Customer Reviews

Angelic Darkness

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This is a strange story. It didn't seem like an American novel at all, perhaps because the author, Richard Zimler, lives in Portugal immersed in a foreign culture which seeps into his American-set story. The prose is rich and inviting, the story complex and mysterious.

The setting is San Francisco in the 1980's. The main character Bill has recently separated from his wife. Haunted by this split, by his growing distance from his younger brother Jay, his estrangement from his mother, and memories of his cruel father, Bill feels lost and alone. He decides that he cannot face living in his house alone and decides to take in a tenant. The potential tenants who answer his ad are dreary, dull, not suitable at all. Bill almost changes his mind when suddenly a striking man appears at his doorstep: Peter. Peter is urbane, intelligent, mysterious, intriguing. Bill doesn't quite know why he finds Peter so attractive, but, even fearing he's making a mistake as he does it, he agrees to take Peter as a tenant.

Their friendship grows slowly. Peter introduces Bill to several characters as strange as he is: Mara the singer who had a childhood illness that destroyed the developmental hormones she needs for normal growth. She looks fifteen but is approaching fifty. Then there's Rain, the young prostitute, and William, an otherworldly, menacing older figure that seems to be a threat not only to Bill but to Peter himself. The gloominess of some of this is somehow still beautiful and inviting. As the novel progresses Bill begins to doubt everything, ultimately wondering if Peter is even really a human being, or some combination good/evil "angel of darkness."

Surprisingly, this dark novel has a happy ending. There seemed to me to be a few loose ends never explained. But then real life has its loose ends whose truths are never revealed to us, so I accepted these minor omissions in the novel.

Deftly told, richly described, this is a very unique novel. If you enjoy strange stories, this may just be the book for you.

I found this novel nothing short of dreadful. Despite exotic trappings and labored arcane rigamarole, the characters are cardboard creations pushed through a plot that is totally transparent from square one. Even in his better efforts Zimler's style tends to cloy because of his evident belief that his work is deeply meaningful and must therefore be difficult to grasp, and as a result he constantly makes the obvious even more painfully so with authorial nudges in the ribs. He has hit rock bottom here.

The characters of the Angelic Darkness caught my eye when I was actually looking for the Last Kabbalist of Lisbon, absent from my book store. I was looking for stories about Sephardic Jews and it was recommended to me. The Angelic Darkness had a continuous thread. I thought for awhile that the characters in Bill's book about the Inquisition would reappear as promised. The ending gave me the impression that Zimler stopped writing his book and started telling about his love affair. They were only scantily connected. At first, I thought this was a weird, spiritual, loose kind of book. Then, at the end, I thought it was just a weak story by a good writer who wasn't writing well at the time. Proves anyone can get a book published.

This is a strange book, it invites you in from the start and the writing is both very good at times, and a little too prosey at others. It is compelling but I found the subject at times to horrific to contemplate.

It is the story of Bill are recent divorcee ironically both with a dark past, and at the same time a fear of the dark. Much of what is around the edges of his life is the threat of darkness rather than the actual reality of it. The stories his father told him of the war, the jar with its strange contents, the oddly androgynous room mate he brings in.

I was interested in this book but found some of things in it almost too horrible to contemplate and found that made the novel (for me) more difficult to read. I did not want to know about the horrors in the background - so this was definitely the wrong novel for me to read. On the other hand I really enjoyed Zimler's writing and I will be keen to try another book of his as he is both stylish and very readable.

I just think this particular book was not for me, but maybe another

I found this to be an imaginative tale with numerous surprising twists. It's very well written, and the author is particularly adept at crafting dialogue that rings true. I was surprised at the degree of tension and anticipation he created in the reader while merely listening to the thoughts of the protagonist. Being from the San Francisco Bay Area, it was fun to read a novel set in a context I was familiar with. And unlike Tom Wolfe (whose recent novel I nonetheless enjoyed), Zimler got it right! All told, a thoroughly engaging read, which I wholeheartedly recommend.

"The Angelic Darkness" is a worthy successor to "The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon". I loved it for many of the same reasons I enjoyed that earlier book: being transported to a different times and places (though this time within living memory), being perplexed by riddles which are more than just clues in a whodunnit, the characterizations so real that you feel sure you've met his characters in your own life. The author's greatest achievement is to intice us to participate in the quest for truths both factual and philosophical. This is what makes "The Angelic Darkness" compelling both as a story and as a mystery. As in "The Last Kaballist", Zimler suggests possible meanings but leaves enough ambiguity that readers are left to form their own interpretation of the meaning of the events. I can't remember enjoying a book so much in years. I couldn't put it down.

