Miss Garnet's Angel

[fajrdrako]

I just finished reading Miss Garnet's Angel by Salley Vickers.

I read a lot of genre fiction, so it was fun to read something that seemed so mainstream. It also featured two of my favourite subjects: Venice and angels.

The plot is about a retired English schoolteacher named Julia Garnet, who decides to go to Venice because she has already wanted to go. Through her life she has been mostly solitary and fairly sheltered. Venice opens her eyes to beauty and to life in various ways, as she makes friends with some people for almost the first time in her life. This is all counterpointed with the story of Tobit from the Apocrypha.

I got quite into the story, and then was reasonably disappointed in the resolutions of the various themes. They fell a little flat. Nothing really surprised me, except for one lie that I had believed. I was disappointed, for example, that after Julia learns Sarah's secret, they never talk about it - never talk again

Still, any story set in Venice (and with Venetian art and angels in it) has to be worth reading.

Comments

[swanswan.livejournal.com]

Hey, I read that one! ANd I agree. I really enjoyed the beginning, the mellow setting and the woman-alone-in-foreign-city aspects, as well as the lovely descriptions of the apartment and the area (I've never been to Venice)

But it did totally veer off towards the end, diversifying the plot too much, I thought, and losing the sense of intimacy it began with. I also found the mild paedophilia side-plot somewhat jarring - just somehow that the author didnt quite manage to mesh all the ideas she wanted to play with.

Still, enjoyable read!

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I thought she did a good job of capturing the beauty and the magic of Venice - though I'm not sure that was sustained to the end, either. Yes, I agree, the plot diversified too much - was it about Julia finding herself, or was it about the nature of fulfilment, or was it about Zoroastrian philosophy? By the end of the book there were a lot of elements that had me thinking "why is that there?" rather than feeling it fit in naturally to the story.

So I liked the first half more than the second, but on the whole, found it well worth reading.