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.
Written on the Body
Written on the Body by Jeanette Winterson
I haven’t entirely made up my mind about this book. I decided to read it because a couple of the girls I was friends with in one of my English classes last Fall raved about it. I can see why they love it, and I can also see why I could love it, but I’m not sure if I even like it all that much. Perhaps this is one of those instances when seeing the value in something is quite different from enjoying it. I think I could really benefit from a solid treatment of it in class, or at least some discussion on it.
The book details the romantic relationship that develops between the unnamed, gender-ambiguous narrator and a beautiful married woman named Louise. The main thing that stood out to me when I first started reading was the precise and beautiful writing. This carried me through approximately the first third of the book, and then I started feeling bored and irritated.
I think that part of what bothered me about the book was that it seemed much more a statement, argument, or commentary on society than an actual story. It’s not that I think that novels should be only about character and plot, but I don’t think that those elements should get thrown into the backseat while political agenda hops into the driver’s side and takes off. I like a little more subtlety, the interweaving of all the different elements that make up a story.
Because I felt that the characters weren’t developed very fully, I felt uncomfortable reading the details of their romantic relationship. I’ve never encountered this before. Often, I identify with at least one of the characters, or, failing that, I feel that I’ve been invited to read, to learn about their lives. Reading this book made me feel like an intruder, like I was reading someone else’s embarrassingly personal diary without permission.
The other result of the flat characters for me was that I just didn’t care about them. There isn’t much of a plot to speak of, so if you don’t care about what happens to the characters, that’s pretty much all there is. Besides the fantastic writing, of course.
I feel that I might have just been in the wrong frame of mind for the book. I can’t summarize my opinion into a recommendation this time because I’m still undecided. I do have a suspicion that this will be one of those books that stays with me. Maybe I’ll re-read this in a few years and decide then.
Articulacy of fingers, the language of the deaf and dumb, signing on the body longing. Who taught you to write in blood on my back? Who taught you to use your hands as branding irons? You have scored your name into my shoulders, referenced me with your mark. The pads of your fingers have become printing blocks, you tap a message on to my skin, tap meaning into my body. Your morse code interferes with my heart beat. I had a steady heart beat before I met you, I relied on it, it had seen active service and grown strong. Now you alter its pace with your own rhythm, you play upon me, drumming me taut.
White Oleander
White Oleander by Janet Fitch
Once I had finished Cloud Atlas, I had no idea what to read next. I often find it really difficult to follow up a fantastic book. I’m never sure if it would be better to raise the stakes by reading something that I know can compete with the quality of the book I just finished, or if I should just read something short and fun that I don’t have high expectations for. Sometimes, I wonder if I would have liked perfectly okay or even solidly good books better if I hadn’t read them on the tail of excellent ones.
This time I decided to re-read an old favourite. I’d been thinking about the protagonist of the novel, Astrid, for some time, so I decided just to go for it. I was a bit hesitant to re-read this one though, just because it spoke to me so deeply the first time I read it. Re-reading can be disappointing, and I really didn’t want to ruin my memories of the book.
As it turns out, I wasn’t disappointed at all. There’s something about this book that catches hold of me, and just doesn’t let go. It’s the story, but also the prose. Fitch’s writing style is like reading a 450-page prose-poem. When I was reading the book I found myself savouring every word like a morsel of delicious food, letting them melt on my tongue. I felt that Fitch chose each of her words with the care a fine jeweller would take when selecting precious stones for a necklace.
The Santa Anas blew in hot from the desert, shriveling the last of the spring grass into whiskers of pale straw. Only the oleanders thrived, their delicate poisonous blooms, their dagger green leaves. We could not sleep in the hot dry nights, my mother and I. I woke up at midnight to find her bed empty. I climbed to the roof, and easily spotted her blond hair like a white flame in the light of the three-quarter moon.
