In the Company of Angels

This is a resounding, deeply moving story of pain, sorrow, love, and redemption. Despite the characters' dark and soul-shattering journeys, light reflects on every page, both literally and aesthetically. Kennedy writes with an exquisite and tender timbre, lyrical and poetical, from core to root to stem to stalk to bloom. His prose is fueled with gravitas and grace, as he probes into the seeds of the subconscious with a Jungian finesse. Nardo Greene is a Chilean teacher who is in Copenhagen receiving treatment for PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder). He was tortured during Pinochet's regime for educating his pupils about "a poet who sang dangerous songs," a poet who was captured and died in a dungeon. Nardo's wife and child are joined with the *desaparecido*, the disappeared. "The poets were captured, but not their songs. For a song, once it is let loose in the air, can only be captured by one person at a time and cannot be stopped, for there are not ever enough policeman, will never be enough policemen or enough soldiers to stop a song. Even all the money of the rich cannot stop a song from reaching the ears of those who will hear it. If only one person hears it and learns it, others will, too, and others again. And they will teach the song to others." This beautiful passage points to the essence of the story, connecting with others to heal wounds, and about the power of human souls to surmount horrifying ordeals and ultimately prevail. Throughout the novel, Kennedy weaves in beautiful poetry, by authors such as Pablo Neruda, one of my cherished poets, and poignant Scandinavian poetry. Moreover, this is the first time that Matthew Arnold's "Dover Beach" mesmerized me with its rousing expression and eloquent sound and rhythm. When this novel opens, psychotherapist Dr. Kristensen is trying to bring Nardo back to the land of the living. Nardo is emotionally, psychically, and spiritually dead. Kristensen is an enthusiastic and diligent doctor, facile at his work. But with Nardo he has hit a wall. His ability to maintain a professional and therapeutic distance is threatened by the fact that Nardo's demons are visiting him. Moreover, he is losing his grip with his family. The chapters from the doctor's perspective are the only chapters written in first person. It is as if he is the center, from which all others radiate outward and back, even the characters that don't personally interact with him. And, yet, he remains the most enigmatic, the most difficult character to pin down. His character feels disembodied at times, as he is woven in as the literal healing force. Michela Ibsen is a lovely woman, an ordinary woman, burdened with unresolved grief. Her much younger boyfriend is Voss, a boyishly handsome and emotionally stunted individual. He is suffocating her with his perverse needs and possessiveness. Michela's parents are both seriously ill. They live in separate rooms in a facility for the aged and infirm. Her rela

In The Company of Angels is an important book, elegantly written, that shattered my heart into little pieces and then offered me the power of redemption. It is one of those rare books that is transformative. At its center is Bernardo Greene, a Chilean teacher who undergoes physical and psychological torture by Pinochet's thugs, and is now at the Copenhagen Rehabilitation Center for Torture Victims. He connects with another damaged individual, Michela, who has also battled evil in the form of her abusive ex-husband Mads who "beat her maybe a dozen times, twenty times, perhaps twice a year for sixteen years." Bernardo ("Nardo") is a poet at heart, and taught his students the poetry of Domingo Gomez Rojas back in Chile before he was picked up. He reflects: "Their objective was to break his spirit, only because he had been a man the people of his community respected, a teacher. They looked up to him, trusted him, a man not without dignity or the courage to examine his thoughts, his experiences, and to tell of what he believed to be so. Not a hero, but a man nonetheless, still a man." Nardo was tortured in every possible way, destroying his body and filling his soul with shame. While in prison, at his most despairing, he experiences "a moment's escape into sunlight from a dark, filthy cell in the company of angels who promise him that one day he would be free". The promised freedom refers to the shackles of his mind, not just his body. Later he muses: "The poets were captured, but not their songs. For a song, once it is let loose in the air, can only be captured by one person at a time and cannot be stopped...If only one person hears it and learns it, others will, too, and others again. And they will teach the songs to others." Michela, for Nardi, is a living angel; someone who will teach him that there can still be good in the world. Michala has her own demons: she visits a bleak nursing home where her adulterous father is wasting from cancer and her mother is unsuccessfully fighting dementia, and her memories drift to the suicide of her 17-year-old daughter. Kennedy writes: "We are alone in the envelope of our bodies -- but there are things that diminish our soltitude, that make it possible to speak across the chasm between us, to reach across and touch it, if only for an instant..." Thomas Kennedy could have turned this entire book into a despondent and dark tale, but instead, he envelopes it into a sort of fable-like quality. The theme is no less than the survival of the human spirit, and the defeat of evil by an indefatigable wish to love. This is supposedly the first part of a quartet, and I will eagerly read the rest of it. It receives my highest recommendation.