In A Remembrance of Things Past, Proust wrote brilliantly about the mystery of personality, in the sense that we always question ourselves regarding the personality of those we love: who is the one I love and who am I when I love? This might very well be the key theme to this novel. The Angelic Darkness is a beautifully written story of love, mystery, and the search for the self. Bill Ticino, the narrator, is someone who has been through life with all the lies, confusion and treacheries of a common man. Then, certain dramatic events change everything and he is forced to face his own self and the demons that lurk inside his soul. Abandoned by his wife and terrified of being alone, he rents a room to Peter, a mysterious Portuguese man, a storyteller from Angola, who reveals a totally different world to him, full of disturbing and exotic sensations. Bill goes through a rite of passage, a true coming of age. He is reborn, and he experiences all the beauty and pain of this process. In his voyage he searches out his own sexual and emotional identity and is able to transcend the seeming inevitability of a commonplace existence, one condemned to mediocrity. Peter influences Bill's life so completely that he begins to perceive the world in a way that makes him question all his previous opinions. He discovers his deeper self, becomes ready to love and to fully enjoy the pleasures of the senses--to experience rage, brutality, remorse and fear. On becoming more human, he transcends his existential predicament, with all the ecstasy and danger that this implies. The dichotomies of angel/devil, male/female, good/bad, and light/darkness exist inside all of us to different extents. Our daily lives, marked by routine, make us forget that we carry this richness within ourselves. Richard Zimler, in this magical novel, shows the way toward wonderful discoveries that no psychoanalysis or religious feelings can achieve by themselves.

Throughout history there have been legends of angels who exist within a kind of parallel reality, a space-time warp. Literally, this is the story of such an angel in San Francisco in the early '80's who enters a man's life and catalyzes his transformation. In the wake of separation from his wife, Bill Ticino, the central character, is depressed and haunted by memories of an abusive father. He advertises fora housemate. An enigmatic Brazilian, Peter, moves into his house along with a magical hoopoe bird, Maria. He introduces Bill to an entire supporting castof charactes: Mara, a Brazilian singer, Rain,a Tenderloin prostitute, William, Peter's German Jewish adoptive father. As in all legends, Peter and the bird vanish overnight when his mission is complete. The morgue where Bill last saw Rain, is now a meat-packing plant. Mara's house is occupied by a stranger who never heard of her. The Brazilian Consulate where Peter worked has no record of his existence. Metaphorically, this is the story of a man's inward wanderings, ofhis encountering darkness--Jungian shadow--and integrating it within himself. This includes realization of the homosexual componenet of his own being at a time when thedarkness of AIDS is spreading over the world. Zimler's writing is engrossing and immediate. The story draws one in with its nests of stories embedded within.

Throughout history there have been legends of angels who exist within a kind of parallel reality, a space-time warp. Literally, this is the story of such an angel in San Francisco in the early '80's who enters a man's life and catalyzes his transformation. In the wake of separation from his wife, Bill Ticino, the central character, is depressed and haunted by memories of an abusive father. He advertises for a housemate. An enigmatic Brazilian, Peter, moves into his house along with a magical hoopoe bird, Maria. He introduces Bill to an entire supporting castof charactes: Mara, a Brazilian singer, Rain,a Tenderloin prostitute, William, Peter's German Jewish adoptive father. As in all legends, Peter and the bird vanish overnight when his mission is complete. The morgue where Bill last saw Rain, is now a meat-packing plant. Mara's house is occupied by a stranger who never heard of her. The Brazilian Consulate where Peter worked has no record of his existence. Metaphorically, this is the story of a man's inward wanderings, ofhis encountering darkness--Jungian shadow--and integrating it within himself. This includes realization of the homosexual componenet of his own being at a time when thedarkness of AIDS is spreading over the world. Zimler's writing is engrossing and immediate. The story draws one in with its nests of stories embedded within.

I never have been able to get into science fiction/fantasy books and this is definitely a novel of intricate fantasy. I would have loved a story about how language connects/separates/hurts/heals us, but that's not what I found here. The characters were completely stock: the struggling, unsure protagonist; the mysterious iconoclastic stranger offering redemption; the ice-queen shrew; the golden-hearted (ex)whore; the tragic, doomed orphan. There was very little that was subtle about this book. Hints that Peter was celestial were very heavy-handed. The dreams that Bill kept having were obvious and seemed like quick and easy ways for Mr. Zimler to make connections and to move the story along. Nothing reminded me remotely of E.M. Forster, the book jacket blurb notwithstanding. Clive Barker, maybe; and like the novels of Clive Barker, I found _Angelic Darkness_ a little too pat and underdeveloped.