6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
a memorable debut novel, beautifully written, September 5, 2005
This review is from: Angel and Apostle (Hardcover)
At the end of Nathaniel Hawthorne's timeless novel, The Scarlet Letter, Hester Prynne's daughter Pearl has been born, raised, and lives in Europe. Angel and Apostle begins when Pearl is a child in Massachusetts and follows her life through adulthood. Ms. Noyes weaves an enthralling account of what Pearl's life might have been in the mid-to-late 17th century. The character
and plot development are first rate as Noyes captures the true essence of Pearl's personality, life, and times.
Life has been difficult for Pearl and her outcast mother. Townfolk shun the dignified adulterous woman who wears the letter "A" over her heart like a badge of courage. These same merciless Puritans call Pearl "the devil's spawn." Their only kindness and support comes from a frail, gentle hearted
minister. Pearl is a precocious child blessed with a vivid imagination and her father's restless spirit. She loves the forests and seashore, the wild animals, and spends her days exploring the area around her cottage. One day she ventures near the home of a wealthy shipping family, the Miltons, and
meets their youngest son, Simon. Simon is blind. His older brother, Nehemiah, loves Simon but has always considered him a burden. Reluctantly, he allows Pearl to introduce Simon to the natural world she loves. The relationship between Pearl and the Miltons grows over time, and in the process changes the lives of everyone around them.
With quietly savage prose, Deborah Noyes takes Pearl to adulthood, marriage, and motherhood. We experience her life in America and England, the blossoming of love, and the heartbreak borne of passion and loss. Readers smell the sea, the bite of chill air, and live the very heartbeats of each character.
This book is a literary classic and highly recommended.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Angel and Apostle could very well be the best debut novel of the year., August 30, 2005
This review is from: Angel and Apostle (Hardcover)
This is Pearl's story.
You may remember Pearl, the elfish daughter of Hester Prynne in Hawthorne's classic The Scarlet Letter. If not, don't worry you do not need to be well read in the classics to read Angel and Apostle. Pearl is strong enough to stand on her own.
I love that teh author offers us a great insight into this fascinating time in history. Historical fiction is a favorite genre and I really think that this is one of the best I've read. The story begins when she meets a neighboring youth, Simon. Pearls passionate approach to life and the world around her brings these two and their families into a life long relationship that will stay with you long after you finish this book. I work in a bookstore and was lucky enough to read a review copy.. I am telling all to read this book!
enjoy!
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
(4.5) How far does the apple fall from the tree?, September 11, 2005
This review is from: Angel and Apostle (Hardcover)
Noyes' novel, a post-The Scarlet Letter treatment of Hester Prynne's years raising her illegitimate daughter, Pearl, mirrors the arcane verbiage of the era, which begins, in this case, in 1649 New England. At that time, Pearl is a child of about seven years, half fairy sprite and half human, taking her cues from the righteous adults around her, who are given to stoning the less fortunate members of a society ruled by excessively rigid standards. Poor Hester is a shadow of her former self, living with Pearl in an isolated cottage, doing needlework for her betters and rushing to and fro to comfort the sick. Rather than teach her daughter the same independence that allowed her to rebel against a repressive society, Hester instructs the girl in the ways of the sinner, ever cautioning against spirit, imagination and individualism. It is hard to believe that this woman, now faded as a country mouse, ever had the passion to confront her own desires.
Early on, Pearl fastens her attentions on Simon Milton, a blind boy whose dying mother is attended by Hester. Simon's older brother, Nehemiah, allows Pearl to take Simon on outings, but when she fails to properly care for him, Pearl is banished in disgrace. She is, after all, only a child. Later, Prynne and her daughter are taken to England by the Milton's, where Hester walks freely without her badge of sin, the tattered red "A" that adorns her clothing in New England. Their lot is not much improved, as Hester places herself in bondage for the next seven years to a Milton family member. Even in England, mother and daughter are pursued by the enigmatic Doctor Devlin, a man Hester avoids but Pearl is drawn to, as he lurks menacingly through Pearl's youth in New England.
As a child, Pearl is far too precocious for her years, her language too sophisticated, hindering my appreciation of the novel at the beginning. But as Pearl matures, her thoughts turn to less maudlin persuasions, the opposite sex now of particular interest. At last perception meets reality and the character matches her rich vocabulary. Now that her fate is more her own, although still dictated by the prevailing religious intolerance, Pearl makes her own willful mistakes. However, as confused as an adult as she was as a child, Pearl is forever tangled in her mother's past, haunted by her father's identity, bound to the ghostly remnants of life in New England, a victim of the self-righteous, Bible-quoting individuals originally penned by Nathaniel Hawthorne.
It is always risky to write a sequel to a classic, a tale that stands because of the author's clarity and profound observations of cultural hypocrisy. Noyes does a more than adequate job of capturing the sounds and images of time and place, but in writing Angel and Apostle, Hester Prynne is robbed of her spirit and iconic status, left in the dust by a daughter who is the product of a confusing moral stasis that denies humanity in its rush to glorify the word of God. Perhaps that is Prynne's inevitable fate. Pearl must seek her own voice, find release from the morass she has created in her life and understand the meaning of forgiveness, for herself and others; more importantly, she must take on the burdens of motherhood to know the true heart of her own mother. What is even more frightening is Noyes prescience in crafting a modern morality tale, couched in Puritan New England, that fits just as well in the confusing moral stew of modern society. For this reason alone, centuries later, Angel and Apostle is chilling. Luan Gaines/2005.
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