The Third Angel: A Novel

(Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. In this elegant and stunning novel, veteran heartstring-puller Hoffman (Here on Earth; Seventh Heaven) examines the lives of three women at different crossroads in their lives, tying their London-centered stories together in devastating retrospect. High powered New York attorney Maddy Heller arrives in 1999 London having had an affair with Paul, her sister Allie's fiancé,; she must now cope with the impending marriage, and with Paul's terminal illness—which echoes the girls' mother's cancer during their childhood. Hoffman then shifts to heady 1966 London and to Frieda Lewis, Paul's future mother, who falls for a doomed up-and-coming songwriter knowing he will break her heart. The narrative then shifts further back, to 1952 and to Maddy and Allie's future mother, Lucy Green. A bookish 12-year-old wise beyond her years, Lucy sails with her father and stepmother from New York to London for a wedding. There, she becomes an innocent catalyst to a devastating event involving a love triangle. Hoffman interweaves the three stories, gazing unerringly into forces that cause some people to self-destruct (There was no such thing as too much for a girl who thought she was second best) and others to find inner strength to last a lifetime. (Apr.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review

“Is there an American novelist who understands the complicated and mulitfacted nature of love in all its manifestations — romantic, familial, platonic — better than Alice Hoffman?... Some critics have minimed the complexity of Hoffman’s work by refering to her as a romance writers. Well, Hoffman is a romance writer, but then so were Flaubert, Proust, the Bronte sisters, and Jane Austen. The Third Angel is indeed a romance, but one of intricacy and pathos, with characters beautifully, believably and empathetically drawn.…The Third Angel represents yet another strong, visceral and deeply, darkly moving tale of love and heatbreak, tragedy and redemption from a writer whose keen ear for the measure struck by the beat of the human heart is unparalleled. The Third Angel is an intense, provocative and throughly affecting novel.”
— The Chicago Tribune

“Like Michael Cunningham’s ‘The Hours,’ Hoffman’s tale weaves the stories of women at key moments in their lives with revelations both stunning and inevitable.”
— The Pittsburgh Post Gazette

“Its realism, combined with a refreshing lightness and its success in portraying emotion with empathy, draws the reader into a deep involvement with the books’ appealing yet flawed characters. Each woman faces up to her challengers in her own way, proving that everyone in the end is responsible for his or her own destiny.”
— The Economist

“Hoffman’s luminous language bounces us into accepting not only coincident but also its consequences.”
— The Boston Globe

“Alice Hoffman paints her books in big strokes and bright colors, with slashes of romantic reds and blacks. She’s a teller of fairy tells, well-worn or new.”
— The Columbus Dispatch

“With a graceful nod to the pow... --This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Three Rivers Press; Reprint edition (March 3, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0307405958
• ISBN-13: 978-0307405951
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.2 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (63 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #50,002 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

  Popular in this category: (What's this?)

  #5 in

  Books > Literature & Fiction > Authors, A-Z > ( H ) > Hoffman, Alice

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

50 of 51 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Atonement, April 9, 2008

By	Julie Neal (Sanibel Island, Fla.) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Third Angel: A Novel (Hardcover)

This book can break your heart. Alice Hoffman writes with delicacy and compassion about life and death, about loving someone with such desperation that nothing else matters. She writes about how people must forgive themselves.

The three chapters in this book are set in different times, and have different characters. The stories, all centered in London, move back in time from 1999 to 1966 to 1952. All three are interconnected, and it's not until the end that the whole picture becomes clear. All involve hopeless, betrayed love.

In the first, "The Heron's Wife," a young woman has an affair with her sister's fiancé. "Lion Park" is about a young woman seduced by a drug-addicted rock musician. "The Rules of Love" involves a precocious 12-year-old girl who innocently causes the violent death to two people in a lover's triangle.

Many themes weave throughout the book -- love, weddings, abandonment, birds, rabbits, the power of the written word... and in the end, atonement.

An extraordinary doctor explains about the Third Angel. There is the Angel of Life and the Angel of Death, neither of which can be controlled. The Third Angel, however, walks among us. He's the angel that makes mistakes. Like all of us, he sometimes needs rescuing.

44 of 46 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "The One Who Walks Among Us.", April 18, 2008

By	H. F. Corbin "Foster Corbin" (ATLANTA, GA USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Third Angel: A Novel (Hardcover)

Alice Hoffman's latest novel THE THIRD ANGEL consists of three stories connected by the same characters and places over different periods of time, beginning with the most recent events and going backward: I, "The Heron's Wife," 1999; II, "Lion Park," 1966 and III, "The Rules of Love," 1952. The stories also hang together because the same themes run through each of them. Who is better to say what Ms. Hoffman writes about than the author, herself? In a recent reading, she told the audience that her books are always about love and loss. In "The Heron's Wife," Maddy falls in love-- she thinks-- with her sister's fiance Paul, when she goes to London for her sister Allie's wedding. In "Lion Park"-- the name of a hotel in London where much of the action takes place over the years-- Frieda, who later becomes the mother of Paul, falls for a rock star addicted to hard drugs although he is in love with someone else. Finally in "The Rules of Love" the twelve-year-old Lucy (later the mother of Maddy and Allie) gets caught up in a tragedy where another character is in love with a women who marries someone else.

Ms. Hoffman's characters in this novel fall in love with the wrong person, or with the right person but too early or too late. Then they may settle-- in the case of Frieda-- for a "nice man." Although love may be simple, it is not rational. The author also writes about the love of parents for children. As one character puts it: "You won't believe how much you'll love your child." Even though Hoffman's complex characters are flawed, seldom turning out the way their parents had hoped they would (sound familiar?), and may do bad acts, betraying those they love, they also often have redeeming qualities as well. They mend their broken lives and sometimes become that third angel, described so beautifully by Frieda's doctor father whom she remembers as a "very serious, lovely, practical man." In addition to the Angel of Life or the Angel of Death, one of whom would ride with him in the back of his car when he made house calls, there was the mysterious Third Angel: "'You can't even tell if he's an angel or not. You think you're doing him a kindness, you think you're the one taking care of him, while all the while, he's the one who's saving your life.'" He walks among us.

Ms. Hoffman is so good at creating events that remind us that, yes, this is just the way it is or the way a similar event in our own lives affected us: for example, the sudden shock and suffocating loneliness of learning that a person-- perhaps an old friend we have lost contact with or someone we once cared about deeply-- whom we thought was alive has been dead for months or even years. She writes as eloquently and movingly about death as anyone I can think of-- passages from Thomas Wolfe's LOOK HOMEWARD ANGEL and Alan Gurganus' PLAYS WELL WITH OTHERS come to mind; and her writing is filled with a magic-- i.e., blue herons and white rabbits-- worthy of the best of Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

Although Ms. Hoffman's prose has not one unnecessary word or phrase, it is beautifully descriptive and often poetic. Consider this: "It was that silver-colored time between night and morning, when the sky is still dark, but lights are flicking on all over the city. It was quiet, the way it is in winter when snow first begins to fall."

If you are not careful, you will be undone by this novel for it gives a poignant picture of what it means to be human.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Wistful and sad, October 11, 2008

By	Beverley Strong (Australia) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Third Angel: A Novel (Hardcover)

I've given this book 4 stars for the beauty of the prose but must confess that I prefer, these days, to read books which uplift me and make me feel happy, rather than near perfect works which leave me feeling sad and hollow inside. There are three stories which interconnect through their characters and run backwards from 1999 to the 50's. The main theme is unrequited love and it all left me feeling miserable and empty. As good as this book undoubtedly is, I felt like reaching for the anti depressants after it ended.