Customer Reviews

Miss Garnet's Angel: A Novel

5 star:		(19)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Retired school teacher, Julia Garnet, is lonely and at a loss with what to do with her life after the death of her flat mate of many years, and decides to spend 6 months in Venice. A confirmed communist, she is amazed at the ease with which she is falling under the spell of the magnificent architecture, especially the churches, which at first she finds decadent, in view of her strict anti-church attitude. She befriends a young couple who are restoring an old chapel and becomes very involved in their lives, as well as meeting- and being totally charmed by a very dashing art dealer- who wines and dines her.Julia falls in love for the first time in her life and is shattered when things don't turn out as well as she'd hoped. I found this book to have an other-worldly feel to it as though Venice itself was responsible for normally prosiac people acting differently, just as if they were somehow charmed and under the influence of old paintings and statues, particularly those of the angel Raphael, whose biblical story interweaves with that of Julia. It's a gem of a book with such a luminous feel to it that I'm sure I'll read it again fairly soon.

And, though reviews can sometimes lead you astray, this book is a marvelous read! I enjoyed it from beginning to end. To see how far Julia Garnet travels, and how much she learns during this story, moved me. And the changes move along slowly. You aren't battered with them. The reader sees Miss Garnet trying to work things through, so that she can move forward as she needs to. A wonderful character.

Salley Vickers is one of two writers whose discovery in the last year has once again made me glad I can still find wonderful writing. It is always a delight to discover an author to add to the "must read all they do" list. A few years ago it was Michael Chabon, and I await his next with baited breath, but in the last year there have been Charles Portis ("Masters of Atlantis" and more), and Salley Vickers. I saw this book in the library and read reviews online before reading it. It is NOT a quick and easy read, as someone suggested in these reviews. It is a parallel rendering of the story of Julia Garnet and the biblical book of Tobit, and the point is the realization that our lives aren't as cut and dried as modernity would have us believe. Raphael the Archangel is the central protagonist really, and his presence seems to seep into the story at every turn. How Julie grows and blooms is the surface story, but underneath there is a stream of the ethereal which also runs through Salley Vickers other two books, "Instances of the Number 3" and "Mr. Golightly." I read these two right after this one. I highly recommend them all.

On the surface, Miss Garnet's Angel seems to have all the elements necessary for a great piece of literature. There is an exotic setting, a well defined central character to assume an "everyman" role, good supporting characters that bring out facets of the central character's personality, and a solid narrative which explores several themes. The most visited theme is how travel can create a more complete person by opening up different aspects of one's persona. Also, an examination of art's power to invoke spirituality and an exploration of the meaning of love frequently reoccur throughout the book.

With all of these elements, one could reasonably expect a solid, if not spectacular, novel. Yet, for some reason, Vickers never quite puts all of these pieces together. The setting, while adequately described, is never established as the only place where this story could've occurred. The main character never transcends her commonness to become memorable. The themes, while frequently discussed, never seem to reach a resolution. Finally, the unrealistic fate of the several characters, especially Miss Garnet and the twins, leaves much to be desired.

There are enough elements that are adequately presented in Miss Garnet's Angel to make it a perfectly acceptable choice for reading. But, by never fully developing these elements, Vickers produced an average book instead of the great book it could have been. Because of those shortcomings, one might be better off looking at other books before settling on Miss Garnet's Angel.

I wanted to like this book. Badly. Maybe that's why I kept turning pages, seeking for some redeeming feature or moment. Alas, I found none. The theme of the novel is obvious from the beginning: Miss Garnett, the main character, finds herself living a meaningless, loveless life, with (probably many) barren years stretching in front of her. This, the theme of a mid-life crises that sometimes prompts people to make the most daring, sublime...or idiotic...things, is a fruitful one in literature, and many a great writer has chosen to subtlely convey this message inside wonderful stories.

However, subtlety is not to be found here. We are repeatedly hit on the head with this theme from the beginning, and know from page one what is the matter with the character because the annoying authorial voice keeps telling us every two lines in case we forget. We also know from the beginning what is the element that will save Miss Garnett from her loveless life: from the moment she first steps on Venice she keeps having the oddest feelings whenever she enters a church or looks at religious imagery.

