Falling Angels (original 2001; edition 2002)

A quick, easy read. Not particularly memorable, but it would be a good way to kill a few hours on a bus ride or as beach reading. I liked the use of the unreliable narrators, although there was nothing very unusual in Chevalier's treatment of them. ( )

Set among the sweeping skirts and social upheavals of Edwardian London, the central characters are two young girls of the same age, whose family plots are situated side-by-side in a cemetery. 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. Disaster occurs when Lavinia and Maude attend a women’s suffrage march. What follows is the breakdown of relationships and families ( )

Library book club pick.
I liked this more than I thought I would. The writing isn't amazing, but the characters were interesting, and at the end I wanted it to keep going. It was melodramatic, but in a satisfying way. ( )

I've read 5 of Chevalier's books, this one was the second, and I liked them all. It is a sad story but well written and with interesting characters. ( )