The Third Angel: A Novel
by Alice Hoffman
|
List Price: Our Price: $1.89 You Save: $23.11 (92%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $0.01 (click here) Category: Book See more book details and other editions |
|---|
Book Reviews of The Third Angel: A Novel
Book Review: Absolutely Amazing
Summary: 5 Stars
"The doctor believed there were three angels," Alice Hoffman wrote in her 2008 novel The Third Angel, "The Angel of Life, who rode along with them most nights. The Angel of Death, who appeared wearing his funeral clothes on those visits when there was no hope. And then there was the Third Angel. The one who walked among us, who sometimes lay sick in bed, begging for human compassion." Hoffman's novel magically intertwines the stories of three women and their life's quests for faith, love, acceptance, and meaning.
We are first introduced to Maddy Heller, an American lawyer in London for her sister Allie's wedding to Paul in 1999. The themes of Maddy's life are misguided love, jealousy, and faith. Maddy is a very lonely, insecure woman who is desperately jealous of her sister. She never feels satisfied with her life. Maddy resents her father for leaving them when she was a child, her mother for loving her sister more than herself, and her sister for being "perfect." She falls in love with a man whom she knows does not love her back. She longs for him to call her, all the while professing that she has no faith in love or marriage. She has spent her life searching for something to believe in. A bundle of contradictions and raw emotion, Maddy is a realistic, complicated, and memorable character.
The second portion of the book deals with the story of Frieda Lewis, the mother of Paul. Frieda was present in the first chapter, but it is here that her character truly unfolds. Her story takes place in 1966 London. Frieda is the intelligent daughter of a country doctor who moves to London in search for something spectacular. She works at the Lion Park Hotel as a maid and falls for an up-and-coming rock star, Jamie. In the end, Frieda married another man because he was appropriate, and Jamie was killed in an accident. She wrote the songs that made Jamie famous, yet she is still alive and with her infant son because he rejected her. "[The Third Angel]'s the most curious," Hoffman writes, "You can't even tell if he's an angel or not. You think you're doing him a kindness, you think you're the one taking care of him, while all the while, he's the one who's saving your life."
The final portion ties the stories together flawlessly. It is the story of Lucy Green, the mother of Maddy and Allie Heller. The story takes place in 1952, when Lucy (a twelve-year-old) joins her father and step-mother in London to attend a wedding. She befriends a man named Michael Macklin at the Lion Park Hotel. He is the only adult who takes the time to talk to and understand the child. The reader will recognize his name from the two previous stories. In Lucy, we find the concepts of the need for acceptance and love, the desire to be heard, and uncontrollable grief for something you believe is your fault.
The themes of love and marriage run through all three story lines. But Hoffman does not romanticize them in the least. "There was good love, and there was bad love," she wrote. "There was the kind that helped raise a person above her failings and there was the desperate sort that struck when someone least expected it." Her concept of marriage is of a failed institution that does not necessarily work and certainly isn't "happily ever after."
Another important element in the novel is faith. All three main characters are searching for something to believe in.
The Third Angel is an excellent book with the power to break your heart and make you look into your own soul as it delves deeply into human nature and motivations. Alice Hoffman's novel is meticulously detailed and flows smoothly. Her characters are deep, believable, and so human. I enjoyed this book immensely. This was the first of Hoffman's novels that I have read, and from this experience I wouldn't hesitate to buy her books again.
by Jennifer Melville
for Story Circle Book Reviews
reviewing books by, for, and about women
Book Review: "The One Who Walks Among Us."
Summary: 5 Stars
Alice Hoffman's latest novel THE THIRD ANGEL consists of three stories connected by the same characters and places over different periods of time, beginning with the most recent events and going backward: I, "The Heron's Wife," 1999; II, "Lion Park," 1966 and III, "The Rules of Love," 1952. The stories also hang together because the same themes run through each of them. Who is better to say what Ms. Hoffman writes about than the author, herself? In a recent reading, she told the audience that her books are always about love and loss. In "The Heron's Wife," Maddy falls in love-- she thinks-- with her sister's fiance Paul, when she goes to London for her sister Allie's wedding. In "Lion Park"-- the name of a hotel in London where much of the action takes place over the years-- Frieda, who later becomes the mother of Paul, falls for a rock star addicted to hard drugs although he is in love with someone else. Finally in "The Rules of Love" the twelve-year-old Lucy (later the mother of Maddy and Allie) gets caught up in a tragedy where another character is in love with a women who marries someone else.