Now, don't get me wrong, I feel the greatest respect for religion, and know jungian analysts state that our interest in religious issues increases (or should increase) with this mid-life crisis . Also, I love Jungian theories, and the use they make of religion,literature and art in general -and, surprise surprise, the author has been a Jungian analyst for some time.In fact, there is no problem at all with the theme, only with the way it is conveyed. And with the main character. Because she's so passive that the only thing she does in most of the story is feel oooooodd feelings whenever she steps into a church, and of course to ask herself "what would Marx or Lenin say of all this?" (hint: she has been a leftist all her life). And, while she goes about feeling oooodd and doing nothing, you ask yourself how can other characters (such as Carlo)feel interested in her. But then, it's not long before you learn they are all just cardboard people, characters with no flesh and bone. Utterly boring characters that are used by the author to repeat again and again (without making us feel for one single moment the pain, fear, awe they are supposed to feel) the OBVIOUS message of her novel.

And when the voice shifts and we get a narrator from Biblical times....oh, boy!! What this narrator says sounds so modern and didactical (as if the author wanted to make the story of Tobit understood by VERY STUPID modern-day children, presenting all kind of plausible explanations, like, how could this biblical character have really lived for 180 years?!....logical explanation for stupid children:maybe they didn't count the years in those times as we do now!!!) as to be actually insulting !!!

So, OK, I got the message. But, having been given it by page 5, and having been offered no interesting characters, whose conflicts I can learn something from, or story to delve deeper in the theme and explore it, I wonder why I wasted more time in this book.

This novel follows approximately eleven months in the life of Miss Julia Garnet, from the Feast of Epiphany to the Feast of Raphael. Her friend, Harriet, has just died suddenly. With her habits already shaken up by the death of her companion, Julia decides to rattle them even further by jetting off to Venice, to enjoy the kind of holiday that Harriet had been planning for their joint retirement from teaching. Miss Julia Garnet is a Communist who's never been kissed, so it's something of a surprise to see her falling in love, and to learn of her abounding interest in an angel.

At first glance, this is a Death in Venice/Don't Look Now kind of book. Carlo, the man for whom Julia falls for big time, turns out to be quite an apocryphal
character, in the modern meaning of the word. Thankfully, Harriet wasn't in the habit of wearing lurid red anoraks, and Salley Vickers' new novel, The Instances of
the Number 3 also opens with a death. However, Julia does encounter the twins who are restoring the Chapel-of-the-Plague (which Salley Vickers seems to have invented for the novel), similar to the sort of work carried out by Donald Sutherland's character in Don't Look Now. However, there is the scene where Julia abandons her guidebook by the Reverend Crystal in St. Mark's Basilica (a reference to A Room with a View perhaps?), and this is where she meets Carlo for the first time. St. Mark's Basilica is very beautiful, but as Carlo tells Julia, all the art has been nicked from other cultures and appropriated by the victorious Venetians of past history. One could say that Salley Vickers has gone about doing the same thing (especially with regards to her new novel), yet there is a more apt simile to describe what she is doing here. Like Gianantonio Guardi, Salley Vickers could be said to be borrowing poses or motifs from other artists, but she recasts them in her own vivid manner (to paraphrase Emil Kren and Daniel Marx's description of Guardi's painting 'The Angel Appears to Tobias'). The quotes that Salley Vickers uses in this novel always seem appropriate, and always seem to be leading somewhere, whereas the quotations in The Instances of the Number 3 seem forced and appropriated. Although I thought there could be more behind Salley Vickers' naming Julia's school as 'St Barnabas and St James'. There's a thread throughout the novel concerning St Mark, who let down St Barnabas and St Paul by returning home early from one of their first journeys, and I couldn't see a link between St Barnabas and St James. Towards the end of the novel, Julia traces Tobias's journey on a map. In so doing, she's conveying the importance of such journeys, to our common history and our own personal development. For interested readers, I've created a page concerning the cultural context of this novel.

We are invited to see Julia as several archetypal figures. She could be Saint Ursula, watched over by the Angel Raphael as in the cover picture of the book, cropped from a painting by Carpaccio (although it's hard to see her pupils following her anywhere willingly, especially not to a massacre, since they tend to regard her as a joke and sing rude songs about her). She could be the legendary traveller of the folk story of the Grateful Dead, as embodied by the dramatisation of the Book of Tobit within the novel. Or she could even be the embodiment of the Angel Raphael himself ('You must be my guardian angel,' Toby says at one point). Although, to see Miss Garnet as the Angel is to play the tricks with the title of the book that don't work in the same way that 'Finnegans Wake' could mean any number of things. Certainly, Julia feels that the Angel Raphael is watching over her, if only in the form of a statue. To some, the ending of the book may come as something of a surprise. It did to me the first time, I'm afraid to admit. But when you dig deeper into Salley Vickers' research, you cannot avoid a deep sense of foreboding.

