How Like an Angel

Jack Driscoll is an original for the ages. How Like an Angel is the most compelling novel I've read this year. I simply could not put it down. The main character, Archie Angel, is as achingly human as any fictional character I've encountered in a long time. Angel has my highest recommend. Don't miss this book!

I loved this book, even though (or maybe because) it broke my heart several times, beginning with the dying swan that gently lays its head on Archie's shoulder as he carries it to his car. Now that I've finished the book, I find myself still thinking about the characters, even some who make only brief appearances, wondering what happened to them. I also loved the novel's seamless merging of past and present, the breathtaking landscapes, and the lyrical prose. I just wish I hadn't read it so fast. Now I'll have to wait a couple of years for Driscoll's next wonderful novel.

It's a joy to read anything by Jack Driscoll. This is a writer who cares about each word. If you like to read a book that is NOT a page turner but one that invites you to savor and reflect, then read any book by this caring and masterful author. Jack Ridl

What a pleasure is was to read the latest Driscoll. It didn't disappoint. How often I read a novel and come away with nothing. Literally nothing. This story, however, cuts through the literary mumbo-jumbo and left me with the feeling that I learned something about the way characters, ordinary people, go about their bumbling efforts to be happy and bring meaning into their lives. It doesn't come with a gunshot or a bank robbery or the next humanity-destroying virus. It's here, reading about people I can understand and live with. Just as examples (there are many) in chapter 4, when Angel is losing his mother, I felt his loss as I was wrapped up in the story. I needed to put the book down for a while after that chapter. Another example is the last chapter, last paragraph. "Dad?" says it all. As things drifted away from Angel, ex-wife, girlfriend, his past, the one place where his rudder was set and firm was with his son. How true. I've gone through a difficult divorce and the one grounding force in all the crap that flew around was the need to maintain contact with the kids. Driscoll's captured and highlighted the primal attractive force between parent and child. Just as rewarding as the story was the tone. I felt as though I was with a good friend and we were tossing a few back at a local tavern as he told me the tale. Thanks for the experience.

Reading Jack Driscoll's How Like An Angel is like wading into the tea-colored river he writes about -- with (and sometimes without) -- a good wading stick. Archie who is a fishing guide finds himself suddenly at sea, dealing with his recent divorce (the dissolution of which feels to Archie as if he's a surviving swan that has mated for life), and the death of first his mother, then his father. Though Archie is no longer sure he can call himself a fishing guide, he nevertheless guides us through sinkholes of sorrow, around the deadfall of disappointment and doubt, over the fast water of hope, ultimately to the river's generous mouth of forgiveness. Where Archie learns that if he can't forgive his own father (who says to him, "Persona non grata, Arch. That's what the whole schmeer boils down to -- a nobody's nobody unless you can forgive me...."), he can never, then, forgive himself. Which is, of course, the only hope he has for a future with his own son, or any hope, as well, of finding firm footing with which to begin a new love relationship with a woman he finds surprisingly fascinating. Driscoll's prose is sheer poetry, his characters accessible, his insights into the human condition heartbreakingly honest, so honest that he disturbingly uncovers parts of you you thought buried forever. Or maybe gone missing. I, for one, hadn't realized I'd lost myself until halfway through the novel when, heart in my throat, I actually said these words aloud, "ahh, there I am." A wonderful read.