The Mark of the Angel [Hardcover]

Nancy Huston (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1999

In the spring of 1957, a young German woman arrives in Paris to take a position as housekeeper to a bachelor flautist. Soon Saffie and Raphael are married and a son, Emil, is born. One day, Saffie and Emil go on an errand to the Marais - the Jewish Quarter - where they encounter an intriguing instrument maker, Andras. Thus begins a passionate affair that will last a decade. Framed within the love triangle is an exploration of the ways in which individual lives and historical events intersect, from the Soviet invasion of Budapest to the Kennedy assassination, and the different ways in which the German woman and the Hungarian Jew remember World War II and the Algerian war for independence.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

From Nancy Huston, a Canadian writer who's lived in France for a couple of decades, comes a modest proposal in the form of a novel: Maybe millennial fiction shouldn't look forward. Maybe it should look back to the shames and sadnesses of the 20th century. The Mark of the Angel, Huston's U.S. debut and a bestseller in France, tells the story of Saffie, a young German girl who takes a job as a housekeeper in 1957 Paris. Her employer, a brilliant young flautist named Raphael, falls hard for her, despite (or perhaps because of) the fact that he finds her "impassive" and "impenetrable." Hard-eyed Saffie seems to sleepwalk through life, and as if in a dream, she and Raphael marry and have a son, Emil. When Raphael sends her off to have his flute repaired one day, he little suspects what he's setting in motion. In András, the instrument maker, Saffie finds a damaged twin. Both are victims of the horrible experiment of Hitler's war: German Saffie has endured not only rape and torture but also the knowledge of her own family's Nazi sympathies. Hungarian Jew András has lost his family and his country. The two embody the horrors that Europeans visited on each other in the middle of the 20th century. And they covertly embark on a five-year affair, during which their love comes to be sorely tested by the Algerian war for independence from France.

Huston's prose is cool, opaque, ironic, and intensely romantic. Her style and her story both owe a great debt to Milan Kundera's Unbearable Lightness of Being, a debt she seems to acknowledge explicitly: "Saffie is crushed, stifled, petrified by the... how to put it... the unbearable tenuousness of the moment... Dizzy with inexistence, she clutches at András's arm--and he, misunderstanding, sets Emil down in a chair on the café terrace--turns to his lover--takes her in his arms and begins to waltz with her... Ah! Thanks to András, the hideous unreality of the world has been held at bay once again, movement has turned back into true movement, instead of immobility in disguise." Kundera's preoccupation with Nietzsche's concept of the eternal return is clearly at work here too: The past, Huston warns us loud and clear, is never past. --Claire Dederer

From Publishers Weekly

Drenched in irony, and very French in sensibility, Huston's U.S. debut must overcome an unfortunate beginning before it gallops away with the reader's mesmerized attentionAbut once underway, it fascinates with its blend of cynicism and romance, and its dramatization of the roles of accident and fate, and of evil and injustice, in human history. Initially, one must accept a far-fetched plot: that when world-famous flutist Raphael Lepage sees Saffie, the young German woman who answers an ad for a maid to clean his luxurious Paris apartment, he immediately succumbs to overwhelming love and soon afterward marries herAdespite the fact that she is as emotionless as a zombie, does not even remotely return his affections and is anathema to his beloved mother, who has never forgiven the Nazi occupation 20 years before. Even the birth of a son does not thaw Saffie's cold indifference, which persists until she meets Andr s, a Hungarian-Jewish refugee who repairs musical instruments; the mutual recognition of irresistible passion releases all her emotions. During their liaisons in his little shop in the Marais, Andr s tells Saffie about the destruction of his family in Budapest, and she reveals her own traumatic memories of WWIIAthe Allied bombings, her father's complicity with the campaign of annihilation, her mother's brutal rape by conquering Russian soldiers. Even as their affair unfolds, however, the horrifying events of the 1940s are being repeated in Algeria and France, as FLN terrorists strike back at French atrocities. In the end, innocence must die, as, Huston reminds us, it always has and always will. While Huston often overwrites and sometimes indulges in arch asides, once she establishes her story's central ironies, the narrative achieves a relentless velocity. A scene in which both Saffie and Andr s recall separate incidents in which poorly buried bodies erupt through the earth, drenching the soil with blood, is a shattering reminder of the endless cycle of human violence. Canadian-born Huston has lived in France for more than three decades, where her books (seven novels plus nonfiction works) are bestsellers. BOMC and QPB selections; paperback rights to Vintage. (Oct.) FYI: The Mark of an Angel won the French Prix des Lectrices d'ELLE and the Prix des Librairies in Canada, and is shortlisted for the Prix Goncourt in France. Huston's other awards include the Prix Contrepoint, the Prix Goncourt Lyceen and the Canadian Governor General's Award in French.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 215 pages
• Publisher: Steerforth Press; 1st edition (October 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1883642647
• ISBN-13: 978-1883642648
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.8 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,538,086 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

35 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This is a great book., September 13, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Mark of the Angel (Hardcover)

I was privileged to be given an advance copy of Nancy Huston's new book, The Mark of the Angel. I started reading it over supper one evening this summer after arriving home from work late, and didn't put it down -- *couldn't* put it down -- until after midnight when I finished it in tears. I was totally caught up in the lives of these people, totally engrossed in their interwoven, tragic lives and the larger context in which they lived.

It took my breath away. It is a beautifully written book, very poetic, profoundly moving, and such an important novel for the end of this century. I haven't read such a powerful novel since Poisonwood Bible, which I also read in galley a year earlier. (And I read (and listen to) a *lot* of books.) Like Poisonwood, it is at once a detailed study of the intimate lives of people you come to care about very much, and also a profound statement about power and imperialism. It offers spiritual and political lessons as well as its poetry.

I hope this isn't a spoiler... but when I finished the book, aside from wiping away my tears, the only other thing I could think to do that seemed appropriate was to give my (teen-ager) son a long, warm hug.

I hope that many, many, many people will discover this gem of a book and love it as much as I did.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful!, January 23, 2001

By 

CoffeeGurl - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Mark of the Angel: A Novel (Paperback)

What beautiful and unique writing! Nancy Huston is a great French-Canadian writer whose work I will be looking forward to reading in the future. The Mark of the Angel is a stunning novel set in Paris during the 1950's. The historic feel of the novel -- after World War 2, during the Algerian war -- is extremely accurate! The story of a daughter of a Nazi having an affair with a Jewish Communist is thought provoking and intense. There are various political views illustrated in this novel.

Huston's writing style makes this beautiful work of art seem like silk. The narrative style is very unique. A tale of adultery, this novel sort of reminds me of The Scarlet Letter, but with strong political views and great historical feel. I highly recommend this book!

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Memorable and very well written, October 16, 2000

By 

K. Denny (southern california) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Mark of the Angel: A Novel (Paperback)

The structure and style of this novel are engaging and effective. The interjections of the narrator force the reader to focus not only on Saffie's story, but to pull back from this narrow focus and absorb the author's bigger message. Her message is a grim one - that history teaches us little, and that human beings will continue to abuse and murder one another with the belief that their cause is right and justifiable. I think the reader could have understood the message with a little less input from the narrator whose voice was, at times, intrusive and tended to state the obvious. This is a novel that delivers a disturbing assessment of mankind, but it is beautifully written and gives the reader much food for thought. I will forever think of the philtrum (that funny little dent between your nose and your upper lip) as "the mark of the angel" now, and remember Ms. Huston's powerful book and message as I do.