Salley Vickers has managed to whip up everything she can think of about Venice into this book. John Ruskin invites Julia out to consume some prosecco (if nothing else), Tintoretto pops in for tea, the House of the Camel really lights up to illuminate William Blake, Vivaldi lectures, and Shakespeare puts on some plays. However the Venice ghetto does not really provide a refuge for Julia, but may have done some time in the past for the sparkling Monsignore and his pug dog. Whilst reading Tucker Malarkey's An Obvious Enchantment recently, I did kind of wonder what the links between Christianity, Judaism and Islam were, and Malarkey missed the (now) obvious source of monotheism: Zoroaster was the first prophet to call for the worship of one true God (rather than Akhenaten). This isn't hacked onto the text by Vickers: it's a natural growth throughout the novel, from the gifts of the three Magi celebrated in the Epiphany, to the Feast of the Apocryphal Raphael. Just as Venice seems to be in peril, so do the Zoroastrians, with ever declining numbers predicted. One gets an indication of how intricately plotted this novel is by the revelation that there was a Fair Maiden on the Zoroastrian Bridge of Separation. Salley Vickers magnificently bridges Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and Zoroastrianism via her dramatisation of the Book of Tobit (and her translation of the tale is a tad bit more successful than Saint Jerome's, despite all it's tail wagging). And what better place to build bridges than Venice?

Miss Garnet has a dry and emotionless life. She vaguely realises this, but is never moved to do anything about it until her friend of many years dies, and she decides to spend time overseas. Her destination of choice is Venice, and there the beauty and history of the place, and the different people she meets, touch her soul and makes her think and re-evaluate everything she has done with her life. Cleverly interwoven with this is the story of Tobias, who is accompanied by an angel as he too ventures on a journey that will also change his life.

This all sounds very deep and meaningful, but it is a lovely, lyrical book, where the central character is charming in her self analysis, regrets and realisations of things lost, and we appreciate the small pleasures that she derives from a beautiful painting, a new lilac dress, and the discovery of new truths from her own research into the story of Tobias and the angel which has so fascinated her. The other characters who populate her journey are equally enchanting, all of whom are not really who they appear to be, but all who help Miss Garnet appreciate what she has in life, as to a degree she does them as well.

If there is one small drawback with the book, it is that it immediately imbues the reader with a great desire to visit Venice, and to gaze upon paintings of angels. But I'm sure I will get over this. I will however, continue to remember this enchanting story, and I recommend it highly. This is a first novel, and I trust that it is the beginning of a great career for a talented and insightful writer.

This is a sweet and entertaining, easy to read book, which poses no real challenge. The story is nice, an older woman that discovers herself toward the end of her life, being intoxicated by the magic of Venice. It is a story about self discovery devoid of the struggle that comes with it, which is probably my biggest criticism. There is a lack of depth in the characters, especially in Ms. Garnet, who seems to accept the new feelings and thoughts that start to invade her as soon as she sets foot in Venice.
The book, however, is enjoyable and it makes for a fun read, just don't expect it to be mind blowing nor illuminating.

The book is excellently written, and a gently intriguing story. Its impact for me lay first in the unexpected and quiet touches about Miss Garnet that were so exquisitely British, full of subtle, nuanced detail. The second importance was the story of Tobit and its lead to the Apocrypha. I love the notion that our human cultures layer interpretation on interpretation thru the centuries. The author's sympathetic, because local and detailed, description of Venice and its treasures was a further treat, for me. And associated with that, the clear message that we must all contribute if this Treasure that is Venice is to continue to exist in our world.

I've just discovered this rare and lovely writer and am amazed that she's not better known here. Seemingly, she's a big hit in the UK and I'm not surprised. This is novel writing at its best, subtle, intelligent, witty and with that quality of strangenes swith which true masterpieces are associated. I suspect she may be one of the few 21st century writers who will last. I hope for her sake she gets her deserved recognition in her own lifetime and doesn't, like so many of her characters, have to die first to come into her own. She has a very optimistic view of human nature as well, along with a fine sense of the potential in us all for doing harm and for tragedy. Do read it and get her better known.