Customer Reviews

Wicked Angel

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This is a very different type of story than one would expect from Taylor Caldwell. It deals with the premise that a person born without a soul (or conscience) is as handicapped as a person born without arms or legs. Since most people believe that heredity and environment have everything to do with the way a child develops socially, this story is a true horror story. The young mother in the story becomes gradually aware that her beautiful little son is different in an alarming way. It contrasts her growing concerns with the way her son is developing and her husband's opinion that it is her mothering skills that are lacking. This is a truly frightening story which the reader will compare to "the Bad Seed" or "Rosemary's Baby" A very short, easily readable book that was ahead of it's time as a psychological look at a true sociopath..

More than a story about a psychopath, the story depicts our society at large as to how it handles it's children. Written in 1965, if it weren't so then, it sure is true now. Many children are spoiled, but the law catches up with them. I think our prison population presents better than any argument the state of child rearing in America. Teachers are expected to do everything when it comes to other people's children, and accept ridiculous remuneration in exchange. Doctors are leaving the field because of skyrocketing malpractice expenses, and stupid lawsuits.

The story is also one of good triumphing over evil. It is an allegory, a fiction of something that may be, and isn't to be taken too literally.

It's also a warning.

I thought it was great.

I recall reading this book when it first came out & I was about twelve. It was one of the first adult horror novels I ever read, and I never forgot the spine-tingling feeling that certain passages induced. It brings to mind "The Bad Seed" and also the movie "The Good Son" with Elijah Wood and MacCaulay Caulkin. The cherb-faced little boy, "Angelo," is not the saint he appears to be (coincidentally his last name actually IS Saint). Bad things happen to children and even adults who don't admire Angelo. Like in The Omen. One of the reviews mentioned a lot of inconsistencies in dates and logic, but the book scared me enough to stay in my mind 45 years! If life wasn't so short, I'd even consider rereading it to see how the book affects me as an adult.
If you like suspenseful stories that feature children, this is a good choice, even if it isn't exactly high brow literature. I remember my older brother examined it and scribbled inside the cover (in pencil): "This book was not nominated for the National Book Award."

Angelo Saint was described as the prototypical psychopath, that is, "born without a soul." An overindulged only child, Angelo has his devoted mother wrapped around his finger while his more practical father Mark, looks on with horrified wonder from the sidelines. Angelo intensely detests his maternal Aunt Alice, who recognizes his social disorder from the start.

Although this is not a diagnostic book, I did feel the description of a psychopath was quite poor. The time sequence is off. For example, the book opens in 1957 with the then 4-year-old Angelo and closes with an epilogue set at the end of 1964. In Chapter 5, the boy's Aunt Alice tells Mark, the boy's father about a pupil named Kennie she had whose father killed his wife with their son as a witness two years prior to her teaching him. Since that was in 1959, how could the father have killed his wife two years prior and then been executed prior to killing her? In Chapter 10, Kennie's father was reported to have killed his wife on June 5, 1959 and was executed on January 5, 1959. How can his death predate his crime and conviction?

At the opening of the story, Angelo, then 4, expresses deep rage at Alice and this rage is manifested in bouts of wetting accidents. He then attacks Alice by smashing the contents of her purse; he destroyed her sunglasses; used her handerkerchief as toilet paper and flushed some of her money down the toilet. His loving, but foolish mother Katherine condones his actions by insisting it was just a childish prank. Mark, however, punishes Angelo.

Over the years, Angelo's cruelties become more subtle and clever. At 6, he discreetly kills a pet dog (which Alice discovers when she visits her sister's family at their summer place in 1959); he frightens away the birds and woodland creatures, viewing them as "weak enemies," and he nearly kills Alice by pushing her over a cliff. Luckily, she is saved, but does not testify against her nephew.

Alice has a crush on Mark which comes as no surprise. (Can't you just hear 1959's "Theme from a Summer Place" playing in the background?) During that summer of 1959, she tells him about a pupil she has who is Angelo's overdrawn literary opposite. Kennie, the orphan whom Alice endorses has been placed with a couple after the boy's father killed his wife in 1959. Alice tells Mark that the boy became an orphan two years earlier, which meant Kennie would have been orphaned in 1957.

Angelo is described as physically large for his age, stunning in appearance and mentally gifted. Despite his natural endowments, he is rather primitive and immature, still given to uncontrollable outbursts of rage and physical attacks on Katherine.

At 10, Angelo has perfected the dark art of subtle cruelty. He nearly poisons a housekeeper because she senses he is not the "Angel Saint" (as Katherine calls him) after all; he hounds a classmate out of his prestigious prep school (yes, Kennie which should surprise no one); he pit people against one another and broke a teacher's arm "accidentally" during a school football game. He uses charm to get out of every difficulty and has all, but these few, whom he has hurt fooled.

Angelo thinks of how easy it is to fool "weak women," and the thought of being sent to a military boarding school per Mark's suggestion is abhorrent to him because "strong men" would make him toe the line. Overindulged and fed with a sense of entitlement, Angelo is incredibly immature. He does not appear to be sophisticated and relies on childish guile to charm people.

When Katherine becomes pregnant with a second child in 1963, she senses that it is wise not to tell Angelo. He pesters her for information about why she is going to the doctor and once he discovers her secret, kills the unborn child, Katherine and later perishes. Even his death is bizarre -- he trips down a flight of steps only to land on his head on the marble floor below. Katherine later dies in the hospital, confiding to Alice that she really knew what an evil son she truly had.

The cliches that bothered me was the boy's name, Angelo Saint. This is obviously a contradiction of his character, which was truly evil. As bad as the misaligned time sequence was, I also disliked the obvious coincidences, like Angelo and Kennie (Alice's protege) ending up as classmates and Mark later meeting Kennie with Alice.

There were some unrealistic parts to the story, such as Angelo being able to gain access to Kennie's records and copy them for the class to read. I also didn't buy an employment agency for maid service giving Mark the address of the family where one of his former maids was working. What about confidentiality? That doesn't sound ethical or realistic. I also didn't like it when the maid lied to Mark about checking on a roast. It was a very weak and transparent dodge.

The time misalignment was bad enough, but I really didn't like the sexist comments, e.g. "he screamed like a girl." I also didn't like the way Katherine's second pregnancy was criticized because of her age. Alice was a little too straitlaced and overdrawn and, at times, seemed insincere. She mouthed inanities, such as "Mark's clever hand." Since when is a hand clever? I also didn't like it when she said "don't laugh" after she complained to Mark about inadequacies in the education field. Mark was NOT laughing - he was listening to her and taking her diatribe seriously!

Katherine was overly effusive in her expressions and was singularly foolish. Mark and his friend, Dr. Whiteside were the only real sympathetic characters save for Angelo's victims.

This book seemed quite sexist even by 1965 standards.