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Title: Falling Angels by Tracy Chevalier ISBN: 0-452-28320-5 Publisher: Plume Pub. Date: 24 September, 2002 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.86 (91 reviews)
Rating: 2
Summary: Not her best
Comment: The story lags, the characters are not as interesting. If you liked The Girl with the Pearl Earring and The Virgin Blue, you will be disappointed.
Rating: 2
Summary: Is This a Family Novel or a Literary Experiment
Comment: I really didn't like GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING, but I thought I'd try another Tracy Chevalier book and, since I love reading books set in both Victorian and Edwardian England, FALLING ANGELS seemed perfect.
On the morning following the death of Queen Victoria, intelligent but plain Maude Coleman meets beautiful but shallow Lavinia Waterhouse at the cemetery where both of their families have plots. The five year old girls become fast friends and their lives become intertwined unto death.
FALLING ANGELS is quite different from GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING in more ways than the fact that it does not explore the world of art. Where GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING had only one narrator, Griet, FALLING ANGELS has several and they take turns telling their stories in short, choppy chapters. One of the ways in which both books are similar is the fact that Chevalier never goes inside the mind of her characters...she fails to gives us her characters thoughts, and this, I think, is a very grave mistake. It distanced me from Griet and it distanced me from both Maude and Lavinia and the other characters that populate the pages of FALLING ANGELS.
It's puzzling to me as to why Chevalier would write so many interior monologues yet fail to let even one character reveal his or her thoughts or emotions. Instead of using the third person to help us "know" each character, Chevalier uses it to give us expository information...something that, to me, smacks of the work of an amateur, not a woman who's just written her third novel. It might have been an experimental device, but if it were, I think it's an experiment in technique that failed.
In addition to the above, the first half of the book, which seems to be developing into a family drama simply doesn't coalesce with the second half, where it veers off into something quite different. It seemed as if Chevalier were trying to weave disparate stories from loosely connected characters into one lovely tapestry of a book, but the tapestry just never came together and simply unraveled, instead.
Like GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING, FALLING ANGELS is rich in description, something that seems to be Chevalier's forte and something I would expect, given the fact that she was, for many years a reference book editor. In GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING we were treated to a tour of Delft during Vermeer's lifetime. In FALLING ANGELS, we're given a guide to Edwardian England. I liked the description in both books, but lovely description doesn't make a compelling story.
I am going to give Chevalier yet a third chance, something I rarely do with any author. I've recently purchased her latest book, THE LADY AND THE UNICORN. The beautiful tapestries at the Musee National du Moyen Age de Cluny in Paris are among my favorite "artistic treasures," so I really couldn't resist a book woven around them. I just hope Chevalier gives us richer characterizations than she did in FALLING ANGELS.
I would recommend this book only to people so in love with Edwardian England that they simply can't get their fill.
Rating: 2
Summary: Falling Angels
Comment: 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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Title: The Virgin Blue by Tracy Chevalier ISBN: 0452284449 Publisher: Plume Pub. Date: 24 June, 2003 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier ISBN: 0452282152 Publisher: Plume Pub. Date: 08 January, 2001 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: The Lady and the Unicorn by Tracy Chevalier ISBN: 0525947671 Publisher: E P Dutton Pub. Date: 29 December, 2003 List Price(USD): $23.95 |
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Title: Girl in Hyacinth Blue by Susan Vreeland ISBN: 014029628X Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: 03 October, 2000 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: The Passion of Artemisia by Susan Vreeland ISBN: 0142001821 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: 31 December, 2002 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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