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Angel Makers

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I read once that people who think old country villages are lovely and bucolic have never heard the rats in the thatching. The village in "The Angel Makers" is like this. The thick dark forest hovers around the houses which seem to gather together for warmth and safety. The people reflecting their environment are sneaky, mean and gossipy. One of their targets is Sari, the narrator of the story and the main character. Sari's mother is dead, and she lives with her father, the village Shaman. She has inherited her father's knowledge and skills. Besides this, the village herbalist and midwife, has taken her under her wing. Added together, this makes Sari a mysterious and slightly frightening figure in the eyes of the other villagers.

Sari's father feels his end is coming, and he makes plans to have his daughter marry the son of the weathiest family in town. The young man, Ferenc is already in love with Sari, and they plan to marry in the spring, except that World War I intervenes. The recruiters come from Vienna and, filled with patriotic fervor, most of the men and boys in the village leave to join the Army.

The atmosphere in the village changes as the women take over the chores and begin to run things themselves. In the light of their freedom and growing sense of power, the women bloom. They become happier and quickly the village runs better than it ever did when the men were there. There are a few women who miss their husbands, but, by and large, the men are not missed. After a couple of years, a group of Austrian soldiers show up with prisoners in tow. These prisoners are Italian, charming and very different from the village men. Relationships form and pretty soon the women start wondering what it would be like if their husbands never came back. The war ends, the Italian prisoners return home and the village men come back to the village. However, if the men were dull and morose before, the war has exacerbated their natural traits and PTSD has made things worse. Beatings and punishments are common. In the meantime, Ferenc, who had been wounded, has returned. Sari has had a deep relationship with a prisoner, but she has kept her virginity because of her upcoming marriage. Ferenc has developed paranoia along with all the other complexes which he brought back from the war. He begins to beat Sari so that her life is in danger. Also, having finally been intimate with her Italian, she is pregnant and doesn't know which man is the father. She becomes afraid that Ferenc will kill her or the baby. She goes to the herbalist for help, and their solution, and the way it changes the village makes up the second half of the book.

This is a study in human nature and the human being's need to survive in the face of adversity. It is a small book, moves very quickly and is well worth the time to read it. It shows that we, many times, don't really know the people we live with, and we, ourselves don't know what we are capable of doing to save ourselves. According to the author, this book is based on a true story.

Sari was very different from the other people in her tiny, isolated village, Nagyrév. Sari was more intelligent than the others were. She was intelligent in a matter of fact way. She used her innate intelligence to improve her life. She wasn't one to let life happen to her, to let it spin her out of control.

Because she was different, she was shunned by the superstitious villagers and even considered to be a witch by some. This all changed when World War I started and the men started going to fight. Finally, everyone seemed to get along. Women who were burdened by abuse and excessive demands, flowered. Sari, midwife and medicine woman, became an essential part of her village. She became liked and respected. It was a happy time. But, in the back of their minds, the women worried about what they would do when their husbands returned. They could not bear to think of returning to the life they had before the men left. They could not even consider returning to a life of abuse. Sari wouldn't either.

This story, although very shocking, is based on a true story. It is a story of the human spirit, especially that of the suppressed woman.

Effectively written, this is a story filled with suspense, mystery, love, and hope. The characters are extremely well-developed and the descriptions of the stark, plain town near its foreboding forest are very realistic, clear, and unforgettable. It serves as a perfect backdrop to the feelings of hopelessness that the characters experience. This is perfectly composed in every way!

My review jumped to 5 stars when I researched and found this IS TRUE. Written as compelling fiction, it's the dastardly accounting of women of a small Hungary town who decided to take life into their own hands. Names were changed to protect the guilty, for some reason. The end is a bit altered, the prerogative of a fictionalization. The original local was Nagyrev, not Falucska. A startling rendition of murder accounts involving mariticide (husband by wife), abortion, femicide, filicide, and more. Once the line is crossed...

It's not a pleasant cozy read, not documentary either. It's historic fiction where "You can't have beauty without a bit of terror." Beauty is the quaint village, terror comes portioned by housewives. It's unique reading when a witch/murderess is protagonist and the victim is the antagonist bad boy. But the author's note does say "heavily embellished (true story) by the author's imagination." Is there a feminist ax to grind. No matter--it makes for a compelling read; always on the suspenseful edge of "What's fiction-What's fact."