All-encompassing in its themes and scope and sensitive to the details which make it come alive, In the Company of Angels is an exhilarating novel, however traumatic its subject. Author Thomas E. Kennedy takes a close look at Chile during the Pinochet government (1973 - 1980), focusing on Bernardo (Nardo) Greene, an "ordinary" Chilean teacher school teacher who was imprisoned and tortured for two years for straying from the assigned curriculum. Kennedy also, however, examines the similarities between government-sanctioned (and encouraged) torture and other forms of torture, including spousal abuse, the repression of women, and the inaction of people who ignore crimes. Ostensibly a love story between Bernardo (Nardo) Greene, a widower whose wife and son were "desaparecido" during his incarceration and torture, and Michela Ibsen, a forty-year-old Danish woman, a victim of spousal abuse, the novel examines many themes related to love and death, freedom and confinement, and the worldly and the spiritual. Greene is getting treatment in Copenhagen at a center devoted to the rehabilitation of torture victims, and he wonders if he will ever be able to trust a human again. His psychiatrist, Thorkild Kristensen, dedicated to Nardo's recovery, has his own problems, unable to "leave the job at work." Though the reader becomes totally consumed with the stories of these vibrant characters, Kennedy's novel is not "just" a love story. Nardo has survived his torture because at the moment that he might have given up, he is visited by angels who take him out of his imprisonment long enough to remind him of a happier life and tell him that he will one day be free. Throughout his time in Copenhagen, Nardo notices birds and feeds them, the symbol of freedom and escape from the earth's limitations; the rain is cleansing. Music and dance become a major pleasure and memory for him. Michela, not only the victim of abuse but the mother of a child who committed suicide, is also the surviving child of parents who are now in a nursing home. Her mother suffers from Alzheimer's disease and no longer recognizes her husband, recalling only the bad times with him. Michela's father, a man who was cruel and unfeeling toward Michela when she was a child, is dying from cancer, waspish toward her now that she is his only visitor. Every detail here is completely integrated into the thematic structure of the novel, with symbols adding to the novel's great power and involving the reader on new levels as the author examines the meaning of love and how to achieve it. Elegant, beautifully constructed so that every level expands the themes, and sensitively descriptive of Copenhagen and its surroundings, In the Company of Angels is at the top of my Favorites for the year. Mary Whipple

This eloquent novel takes on a subject matter that some readers may not have previously reflected on: the examination of the legacy of tortures and other forms of brutalities, psychic and physical, and the struggles that survivors of such cruelties go through in their attempt to restore pieces of their old selves, unbroken before the tragic events that befell them. The novel's main protagonists are Bernardo Greene and Michela Ibsen. Bernardo was a teacher in his native Chile before fleeing to Copenhagen after gaining freedom from his captors and torturers. A victim of trumped up charges, he had lost his family, his trust for most human beings, and his sense of self-worth. Michela is a beautiful 40-ish Danish woman who has also experienced pain: the loss of an only child, and a failed marriage to a man who had physically abused her. Now caring for her hospital-bound parents who are in their sunset years, and dating a much younger man, she finds herself curiously drawn to Bernardo when they first met in a cafe, and Bernardo, clearly smitten with her, had summoned the courage to ask her to dance with him. That Bernardo was initially hesitant, even fearful, to approach Michela is understandable. He is still fighting demons from his past, and although he has been getting help from Dr. Kristensen, he has not progressed enough in the healing process to risk hurting himself even more, or Michela, who may not find him "man enough" for her. Michela is similarly conflicted. Does she deserve the love of another man after her failed first marriage? Why is she having these kinds of doubts when she knows she has a lot to offer? Bernardo's and Michela's fears and doubts are manifestations of some of the impact of the brutalities they have been subjected to. What would come of their budding feelings for each other? Would they try to reach for the next level? For them to do so, they must be able to overcome their fears and doubts; to reach across the chasm that separates not just them from each other, but their current wounded selves from the person they would like to be. Would they succeed? Would they run into unexpected obstacles? Despite the gravity of the subject matter, readers are never in danger of getting left in the lurch with heavy-heartedness, for the story of Bernardo and Michela is told with measured cadence and just the right mix of subplots that invite loathing for the weaklings inflicting cruelties on them and admiration for their individual strengths and courage. Very moving story!