Falling Angels

I loved this book for a lot of reasons. It was immediately engaging, tragic, humorous in spots and always interesting. It’s told through several first-person accounts and they were all great. I especially liked and felt empathy for Kitty. I would have felt all her frustration, hopelessness and helplessness if born in her place and time. Especially when it came to kids. Ugh. Her daughter Maude doesn’t seem to crave her attention though, so she’ll probably turn out just fine if she does get to University.

I guess if there has to be a person to dislike it’s Livy. She’s just a spoiled brat and already vapid at age 5. Maude’s complaints about her are spot on, but Livy just thinks she’s the perfect little lady. I could barely show more force myself to read what she did with the Suffrage banners.

The movement, while positive in so many respects, was nothing but tragedy for the Colemans and the Waterhouses. I didn’t expect Ivy May’s fate and it shocked and saddened me. Her one and only chapter was so wrenching. From reading history and novels written in Victorian times, child abduction, murder and abuse was pretty rampant and because children weren’t a protected class in the sense they are now, crimes against them just piled up with no end.

I wish a little more focus was put on the Suffrage movement than was the bereavement practices of Victorians. They were positively suffused with death - gloried in it, reveled in it, milked it for all the emotional drama it could afford. I guess since women above the working poor had nothing to do, it filled their days. I think that’s why the women who weren’t afraid of their own intellects and wills went into the Suffrage movement so thoroughly even though they knew nothing was likely to change in their lifetimes.

It appalls me to read the sentiments of “mother” Coleman. Women who thoroughly believe that women are second class citizens and ought to remain basically slaves to men. It’s incredible. They’re so afraid it would be funny if it weren't so pathetic and dangerous. Women still think like that today. Some reviews of this book characterize Kitty as selfish. Why, because she doesn’t bow down and serve every last convention? Because she isn’t a doormat? Because she has thoughts and ideas of her own? Because she wants to have some agency? OMFG it’s stupid how some women think. Blinkered, frightened fools. I really liked the way Tracy silenced her in the end. Pity she didn’t give us another mother Colman viewpoint after she lost her tongue. That would have been fun. She should have been Mrs. Waterhouse’s mother in law. They would have gotten on like a house on fire if Trudy could have had an ounce of self-esteem.

Simon, Mrs. Baker and our Jenny fill in the voices for the servant class. Jenny’s fate is easy to see coming, but I was surprised that she made her way back. Simon seemed a little to free to do what he wanted through the whole novel. I think most boys his age were basically worked to death. He was fun and needed to have freedom to be able to move the plot forward in several ways.

Overall a lot of fun, insight and one of her best books. show less

This book follows two families in England at the beginning of the 20th century. Two little girls' lives intersect when they meet at their families' adjacent burial plots in a London cemetery. As they grow up together, death and the symbolism surrounding it are prominent themes in their lives. The novel takes place during England's suffrage movement. One of the mothers becomes involved with these activities, leading to turmoil that costs each family dearly.

I found this to be a beautiful novel that is quite different from other of Chevalier's works due to the time frame in which it takes place. The book is told from the point of view of several of its characters and I found each to be quite engaging. I listened to the audiobook version show more and the narrator did a pretty good job although her accents were a bit inconsistent.

4/5 stars show less

Falling Angels begins with the death of Queen Victoria and ends with the death of King Edward VII. In between, the Coleman.and Waterhouse families navigate the social changes that opened the 20th century. Chief among these is the women's suffrage movement, but the book also includes changing attitudes to death and burial, a relaxing of the social strictures associated with the Victorians, and the blurring of boundaries between the classes.

Written in the first person as recollections by the main characters, it is a thoughtful and heartbreaking story. There is amusement in the form of the friendship between Maude Coleman and Lavinia Waterhouse and the rivalry between their parents, and sorrow in the fates of Maude's mother Kitty and show more Lavinia's sister Ivy May.

