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Summary
Summary
A fashionable London cemetery, January 1901: Two graves stand side by side, one decorated with an oversize classical urn, the other with a sentimental marble angel. Two families, visiting their respective graves on the day after Queen Victoria's death, teeter on the brink of a new era. The Colemans and the Waterhouses are divided by social class as well as taste. They would certainly not have become acquainted had not their two girls, meeting behind the tombstones, become best friends. And, even more unsuitably, become involved with the gravedigger's muddy son. As the girls grow up, as the new king changes social customs, as a new, forward-thinking era takes wing, the lives and fortunes of the two families become more and more closely intertwined -neighbors in life as well as death. Against a gas-lit backdrop of social and political history, Tracy Chevalier explores the prejudices and flaws of a changing time. A novel that is at once elegant, daring, original, and compelling, Falling Angels is a splendid follow-up to the book The New York Times called "marvelously evocative" and The Wall Street Journal deemed"triumphant."A Selection of The Book of the Month Club and The Literary Guildreg; A Quality Paperback Book Club Alternate Selection
Author Notes
Tracy Chevalier was born on October 19, 1962 in Washington, D.C. After receiving a B.A. in English from Oberlin College, she moved to England in 1984 where she worked several years as a reference book editor. Leaving her job in 1993, she began a year-long M.A in creative writing at the University of East Anglia.
She is the author of several novels including The Virgin Blue, Burning Bright, Remarkable Creatures, and The Last Runaway. Her novel Girl with a Pearl Earring was made into a film starring Colin Firth and Scarlett Johansson.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (6)
Publisher's Weekly Review
No small part of the appeal of Chevalier's excellent debut, Girl with a Pearl Earring, was its plausibility; readers could readily accept the idea that Vermeer's famous painting might indeed have been created under circumstances similar to Chevalier's imaginative scenario. The same cannot be said about her second novel. While Chevalier again proves adept at evoking a historical era this time, London at the turn of the 19th century she has devised a plot whose contrivances stretch credibility. When Maude Coleman and Lavinia Waterhouse, both five years of age, meet at their families' adjoining cemetery plots on the day after Queen Victoria's death, the friendship that results between sensitive, serious-minded Maude and narcissistic, melodramatic Livy is not unlikely, despite the difference in social classes. But the continuing presence in their lives of a young gravedigger, Simon Field, is. Far too cheeky for a boy of his age and class, Simon plays an important part in the troubles that will overtake the two families. Other characters are gifted with insights inappropriate to their age or station in life. Yet Chevalier again proves herself an astute observer of a social era, especially in her portrayal of the lingering sentimentality, prejudices and early stirrings of social change of the Victorian age. When Maude's mother, Kitty, becomes obsessively involved with the emerging suffragette movement, the plot gathers momentum. While it's obvious that tragedy is brewing, Chevalier shows imaginative skill in two neatly accomplished surprises, and the denouement packs an emotional wallop. While not as accomplished a work as Girl, the ironies inherent in the dramatic unfolding of two families' lives ultimately endow this novel with an impressive moral vision. Agent, Deborah Schneider. (Oct. 15) Forecast: The popularity of Girl with a Pearl Earring among reading groups and its record as a bestseller will provide a ready audience for Chevalier's new effort. The perennial appeal of books set in post-Victorian England should be another asset. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
Maude Coleman and Lavinia Waterhouse meet in a graveyard the day after Queen Victoria's death. The two girls become fast friends, although their mothers come to dislike each other almost as quickly. The girls' friendship endures, and they continue to meet in the graveyard, keeping company with Simon, the son of a gravedigger. While Lavinia's mother dotes on her frivolous daughter, Maude's mother, Kitty, is indifferent to her only child. Kitty is unhappy in her marriage and actively pursues the superintendent of the churchyard, Mr. Jackson. When their affair leads to an unwanted pregnancy, Kitty takes matters into her own hands, isolating her further from her family. After Kitty meets Caroline Black, a passionate suffragette, she is revitalized by a cause that brings a purpose to her life. Both her husband and Maude are dismayed by her involvement, and when Kitty's newfound purpose quickly turns into fanaticism, it leads to an event that harbors tragedy for all involved. Chevalier's second novel captures not only the progressive spirit of post-Victorian England but also its conventions, such as the preoccupation with death and the impossibly mature voices of young children. Accomplished and powerful, it is certain to appeal to those who made Chevalier's first novel, Girl with a Pearl Earring (1999), a surprise best-seller and a favorite on the book-club circuit. Kristine Huntley
School Library Journal Review
Chevalier follows up her best-selling Girl with a Pearl Earring with the story of two girls from different backgrounds who might never have met and become friends had their families not visited adjoining gravesites in 1901 London. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Guardian Review