Ms. Hoffman's characters in this novel fall in love with the wrong person, or with the right person but too early or too late. Then they may settle-- in the case of Frieda-- for a "nice man." Although love may be simple, it is not rational. The author also writes about the love of parents for children. As one character puts it: "You won't believe how much you'll love your child." Even though Hoffman's complex characters are flawed, seldom turning out the way their parents had hoped they would (sound familiar?), and may do bad acts, betraying those they love, they also often have redeeming qualities as well. They mend their broken lives and sometimes become that third angel, described so beautifully by Frieda's doctor father whom she remembers as a "very serious, lovely, practical man." In addition to the Angel of Life or the Angel of Death, one of whom would ride with him in the back of his car when he made house calls, there was the mysterious Third Angel: "'You can't even tell if he's an angel or not. You think you're doing him a kindness, you think you're the one taking care of him, while all the while, he's the one who's saving your life.'" He walks among us.
Ms. Hoffman is so good at creating events that remind us that, yes, this is just the way it is or the way a similar event in our own lives affected us: for example, the sudden shock and suffocating loneliness of learning that a person-- perhaps an old friend we have lost contact with or someone we once cared about deeply-- whom we thought was alive has been dead for months or even years. She writes as eloquently and movingly about death as anyone I can think of-- passages from Thomas Wolfe's LOOK HOMEWARD ANGEL and Alan Gurganus' PLAYS WELL WITH OTHERS come to mind; and her writing is filled with a magic-- i.e., blue herons and white rabbits-- worthy of the best of Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
Although Ms. Hoffman's prose has not one unnecessary word or phrase, it is beautifully descriptive and often poetic. Consider this: "It was that silver-colored time between night and morning, when the sky is still dark, but lights are flicking on all over the city. It was quiet, the way it is in winter when snow first begins to fall."
If you are not careful, you will be undone by this novel for it gives a poignant picture of what it means to be human.
Book Review: THE THIRD ANGEL contains a marvelously vast beauty
Summary: 5 Stars
"There was good love and there was bad love. There was the kind that helped raise a person above her failings and there was the desperate sort that struck when someone least wanted or expected it."
THE THIRD ANGEL --- Alice Hoffman's 20th novel for adults --- tells of three women in three different times, in the desperate sort of love that nearly always leads to a bad end.
In the late 1990s, Maddy Heller heads off to London for her sister's wedding. When she meets Allie's fiancé, Paul, there is an undeniable chemistry. She realizes that acting on her urges would be a bad idea, but Maddy has long carried a grudge against her sister. She has always felt that their mother favored Allie. Besides, Allie seems, well, almost uninterested in Paul. It's as though she doesn't really want to marry him, or is that just a convenient excuse Maddy tells herself?
Maddy checks into the Lion Park Hotel, a small old inn away from the rest of the wedding party. She recalls that her mother, Lucy, told her about a time when Lucy herself stayed there in the early 1950s. Lucy was 10 years old, and her family had come to London for her stepmother's sister's wedding. That love story didn't work out too well either. In fact, it went horribly wrong and she was right in the middle of it. Lucy knows the story behind the ghost in Room 707. She has carried that knowledge through all the years of her life. Now she watches her daughters falling into relationships destined to bring them a heartache potentially as devastating as that one.
Paul's mother, Frieda, also has a history with the Lion Park Hotel. As a rebellious young woman in the mid-1960s, she fled her rich father's home to make her way in this world. The Lion Park provided rooms, mostly shared, for a reasonable price, plus employment as a maid. That suited Frieda just fine. Her father would cringe if he could see her working as a maid, which would suit her quite fine as well. As far as she was concerned, he really had no say in her life, especially after leaving her and her mother for another woman. Ironically, she falls hard for Jamie, a man with a troubled past and a fiancé. She finds out what it's like to be "the other woman" --- and also learns about a desperate love that can kill.
But this is not just the story of the women. The men have their stories too. As do the mothers. Everyone has made mistakes in their lives. What can they do to atone for the wrongs they have done to others? There is always a price. For some, the cost is very dear.
Where, you may ask, does the third angel come in? Dr. Heller, Lucy's father, told her of the angel of Death and the angel of Life, two mythical beings that we all have heard about. Whenever he went on house calls, he claimed one of them rode in the back seat of his car. Then there is the third angel, who watches over us in a quiet, obscure way, almost unnoticed. One of them always rides with us, but knowing which one can be difficult to tell.