Kitty Coleman was my favourite character, a woman born in the wrong time who fought to improve the world for her daughter and was misunderstood in the doing. Hers is a heart-rending story of the ties of social duty and the frustrations of wanting to be seen and respected as an intelligent woman. show less

Beginning on New Year's Day 1900 and ending a decade later, this novel revolves around two families who have adjoining plots in the local ceremony and later become neighbors in their current homes, too. Told from various viewpoints, including servants, the story builds upon itself and is strengthened with multiple perspectives.

I was on the fence about this book at first; I picked it up just because I had enjoyed reading Chevalier's Remarkable Creatures and figured I would try something else she wrote. Initially, I wasn't sure what to make of this story and the early obsession with the graveyard; I thought to myself that this was the most I had ever heard a cemetery referenced in a book that wasn't straight-up horror. Later, I realized show more that I should have seen this for the foreshadowing that it was but I completely missed that at first.

However, I did start to get drawn into the character drama and appreciate the many portraits Chevalier was drawing. By the time that the suffragette movement came in to play, I was hooked on the book. I also appreciated how so many threads of ideas and plotlines started coming together beautifully. Admittedly, I was surprised by where the story took some characters and a little disappointed that one thing was never resolved (namely, the circumstances of and perpetrator behind Ivy May's death, even though there are clues for readers to make their own interpretations).

Overall, I found myself lost in the drama of this book and wanted to keep reading to see what would happen next. The writing style is very accessible while also being eloquent. Chevalier expertly intertwines her fictional characters with actual suffragettes and into real events such as the deaths of Queen Victoria and later King Edward. The audiobook version had a so-so narrator; I do think she did a good job overall with diction, accents, and modulation, but there were just too many characters in this book for her to create distinct voices for each one. Still, I think her reading had heart and it's a worthwhile listen for the audiophile. show less

I love Tracy Chevalier's style - her character development is strong and her telling of the story from multiple perspectives works well (I also enjoyed Virgin Blue in which she tells a family story from the perspective of 2 people living at different times).

In many ways, this book reminded me of An Inspector Calls, in that all of the characters bear partial responsibility for the outcomes. As each character's actions contribute just a little to the consequent actions of the others, so what happens towards the end seems sadly inevitable.

4.20.19 This book has even more poignancy than when I first read it many years ago. Tracy Chevalier deftly tackles sentimentalism in death culture, transitions from Victorian to Edwardian culture, class hierarchy, and women's activism. The chapters are short and move quickly. Each narrator helps weave a perspective into a rich tapestry that makes up the narrative. One of my favorite historical fiction novels.

It is 1901 and with the death of Queen Victoria, one age has ended and another begun. Through a variety of first-person narrators, the reader is introduced to two middle-class London families, the Colemans and the Waterhouses, as well as their servants, a cemetery manager and the son of a gravedigger, each contributing with their distinctive voice to the plot, which details the fortunes of each family by focusing on the two daughters.

As can be expected from the author of Girl with a Pearl Earring, the atmosphere and the sense of being transported through time are excellent (in particular the sections covering the customs concerning the etiquette for mourning), but while the characters and their individual fates are engaging, the book show more never provides the wow! factor that is the sign of an outstanding read, and in the end there were few real surprises. The plot is almost exclusively character driven and hence on the slow side, and it is only in the last quarter of the book that events spiral out of control. Appropriately for a series of character studies there is a lot that remains unsaid, and the reader is required to read between the lines. And though I was always happy to spend time in the company of the protagonists, I didn't feel the urge to return to the novel at every possible opportunity. Still, as an exploration of days gone by it is very well done, and is certainly an eye-opener as to how much the Victorians and Edwardians turned death into a business (with the etiquette to be ignored at a person's peril!).

The Times reviewer remarks in the novel's blurb that the book "shows both the strangeness of the world as it was and its closeness to our own time". I wholeheartedly agree with the first part of the sentence, but in my view it is only in the closing pages that I got the sense that progress had been made and society was entering the modern age. show less