In her follow-up to Girl With a Pearl Earring , Chevalier invokes the two splendid Victorian obsessions of sex and death, except that now the Queen's protracted reign is finally over, and social and sexual mores are slowly beginning to change. The Colemans and the Waterhouses are reluctant neighbours, yoked together by their daughters' friendship and by the prospect of their families' bodies lying together in adjacent graves. But the girls' penchant for visiting the cemetery to compare urns and angels brings new dangers, not least in the shape of Mrs Coleman's sexual liberation at the hands of the superintendent of graves, a fulfilment that leads her pell-mell into the hands of the Suffragettes. Chevalier pursues narrative even-handedness by giving husbands, wives, children and servants their own voices and allowing them to overlap, accumulate and, ultimately, contradict one another. Although one feels her diligent researches haven't always led her to a perfect understanding of the Edwardian era - some of the writing veers uncomfortably towards pastiche - the progress of her characters out of Victorian reticence and into the relative permissiveness of the early 1900s is neatly handled. Particularly enjoyable is the precocious pomposity of little Lavinia Waterhouse, who likes nothing better than to compile lists of mourning etiquette, and who yearns for the rectitude of yesteryear. And Chevalier does a good line in ghouls, with visits from the Coleman grandmother as much as treat for readers as it is a shuddering nightmare for her relatives. Caption: article-shortfic.1 [Tracy Chevalier] pursues narrative even-handedness by giving husbands, wives, children and servants their own voices and allowing them to overlap, accumulate and, ultimately, contradict one another. Although one feels her diligent researches haven't always led her to a perfect understanding of the Edwardian era - some of the writing veers uncomfortably towards pastiche - the progress of her characters out of Victorian reticence and into the relative permissiveness of the early 1900s is neatly handled. - Alex Clark.
Kirkus Review
Chevalier's enormous hit with Vermeer and the 17th century (Girl With a Pearl Earring, 2000) is followed by a novel so familiar-the forces of change at 19th- century's end put cracks in domestic life-that the hyperverisimilitude of its period-color seems almost done by number. Things aren't going so well in Kitty and Richard Coleman's marriage, though by appearances all's fine: they're a respectable couple in London's middle-high society, live in a fine house, keep maid and cook, and remind readers of the upstairs family in, well, Upstairs, Downstairs. But under the surface is what matters-fulfillment, self-expression, dynamism, sex-and that's where Richard Coleman, though charming as fiance, reveals himself to be old-fashioned, "ordinary," even authoritarian as husband. When Kitty withdraws from him sexually, the germ of plot-trouble is sown-and would seem to be reaped when Kitty's single fling brings her the need of a secret abortion that's followed by long, deep depression and dire health. But really it's just the start, for when Kitty discovers and then actively joins the Suffragists, her health and life are both transformed-though Richard grows only the more angry and disapproving at the folly and impropriety of it all. As events move toward a terrible end (there's a vast Suffragist rally, a freak accident, two awful deaths) Chevalier proves herself ringmaster of the symbols she puts through their paces: the London cemetery, for example, that functions as social center (people stroll through to admire their families' urns and angels), brings Kitty to her single-fling lover (he's the graveyard manager), and provides a playground for young daughter Maude to meet her vain friend Lavinia, a kind of Becky Sharp of the past to Maude's gradually emerging prototype of the educated woman of the future. All takes place between the death of Victoria and the death of Edward, time when one world was born, one died, and houses got electricity and phones. Chevalier offers pleasures enough, indeed, though on an outing taken countless times before.
Library Journal Review
January 1901. Queen Victoria is one day dead; two families visit their respective family graves to mourn, and two girls meet, become friends, and bring their relatives together in unexpected ways. As in her first novel, Girl with a Pearl Earring, Chevalier excels at capturing subtle social nuances and setting historical scenes. Key among the characters who narrate parts of the story is beautiful and frustrated Kitty Coleman, who, as the times shift from Victorian to modern, embraces the change with a bid for personal freedom. Her secrets and lies have disastrous consequences. The novel is infused with enriching details the proper fabric for mourning handkerchiefs, how to host an "at home" (an open house), and the route the suffragettes took on their march to Hyde Park. Like an E.M. Forster novel filtered through a modern sensibility, Falling Angels takes us back to the early 20th century and keeps us there, waiting to see what Kitty and her crowd will do next. Boldly plotted and beautifully written, this impressive novel is highly recommended for all public libraries. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 6/1/01.] Yvette W. Olson, City Univ. Lib., Renton, WA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Excerpts
Excerpts
An elegant, daring, original, and compelling novel, set against a gaslit backdrop of social and political turbulence in early twentieth-century London, Falling Angels draws a picture of family life that exposes the prejudices and flaws of a changing time.In January 1901, two families become inextricably linked when their daughters meet in a fashionable London cemetery. Separated by social class as well as taste, the Waterhouses cling to traditions while the Colemans look ahead to a more modern society. As the girls grow up and the nation emerges from the shadows of oppressive Victorian values, one woman's bid for greater personal freedom has disastrous consequences, changing the lives of both families forever. Excerpted from Falling Angels by Tracy Chevalier All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