Character-driven novel of true-life adaptation through the minds and desires of Hungarian women living through the shortages of wartime (which includes men shortages.) Groins cry for attention from the men-less women of the Falucska village and nearby Italian officers in Gazdag POW camp. Mutual consumption. Titillated survival. Too bad...this could have better included the inner struggles of POWs housed nearby as well. It is this small bit that falls short.

You the reader feel affection for young Sari who desires education more than physical gratification. You sympathize with her emotional failings. You trill when she takes command of her destiny. The you become appalled when this widowed mother begins dealing death like serving ale over the local pub counter.

I was shocked.
I was also educated.
Certainly, I was engrossed.
This debut novel should make a name for author Jessica Gregson. And unfortunately, if she's single, she may never find a husband...unless he's illiterate. :)

They say the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.. and having read this which is based on a true story, I'd say they may be right.

It's a novel about the abuse of power and how what can be a good thing in one's hands can become something else, something evil in another's.

Sari is a teenager branded as a slight "witch" because she has the power to use herbs and such to help with wounds, illness, and pregnancies. She feels ostracized by her little town and so when the wealthiest boy agrees to marry her when she becomes a certain age, she feels lucky. But he goes to war first, WW1 to be exact and while the men are gone from this small town, the women go a little stir crazy and trouble brews when some Italian POWs show up. You get the picture.. Eventually the women get used to men being gone, even Sari.

Marco, a handsome Italian POW makes Sari start to think about some things. "..you're happy for people just to tolerate you because of the person you've married?" Does she want to be liked for simply being Ferenc's wife when he comes back? Does the town respect her for her or just because of Ferenc? She's left little time to ponder because Ferenc does come back and he's not the same man. None of the men are the same. Every man is changed by the war.. wounded.. afflicted with nightmares.. And the women don't like them, have gotten used to not having them around.. prefer it even..

But some are downright abusive and what starts as good intentions.. kill this man, save a baby.. kill this man, save a woman.. ends up being greatly abused and Sari realizes the town never respected her at all and they may just try to blame her for it all.

Extremely well written, suspenseful at some parts, shocking in others. Lots of things happened that I didn't foresee. I couldn't predict this one at all. I could also see from "both sides of the fence" in this one. I didn't like what some of the characters did at times, but I could also understand. It takes a skilled writer to pull this off. I also enjoyed the conflicting emotions that Sari had about what she was doing at different parts of the story.

Love, sex, intrigue, murder, war.. this book has it all.

Favorite quote: (Judit's views on religion)"I have no respect for anything that only wants to stop people from doing things."

Killing your husband by feeding him arsenic always makes him uneasy.
The Angel Makers by Jessica Gregson
A riveting tale of women taking control of their lives. The book offers a snapshot of the time between 1914 and 1928 in a small European village were World War I changes the lives of the local women. Was what these women did right or wrong? That question is up to the reader to ponder. However, I did find it hard to put the book down after I started reading as I was compelled to learn out how it was going to end for these troubled women.

This is the story of a group of women in a small Hungarian village who poisoned their husbands when they returned from fighting WWI because many of the women had taken lovers from the POW camp nearby and because most of their husbands were violent brutes. Frankly, I did not believe this story and was all set to give this book a less-than-positive review, but then I looked it up on Google and found that something like this did happen and that it is well documented. However, even though it is based on a true story, I still feel skeptical.

First of all the prison for prisoners of war that springs up in their neighborhood while their husbands are off fighting the war seems much too lenient. The women work there as cooks and housemaids and freely have affairs with the men, often leaving the prison itself and going off into the woods to make love. In one instance, the prisoner actually comes to a woman's house. Also, the woman who is responsible for most of the poisonings is well respected in town and actually sees herself as doing a service. She is the heroine of the story and is portrayed with sympathy and understanding. And, really, how can every single returning husband be a viscous brute who deserves killing?

That said, I did enjoy the book. It was a fast read and a good story, well told. I just wish it didn't glorify these poisonings so much.

The Angel Makers relates a partially fictionalized account of actual events that occurred in a Hungarian village during and after WW1. Focusing primarily on the lives of two specific women in the village, Sari Arany and Aunt Judit, author Jessica Gregson, recaptures the age old story of life, death and the struggle between the sexes focusing on the domestic battles that the women of the village have been subjected to.