Don't let the size of this small book fool you. THE THIRD ANGEL contains a marvelously vast beauty, one worth far more than the modest cover price. In these troubled times, Alice Hoffman's story of love and redemption is a rare gem.
Book Review: Love, Heartache and The Ghost in Room 707
Summary: 5 Stars
Sometimes I think the whole concept of language and storytelling have spent centuries waiting around for Ann Hoffman to come along and use them. She is certainly one of the best wordsmiths the English Language has ever produced, one of the best storytellers too and she's at the top of her game with this one.
The Third Angel is three novellas which work backward in time, telling the story about interconnecting characters and a ghost. What happened back in 1952 affects what happens in 1966 and 1999. We get the last story first and the first story last.
The story opens with American Attorney Maddie Heller arriving at the Lion Park Hotel in London. Her sister Allie is getting married and her husband to be Paul who is ill. However, that doesn't stop Maddie from sleeping with him. Maddie is the bad sister. Children's author Allie is the good. The ghost in room 707, well he's just the ghost. In Maddie's defense, if there can be any defense for a woman who sleeps with her sister's intended, is that she's in love him. It's tragic for Maddie, what she has done can ruin her sister's life. Will it?
Maddie's story finished we move back to 1966 and Ms. Hoffman captures the time beautifully. She captures the story of Paul's mother Frieda beautifully as well. Frieda is an over educated maid in the Lion Park Hotel and she's besotted with a wannabe Jim Morrison type and she has his child and names him Paul, who will eventually grow up, get sick and marry Maddie's sister Alley. Again Ms. Hoffman has given us characters so true that they'll be in your head long after your reading of this book is done. She's done the ghost justice too.
Frieda's story finished, we move still backward in time to 1952 and join twelve-year-old Lucy, who will later in life give birth to Allie and Maddie. Her father and stepmother bring her across the ocean to London as they are going to the wedding of stepmom's sister Bryn who still has a thing for her ex-husband Michael, who is not the guy she's supposed to be marrying. Lucy carries messages back and forth between Michael and Bryn and it's because, whoops, better stop right here, but needless to say the ghost might not be a ghost yet. You'll have to get this book to find out more, but it'll be a good investment.
Ann Hoffman's characters, her ghost, her three angels, the rabbet who lives in the hotel and the city of London all invite you to crack open the pages of the best book you'll read this year.
Reviewed by Vesta Irene
Book Review: The Ghost of Michael Macklin
Summary: 4 Stars
This latest offering by Ms. Hoffman is a generational piece whose roots are in the 1950s. The backdrop for most of the story is the Lion Park hotel in London, a second-rate hotel that is haunted.
Our first encounter with sisters Maddie and Allie uncovers a betrayal by the younger sister who lives a care-free existence based on the fact that she believes that she was an unloved child. Allie, the older sister, has pretty much done what was expected of her because she has always been the caretaker; first when her mother had cancer and later when her fiance suffers from the same disease. She realizes only too late that she truly loves her fiance and moves swiftly to makes things right only to lose him too.
Freida, the fiance's mother, takes up the middle of the book. Her story is set in the 1960s and brought back for this reader 'the look' that was so popular then in London: overly made-up eyes, short mini-skirts, high boots, swingy music, free love, etc. Hoping to escape from the dreariness of a rural youth she makes her way to the Lion Park hotel where she works as a maid. Soon, though, she becomes the muse for a rock-star wanna-be who is hooked on drugs and has a very Paris Hilton-like girlfriend. In the end, Freida puts all of the very trendy and drug-filled life behind her and returns to her rural home where she marries the boyfriend who had gone on to college. She goes on to nursing school herself and lives a very fulfilling life in spite of the ghostly happenings that populated her time working at the Lion Park.
The thread that sews it all together is Lucy Green. Lucy is the mother of the two young women we first met at the outset of the story. Inadvertently she is the one who caused the problems that have brought about the haunting of the Lion Park's seventh floor. Having witnessed the deaths of the people involved she withdraws to a secret place inside herself just as she did when her own mother passed away. It takes love in all its simple complexities to bring Lucy into her own once more.
This book is a very easy read despite the complexities of the characters we meet. I read it in two sittings and would have accomplished it in one had I not fallen asleep at nearly two in the morning.
I give this story four stars simply because I've enjoyed some of Ms. Hoffman's other offerings more.
Note: you're bound to fall in love with Millie.
Recommended: Practical Magic, The Probable Future