Rating: 
Summary: Offensive in several ways
Review: This book is offensive if you are: female, single and over 50; if you are politically liberal; or if you are Jewish.The condescending tone to all of the above really took me by surprise. I do not understand why this book was received with such enthusiasm.
Rating: 
Summary: Miss Garnet's Angel
Review: This book sums up for me why we read fiction. Its depiction of the spiritual awakening of an elderly spinster during a six month sojourn in Venice illustrates the possibilities which life has to offer and reminds us of the truth in the quote 'it is never too late to be what you might have been'. It has the potential to influence the way we see our own lives, enlightening us in the way Venice enlightens Miss Garnet.
Rating:
Summary: Like the most beautiful piece of sparkling Murano glass...
Review: This is no hokey and banal Touched By An Angel melodrama, peopled (or angeled :-) with dubious beings who are anything but magical, but a serious and fine work that delves deeply into exotic religions (and the place of guardian angels in such religions) and art/art restoration/and art restorers, replete with enigmatic, enthralling characters and an intelligent albeit twisting plot. The other reviewers have supplied the high points of the story and summarized it, so what I have to add is that it gives exquisite pleasure to readers, much like the Murano glass manufactured in Venice gives pleasure to those who buy or view it. It shines, it sparkles, it's one of a kind...we know Miss Garnet so well by the time the tale is told...and we hate to lose her. This is an inspirational novel that will stick in one's imagination for a long time, and it's encouraging to know that this is Salley Vickers's first book. She can only get better and better. For those who welcome something out of the ordinary and who have an interest in myth, religion, art, magic, and the vulnerability and frailty of human beings just like us. Venice, that beguiling, mysterious city, is a character as much as anyone or anything else in Miss Garnet's Angel.
Rating:
Summary: The Grateful Living
Review: This novel follows approximately eleven months in the life of Miss Julia Garnet, from the Feast of Epiphany to the Feast of Raphael. Her friend, Harriet, has just died suddenly. With her habits already shaken up by the death of her companion, Julia decides to rattle them even further by jetting off to Venice, to enjoy the kind of holiday that Harriet had been planning for their joint retirement from teaching. Miss Julia Garnet is a Communist who's never been kissed, so it's something of a surprise to see her falling in love, and to learn of her abounding interest in an angel. At first glance, this is a Death in Venice/Don't Look Now kind of book. Carlo, the man for whom Julia falls for big time, turns out to be quite an apocryphal
character, in the modern meaning of the word. Thankfully, Harriet wasn't in the habit of wearing lurid red anoraks, and Salley Vickers' new novel, The Instances of
the Number 3 also opens with a death. However, Julia does encounter the twins who are restoring the Chapel-of-the-Plague (which Salley Vickers seems to have invented for the novel), similar to the sort of work carried out by Donald Sutherland's character in Don't Look Now. However, there is the scene where Julia abandons her guidebook by the Reverend Crystal in St. Mark's Basilica (a reference to A Room with a View perhaps?), and this is where she meets Carlo for the first time. St. Mark's Basilica is very beautiful, but as Carlo tells Julia, all the art has been nicked from other cultures and appropriated by the victorious Venetians of past history. One could say that Salley Vickers has gone about doing the same thing (especially with regards to her new novel), yet there is a more apt simile to describe what she is doing here. Like Gianantonio Guardi, Salley Vickers could be said to be borrowing poses or motifs from other artists, but she recasts them in her own vivid manner (to paraphrase Emil Kren and Daniel Marx's description of Guardi's painting 'The Angel Appears to Tobias'). The quotes that Salley Vickers uses in this novel always seem appropriate, and always seem to be leading somewhere, whereas the quotations in The Instances of the Number 3 seem forced and appropriated. Although I thought there could be more behind Salley Vickers' naming Julia's school as 'St Barnabas and St James'. There's a thread throughout the novel concerning St Mark, who let down St Barnabas and St Paul by returning home early from one of their first journeys, and I couldn't see a link between St Barnabas and St James. Towards the end of the novel, Julia traces Tobias's journey on a map. In so doing, she's conveying the importance of such journeys, to our common history and our own personal development. For interested readers, I've created a page concerning the cultural context of this novel. We are invited to see Julia as several archetypal figures. She could be Saint Ursula, watched over by the Angel Raphael as in the cover picture of the book, cropped from a painting by Carpaccio (although it's hard to see her pupils following her anywhere willingly, especially not to a massacre, since they tend to regard her as a joke and sing rude songs about her). She could be the legendary traveller of the folk story of the Grateful Dead, as embodied by the dramatisation of the Book of Tobit within the novel. Or she could even be the embodiment of the Angel Raphael himself ('You must be my guardian angel,' Toby says at one point). Although, to see Miss Garnet as the Angel is to play the tricks with the title of the book that don't work in the same way that 'Finnegans Wake' could mean any number of things. Certainly, Julia feels that the Angel Raphael is watching over her, if only in the form of a statue. To some, the ending of the book may come as something of a surprise. It did to me the first time, I'm afraid to admit. But when you dig deeper into Salley Vickers' research, you cannot avoid a deep sense of foreboding.
