Falling Angels (Paperback)

~ (Author) "I woke this morning with a stranger in my bed..." (more)
Key Phrases: full mourning, Kitty Coleman, Caroline Black, Miss Maude (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Set among the sweeping skirts and social upheavals of Edwardian London, Tracy Chevalier's Falling Angels is a meditation on change, loss, and recovery. Her central characters are two young girls of the same age, whose family plots are situated side-by-side in a cemetery modeled on Highgate. Lavinia Waterhouse is respectably middle-class, devoted, like her conventional, doting mother, to the right way to do things, although suspiciously well- schooled in subjects like funerary sculpture and the English practices of mourning. Her friend Maude Coleman comes from a slightly more privileged and free-thinking background. In contrast with Lavinia's mother, Maude's mother Kitty Coleman is well-educated by the standards of the day, and it has made her restless and irritable. But neither her reading, nor her gardening, nor her affair with the somber, high-thinking governor of the cemetery is enough for Kitty. She comes alive only when she discovers the women's suffrage movement, and her devotion to the cause takes her away from Maude in every sense.

Although the point of view shifts between many characters (with even the Coleman's maid and cook getting their say, sometimes unnecessarily), Falling Angels is essentially the children's story, since it is their lives that are most open to change. The narrative spans exactly the years of Edward VII's reign, from the morning after his mother Queen Victoria's death in January 1901 to his own death in May 1910. Chevalier (Girl with a Pearl Earring) deftly uses the nation's dramatically different mourning for these two monarchs to signal the social transformations of the period. Readers at ease with English history will find Falling Angels an unusually subtle novel, with an emotional range that recalls the best of the Edwardian novelists, E.M. Forster, and his quintessential novel of Edwardian manners, Howard's End. --Regina Marler --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly

No small part of the appeal of Chevalier's excellent debut, Girl with a Pearl Earring, was its plausibility; readers could readily accept the idea that Vermeer's famous painting might indeed have been created under circumstances similar to Chevalier's imaginative scenario. The same cannot be said about her second novel. While Chevalier again proves adept at evoking a historical era this time, London at the turn of the 19th century she has devised a plot whose contrivances stretch credibility. When Maude Coleman and Lavinia Waterhouse, both five years of age, meet at their families' adjoining cemetery plots on the day after Queen Victoria's death, the friendship that results between sensitive, serious-minded Maude and narcissistic, melodramatic Livy is not unlikely, despite the difference in social classes. But the continuing presence in their lives of a young gravedigger, Simon Field, is. Far too cheeky for a boy of his age and class, Simon plays an important part in the troubles that will overtake the two families. Other characters are gifted with insights inappropriate to their age or station in life. Yet Chevalier again proves herself an astute observer of a social era, especially in her portrayal of the lingering sentimentality, prejudices and early stirrings of social change of the Victorian age. When Maude's mother, Kitty, becomes obsessively involved with the emerging suffragette movement, the plot gathers momentum. While it's obvious that tragedy is brewing, Chevalier shows imaginative skill in two neatly accomplished surprises, and the denouement packs an emotional wallop. While not as accomplished a work as Girl, the ironies inherent in the dramatic unfolding of two families' lives ultimately endow this novel with an impressive moral vision. Agent, Deborah Schneider. (Oct. 15) Forecast: The popularity of Girl with a Pearl Earring among reading groups and its record as a bestseller will provide a ready audience for Chevalier's new effort. The perennial appeal of books set in post-Victorian England should be another asset.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Plume; First Plume Printing edition (September 24, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0452283205
• ISBN-13: 978-0452283206
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 4.5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (147 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #59,419 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

53 of 58 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing, November 29, 2001

By	demimonde (Windsor, CO United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Falling Angels: A Novel (Hardcover)

I really had no idea what Falling Angels was even about when I started it ~ I only picked it up hoping I would enjoy it half as much as I did Chevalier's first novel, Girl With a Pearl Earring. Falling Angels not only met my expectations, it fully exceeded them. From page one (I didn't know Victorians did THAT!) I knew I was in for a rollercoaster ride of a book.

Neighbors Kitty Coleman and the Gertrude Waterhouse are as different as night and day. Kitty is forward thinking and restless in her role as wife and mother. Gertrude is firmly, and happily, ensconced in the oppressive Victorian mores of the day. To their horror their young daughters, Maude and Lavinia, become the best of friends and the two families are forced to interact. Over the course of nearly a decade, starting with the death of Queen Victoria, we watch as the Colemans and the Waterhouses struggle with each other, themselves, and the changing times as England moves into the new century.

Tracy Chevalier is an author I will seek out again and again ~ I can't wait to see where she takes us next.

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Melancholy and Captivating, May 24, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Falling Angels: A Novel (Hardcover)

I just finished Falling Angels, which I read mostly due to an interest in Victorian England but also because I enjoyed "Girl With the Pearl Earring" so much. I found myself deeply drawn into this book. I have to admit it made me a little moody - large parts of it take place in a cemetery and there is a pervading sense of mortality throughout, but I also enjoyed seeing the same story from the viewpoints of a variety of characters. I didn't feel that the commentary by Jenny and Mrs. Baker was "unnecessary," but that it added to a fuller understanding of all of the issues the characters were involved in. A very interesting commentary on English womanhood during the Victorian and Edwardian eras, taking age, class, and educational differences into account.

29 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Victorian England from another view., June 2, 2002

By	Britt Arnhild Lindland (Norway) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Falling Angels: A Novel (Hardcover)

I read Girl With a Pearl Earring last year, and it became my book of the year. It was therefor with great anticipation I bought this book, another book from Tracy Chevalier had to be another winner.

Falling Angels is from the time period the years following the death of Queen Victoria in 1901. Two families meet at a cemetery, and this meeting has great influence on both families' lives. The story is told through several voices, all the members of the families, but also people around them. All the time we follow the same story though, the life of these two families, and how they react upon changes in society.

Girl With a Pearl Earring is told through one girl only, and in the beginning I had problems with all the voices in this book. But as the story went on this became the perfect way to enlighten the points the book wanted to enlighten. The gravedigger boy had one story to tell, the girls of the two families other stories, still it is all woven into a whole, using a rich mixture of colors.

I love Chevalier's way of writing. What made me give this book a four star instead of a five was the development of the story. The firts half of the book built up a family story, quite interesting in itselves, but then when the book became more and more a book about the suffragettes it lacked connection with the first part. All in all the book has some very good points though, and as several other reviewers have pointed out, the last hundred pages has alot of surprises.

I look forward to the next book bu Tracy Chevalier.

Britt Arnhild Lindland