The Third Angel
The Third Angel by Alice Hoffman
I’ve had Alice Hoffman in the back of my mind as an author I wanted to check out ever since I saw the movie Practical Magic, which is based on her novel of the same name. I actually meant to start out with Practical Magic, because I just love that story, but I guess it just became one of those many books that I mean to read and then never quite get around to reading. Mum had an advance reading copy of The Third Angel lying around the house, so I borrowed it from her at her recommendation.
The novel tells the stories of three women all in love with men who are somehow wrong for them. As the book unfolds, it becomes apparent that these women are interconnected in surprising ways. Their individual stories build on each other and form the pieces of another, larger story that involves all of them. The book works backwards in time, beginning with Maddy Heller’s experiences when she stays at the Lion Park Hotel for her sister’s wedding in 1999. The novel then deals with a significant event in Frieda Lewis’s life when she worked as a chambermaid in the Lion Park Hotel in London in the mid ’60s. Finally, the book takes us back to twelve-year-old Lucy Green’s trip to the Lion Park Hotel in 1952, where she witnesses a tragedy that will influence the lives of both Maddy and Frieda when they come to the hotel.
I had some trouble getting into the novel at first, mostly because I wasn’t all that engaged with Maddy’s story. I wasn’t sure what to make of the elements of magic and the supernatural events that were running through the story, either, because at the outset the book appears to be simply realistic fiction. Once I got to Frieda’s section of the book, I got really immersed in the story, and accepted the magical elements without trying to figure out their exact role in the story. I actually grew to really enjoy the magical element of her work. Furthermore, I loved that there was a fairy tale called The Heron’s Wife that figured in some important way in each story. Overall, I found that the three individual stories fit together extremely well, with each story leaving a trail of clues for the subsequent tale.
Everything was yellow in the park. When it rained, leaves came swirling down. When it was sunny everything looked golden. Frieda Lewis was nineteen and had been working for four months at the Lion Park Hotel in Knightsbridge. Her favourite rooms to clean were teh ones on the seventh floor. From there, she could look out the windows in the back and see the little courtyard park with its stone lion. From the front rooms, she could see the tops of the trees in Hyde Park. Once she climbed onto the ledge and stood there for a moment, above the traffic and the fumes, mesmerized by the movement of the trees and the clouds in the sky.