Salley Vickers has managed to whip up everything she can think of about Venice into this book. John Ruskin invites Julia out to consume some prosecco (if nothing else), Tintoretto pops in for tea, the House of the Camel really lights up to illuminate William Blake, Vivaldi lectures, and Shakespeare puts on some plays. However the Venice ghetto does not really provide a refuge for Julia, but may have done some time in the past for the sparkling Monsignore and his pug dog. Whilst reading Tucker Malarkey's An Obvious Enchantment recently, I did kind of wonder what the links between Christianity, Judaism and Islam were, and Malarkey missed the (now) obvious source of monotheism: Zoroaster was the first prophet to call for the worship of one true God (rather than Akhenaten). This isn't hacked onto the text by Vickers: it's a natural growth throughout the novel, from the gifts of the three Magi celebrated in the Epiphany, to the Feast of the Apocryphal Raphael. Just as Venice seems to be in peril, so do the Zoroastrians, with ever declining numbers predicted. One gets an indication of how intricately plotted this novel is by the revelation that there was a Fair Maiden on the Zoroastrian Bridge of Separation. Salley Vickers magnificently bridges Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and Zoroastrianism via her dramatisation of the Book of Tobit (and her translation of the tale is a tad bit more successful than Saint Jerome's, despite all it's tail wagging). And what better place to build bridges than Venice?
Rating:
Summary: A Book as Beautiful and Magical as Venice Itself
Review: What a joy to read this lovely book shortly after returning from a trip to Venice. Steeped in the art and history of Venice and in an obscure story from the Apocrypha, the novel is multitextural, haunting, and ethereal just like the serpentine streets of that most Serene of Cities. The subject matter sounds weighty but it is never dull. Elements of a mystery are part of this story of the spinster English school teacher Miss Jula Garnet who is changed forever by her stay in Venice and the people she meets there.I kept turning pages to find out what would happen next. Just a wonderfully literate,and thoughtful book. It will stay in your memory.
Rating:
Summary: A visit back in Venice
Review: When a friend gave me this book with her comment that she didn't know whether she had enjoyed the book simply because she was familiar with alll the spots in Venice that are mentioned in the book or more, I knew I was going to like the book. I was surprised by the growth in the character of Julia and her interactions with the new friends she makes in her new home. When she returns to London, only then is she able to see how much growth has occured in her. Her religious questions that plague her perhaps plague all of us. So the insight here is worth attending to. At this point, I am looking for other Vickers books to read. What a treat!
Rating:
Summary: Come! Enter this Magical World!
Review: When I picked up this book, I knew nothing about The Book of Tobit and how did Parsis live and what were their origins or anything about them. I just had a couple of Parsi friends and yet I never bothered to ask them about their heritage, till I read Miss Garnet's Angel. I do not know under which genre would this book fall in, but I do know that this book has a class of its own. The characterisation of Julia Garnet - reminds me of so many Muriel Spark characters - Miss Garnet was my companion while I was reading this book. The setting of course was amazing - venice! hmmm...the narrow bylanes in the water, shadows of Miss Garnet and her life, the friends she makes in Venice, the heart ache, the revelation, the search - all of this and more make the book so magnanamous - so rich in detailing - that one wants to stop at many places in the book and ask themselves: What would I do if I was in her place? It's not only Harriet's Death that prompts and evokes feelings in Miss Garnet's heart. It runs deeper than that. There is more to be discovered - Go read this one!!
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