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Loading... In The Company Of Angels (original 2004; edition 2010)by Thomas Kennedy
Work InformationGreene's Summer by Thomas E. Kennedy (2004)
   No current Talk conversations about this book.  Osbaldistone | Aug 7, 2019 |    ) booksandblintzes | Jun 7, 2016 |  ) Robert.Zimmermann | Oct 7, 2013 | This is a beautiful tender novel about Nardo, a Chilean victim of the Pinochet torture regime who now lives and is being treated for his emotional scars in Copenhagen. He is a frightened shell of a man – “Never be a man again,” Frog Face had promised him when he was his captive – who cowers in the corner of his room when he hears foot steps on the stair, and is belligerently resistant to his therapist, Dr. Kristensen. Nardo meets a Danish woman, Michela Ibsen who is divorced from an abusive husband and involved with a man named Voss, 10 years her junior. She is a lost soul, suffering pangs of guilt because she could not save her seventeen-year-old daughter from killing herself five years earlier. And Voss, is an immature, unstable, and violent man whose love for Michela is twisted by his perverted sexual jealousy. Michela’s father and mother are both patients in the same hospital. Her father is dying from colon cancer and remains mean-spirited and bitter to the end, while her mother is blissful and ignorant due to dementia. How all these people, except Michela’s mother, come to terms with what they believe are their weaknesses is the beautiful story. An elegant and important novel, well written, and filled with compassion tinged with Christianity without dogma that mends hearts and returns dignity to these damaged people. (  ) Limelite | Dec 9, 2012 |  This review was written for LibraryThing Early Reviewers. ) SmangosBubbles | Aug 3, 2012 |
Told in brief, gaunt chapters and language that is both bare and emblematic, this is a grave, brave book, both terrible and tender. In its wisdom and empathy, in its understanding of the supreme importance of love, in its portrait of a strong man and its knowledge of the human soul in all its suffering, this is indeed a profound and exceptional work. Kennedy doesn't heap on the misery in order (or not only) to create a compelling psycho-melodrama. He is serious about wanting to get at — dig down to — what it is that makes people do unspeakable things.  Kennedy (an American living in Denmark) steers the two toward a romance that, once initiated, veers in and out of melodrama, but his portrayal of less operatic relationships is rich. Kennedy writes clean, evocative prose, and an occasional note of humor leavens this dark novel. Belongs to SeriesAwards
Imprisoned for teaching political poetry to his students, Bernardo Greene has been tortured for months in Pinochet's Chile when he is visited by two angels who promise that he will survive to experience beauty and love once again. Months later, in Copenhagen, where he has come for treatment, the Chilean exile befriends Michela Ibsen, herself a survivor of domestic abuse. No library descriptions found. 
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LibraryThing Early Reviewers AlumThomas E. Kennedy's book In the Company of Angels was available from LibraryThing Early Reviewers.  Current DiscussionsNonePopular covers
 Google Books — Loading...GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.54Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999LC ClassificationRatingAverage: (3.9)
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Wikipedia in English
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I'd call this a dark novel only in that it seems to present between its covers nearly the whole range of emotions connected with human relationships, and, let's face it, a lot of it is dark.
Kennedy's prose is fabulous, both in the beauty of the language and its use in drawing the reader into the story. I know some reviewers have commented on the presence of sex and torture, but these are present only as backdrops to help the reader try to comprehend the mind that is being investigated in the foreground. And don't worry, it's far less graphic than most novels you're likely to pickup at the airport bookstore.
When this story is over, you can look back and see ways in which each major character has had an effect, positive, negative, or both, on each other major character, even when they may have never met. Quite a fulfilling read, wonderfully described, and full of powerful insights into individuals and inter-relatedness.
Os. (