Due to the lack of any medical professional, Sari and Aunt Judit have functioned as the town healers administering to the needs of the locals as well as to the residents at a local facility housing P.O.W.'s. When the war ends and the men of the town return, the women of the town, having survived the War and become used to their independence are unwilling to once again be subjected to the oppression, drunkenness, or laziness of their husbands and enlist the help of the two "healers" in disposing of their unwanted mates. The method they utilize to achieve their ends involves the use of arsenic made by boiling flypaper, skimming off the lethal residue, reducing it to a powder and liberally adding the concoction to their victims food. After initially disposing of unwanted spouses, some continued their "family cleansing" by poisoning other family members who had either become a burden or who had considerable property or valuables that could be inherited. The practice went undetected for many years until someone noticed a suspiciously high number of deaths in this particular village and that the remaining residents were, for the most part, female.

One last thing.....there is one particular four letter word which appears about a half dozen times in the narrative which some readers may find offensive. I will admit that other less jarring words could have been substituted, however that small criticism aside the book itself is well written, suspenseful and extremely informative........and not just for the historical aspects of the story. I would venture to say that the author may have contributed to an increase in the sale of flypaper at your local Home Depot and that spouses should beware of mates who suddenly take an unexpected interest in the culinary arts. 3 1/2 stars

In a novel that reads like a Grimm's fairy tale, Gregson reimagines a true story, as much a reminder of the unpredictability of human nature and the subjugation of women as it is an infamous series of murders. At the start of World War I in 1916, a provincial Hungarian village has sent its men off to fight, the women left to wait. Engaged to Ferenc, the son of the village's wealthiest family, Sari Arany cannot live unsupervised after her father's death. Until Ferenc returns, she takes up residence with her Aunt Judit, a midwife, planning to blend her healing skills with those learned from Judit. Long-accustomed to her treatment as an outsider, Sari values her education as the daughter of the village "Taltos", or wise man, willing to bear the ostracism of those who find her strange, especially with the added status her fiancé confers.

When Ferenc's family home is leased to the army for the confinement of Italian prisoners-of-war, the females riddled with anticipation, the presence of men, albeit foreigners unexpected. While the war drags on, the women escape their usual dreary existence, flocking to the camp to offer services as cooks and laundresses. The inevitable occurs, a steady stream of supplicants appearing at Judit's door requesting precautions to avoid the consequences of romantic liaisons, but there is no remedy for heartbreak or the shock of the village when the war ends, the Italians have left and world-weary, damaged husbands return. Even Sari is not exempt from entanglement, faced with a dramatically altered Ferenc, emotionally volatile and free with his fists. Sari faces her darkest hour and a decision that ultimately unleashes an atavistic response from village women, who demand her complicity.

Freed from the constraints of historical fact, Gregson describes the ease that spreads like a river of molasses through the village with the confluence of strangers and opportunity, as shocking as the chill of suspicion as men take their rightful places, their wives seething with resentment at freedom reluctantly forfeit. In a village dominated by tradition, the balance of power shifts once again, though not measurably, an imperative for murder become whim, a raging fever spreading through village women that breeds stupidity, greed and carelessness. Rife with moral ambiguity, a cautionary tale is born, humanity waxing predictable because "everyone's started thinking that just finishing people off is the best way to deal with problems, but it's not." Luan Gaines/2011.

What would you do to protect yourself and, more importantly, your unborn child? Based on a true story fromWorld War I, this novel gives life to a bleak, remote Hungarian town with very strong women, who are determined to survive their (mostly) abusive men who come back from the war damaged and disturbed. One poisons her husband and manages to pass it off as if he died of an illness, and before she knows it, she and the other village women are headed down that slippery slope. where should the line be drawn between which men should die and which not? Really a great novel and fascinating story, all the more so because it is true.

The Angel Makers is the type of book that draws you right in, the descriptions of the village, the people, the forest which isolated this community from the rest of the world...it all came together so easily and so readily, I was hooked from the very first few pages.

I went back and forth between understanding these women and the actions they felt they couldn't avoid and really despising them for making their own problems and not realizing that you just can't take that sort of thing into your own hands, no matter what. It was a snowball that took off down the hill and trapped everyone in it. Lie after lie after lie, it was bound to come unraveled eventually, and it does, and again, I wasn't sure if I wanted them to escape justice or if I wanted them to hang!

I realize that the world the author created for us here is very realistic of that sort of life in that particular time period, so I can't really judge these women by today's standards. The world just isn't like that for women anymore, and I tried very hard to put myself in their shoes, to wonder what I would have done given their limited options and circumstances. I'm just glad that we've come this far so that most women today do not have to deal with such despair and hopelessness.

I give The Angel Makers five stars because it was very well written and it gave me a glimpse into a world I know so little of. I also liked it because it really made me ponder things I normally wouldn't consider. I like that in a book.