Kitty's only child, Maude. For Gertrude is the ultimate modern housewife and mother. And each woman's "At Home" days conveniently conflict with one another, therefore eclipsing their chance at real socialization. On the other hand, with cricket as the draw, their husbands, Albert and Richard, strike up a cursory friendship that deepens with time. As Maude and Livy age, they face the erosion of Maude's family, although when real tragedy strikes they experience a time of growing apart as they mature. The servant class spokesladies of the Coleman cook, Mrs. Baker, and the housemaid, Jenny Whitby, flesh out the Edwardian times and the life of an upstairs/downstairs relationship. Typical to Chevalier's writing in her other novels, she masterfully builds the tension and suspense that makes the reader want to keep going. Therefore, this is an easy, fast read. And I do recommend it, particularly if you like to feel a part of a plot with characters who speak directly to you.
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Summary: Not a sociological study, but the next best thing
Review: With her third novel, 'Falling Angels', Tracy Chevalier masters as a gifted storyteller. Chronicling a period of almost ten years the lives of two families who have neighbor graves in a cemetery-- the Colemans and the Watherhouses--, the writer takes us to look inside the Edwardian society in the early XX Century. Essentially this is the story of their two girls, Maude Coleman and Lavinia Waterhouse. They became friends, and then neighbors. And while the families are not very found of each other, they can tolerate one another. Besides that we also have Kitty Coleman, Maude's mother, who seems to have lost passion for life and is trying to find something exciting that changes her life. After all the main characters are introduced, the writer is able to unfold a breathtaking story, full of twists and turns, that make you only looking forward to turn the page and see what will happen then. In my opinion, the novel can be divided in the three different parts: 'Life X Death', 'Kitty's Awakening' and 'Death X Life'. In the first part we learn about the traditions about funerals, and how each character stands on it. In the second, more political, it shows Kitty involvement with the suffragettes. And in the third one, characters have to cope with death, and the entire struggle after that. There isn't a single narrator in the novel. Each chapter is told by one character --even servants have a chance to tell their point of view of an event. While this may not have been the wisest form of narrative, Chevalier manages to hold the reader's attention, because all the characters are interesting and have something to say, which counts in the main narrative. Somehow, this novel is quite different from Chevalier's previous books --'Girl with a Pearl Earring' and 'The Virgin Blue'. She seems to be more confident, and is not afraid of touching upon issues like death. Although this sounds like a book about death, one must be really close to this theme to talk about life. Only in a novel like this a reader would find such a sentence: 'What people do with their dead is usually a reflection of themselves rather than of their loved ones'. 'Falling Angels' may not be a sociological study of funeral rites and women's position in the early XX Century in London, but, as far as fiction is concerned, it is the next best thing.
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Summary: Just a bunch of cliches
Review: I agree with the reviewer who said that the constant switching of narrators led to confusion and that the characters are not well developed or interesting. The characters are all cliches. There's the oblivious father, the neglecting mother, the prudish, disaproving neighbor ... And as another reviewer pointed out, the lesson seems to be that women who dare to have interests outside the house will necessarily neglect their families and will pay for it.
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Summary: Great!
Review: I really loved it. Especially because I didn't always agree with the actions and attitudes of the characters. It really transported me to a time (the early 1900s in London) that I knew very little about, and made me appreciate the characters' frustrations, etc.. that were products of the time they were living in.
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Summary: My new favorite author
Review: I've read all 3 of Ms. Chevalier's books in as many weeks, her writing style is perfect for me. Falling Angels wasn't quite what I expected, it's not my favorite of her other two (girl w/ a pearl earring & the virgin blue) but if you're looking to explore women's historical fiction, anything by Chevalier is a great place to start.
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Summary: I loved it!
Review: I disagree with some of the previously posted reviews where critics call Chevalier's change of voice from characters "confusing", and disrupting the flow of the book. I found it fascinating to read about one event from different characters' perspectives. This gives the reader more of a sense of who these characters are and what they're thinking. I think this only helps to build her characters. The relationship between the two girls of the families is captivating as they become best friends against their mothers' will, and then become as distant as ever due to a dark turn of events. I loved this book, and rate it just as high as "Girl with Pearl Earring".
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Summary: I just kept waiting for it to end!
Review: Chevalier's multi-narrated novel, Falling Angels, is an utter bore! The story centers around the friendship of two neighboring girls in post Victorian England-one beautiful and vapid, the other brainy. The story comes to the reader from several points of view: each of the girls, 2 housekeepers, the boy who works at the graveyard, the mothers, the fathers, and so on. A cast this large sharing the narration lends itself to confusion or an extremely fast-pace (or both), but unfortunatly, in this book, the characters are almost always lacking in ANYTHING riveting to say- that the only place I was led into was boredom! The women in the book who stand for things, or cross the line dividing "good girls" and "bad girls" are punished- it felt like some kind of out-dated lesson in womanly politeness. There are two horrid deaths in a span of a few pages, and you could practically see Chevalier's fingerprints on the pages. It's never good when you can feel the author squeezing their characters until they pop. The only reason I gave this book two stars is because of the details Chevalier supplies about the day to day life of the women. I might have liked the novel more if Chevalier stuck to the voices of Jenny Whittbey, and Kitty Coleman - at least they had some interesting things to say. I'd stay away from this book if I were you.
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Summary: A preview of better things to come
Review: I was very relieved to find out that "The Virgin Blue" was written before "Girl With a Pearl Earring," and "Falling Angels." "The Virgin Blue" is wildly uneven, not merely because the writing is split between two different eras, the modern era of Ella Turner and the Sixteenth Century world of Isabelle Tournier. The more compelling story, by far, centers on Isabelle Tournier and her Calvinist family forced to flee France for the outskirts of Geneva. Isabelle, however, does not adhere to strict Calvinist beliefs as she still worships the Virgin Mary. This is the very type of story at which Chevalier excels: women attempting to find themselves within a society that has certain social mores. The modern day story is dragged down by clunky dialogue mystical, new age connections between Ella and Isabelle. Ella has moved to France with her husband and finds she has trouble fitting in until she begins to search for information on her family. Eventually, her hair turns red, like Isabelle's (which is associated with the Virgin) and she begins to have nightmares of blue cloth after having sex. Ella's husband, supposedly a successful professional architect, speaks with all the grace and eloquence of a hormonal and emotion twelve-year-old. For fans of Tracy Chevalier, "The Virgin Blue" shows that the compass of her early work is at least pointed in the right direction.
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