Miss Garnet's Angel

Salley Vickers is one of two writers whose discovery in the last year has once again made me glad I can still find wonderful writing. It is always a delight to discover an author to add to the "must read all they do" list. A few years ago it was Michael Chabon, and I await his next with baited breath, but in the last year there have been Charles Portis ("Masters of Atlantis" and more), and Salley Vickers. I saw this book in the library and read reviews online before reading it. It is NOT a quick and easy read, as someone suggested in these reviews. It is a parallel rendering of the story of Julia Garnet and the biblical book of Tobit, and the point is the realization that our lives aren't as cut and dried as modernity would have us believe. Raphael the Archangel is the central protagonist really, and his presence seems to seep into the story at every turn. How Julie grows and blooms is the surface story, but underneath there is a stream of the ethereal which also runs through Salley Vickers other two books, "Instances of the Number 3" and "Mr. Golightly." I read these two right after this one. I highly recommend them all.

Miss Garnet has a dry and emotionless life. She vaguely realises this, but is never moved to do anything about it until her friend of many years dies, and she decides to spend time overseas. Her destination of choice is Venice, and there the beauty and history of the place, and the different people she meets, touch her soul and makes her think and re-evaluate everything she has done with her life. Cleverly interwoven with this is the story of Tobias, who is accompanied by an angel as he too ventures on a journey that will also change his life.This all sounds very deep and meaningful, but it is a lovely, lyrical book, where the central character is charming in her self analysis, regrets and realisations of things lost, and we appreciate the small pleasures that she derives from a beautiful painting, a new lilac dress, and the discovery of new truths from her own research into the story of Tobias and the angel which has so fascinated her. The other characters who populate her journey are equally enchanting, all of whom are not really who they appear to be, but all who help Miss Garnet appreciate what she has in life, as to a degree she does them as well.If there is one small drawback with the book, it is that it immediately imbues the reader with a great desire to visit Venice, and to gaze upon paintings of angels. But I'm sure I will get over this. I will however, continue to remember this enchanting story, and I recommend it highly. This is a first novel, and I trust that it is the beginning of a great career for a talented and insightful writer.

Retired school teacher, Julia Garnet, is lonely and at a loss with what to do with her life after the death of her flat mate of many years, and decides to spend 6 months in Venice. A confirmed communist, she is amazed at the ease with which she is falling under the spell of the magnificent architecture, especially the churches, which at first she finds decadent, in view of her strict anti-church attitude. She befriends a young couple who are restoring an old chapel and becomes very involved in their lives, as well as meeting- and being totally charmed by a very dashing art dealer- who wines and dines her.Julia falls in love for the first time in her life and is shattered when things don't turn out as well as she'd hoped. I found this book to have an other-worldly feel to it as though Venice itself was responsible for normally prosiac people acting differently, just as if they were somehow charmed and under the influence of old paintings and statues, particularly those of the angel Raphael, whose biblical story interweaves with that of Julia. It's a gem of a book with such a luminous feel to it that I'm sure I'll read it again fairly soon.

This novel follows approximately eleven months in the life of Miss Julia Garnet, from the Feast of Epiphany to the Feast of Raphael. Her friend, Harriet, has just died suddenly. With her habits already shaken up by the death of her companion, Julia decides to rattle them even further by jetting off to Venice, to enjoy the kind of holiday that Harriet had been planning for their joint retirement from teaching. Miss Julia Garnet is a Communist who's never been kissed, so it's something of a surprise to see her falling in love, and to learn of her abounding interest in an angel. At first glance, this is a Death in Venice/Don't Look Now kind of book. Carlo, the man for whom Julia falls for big time, turns out to be quite an apocryphalcharacter, in the modern meaning of the word. Thankfully, Harriet wasn't in the habit of wearing lurid red anoraks, and Salley Vickers' new novel, The Instances ofthe Number 3 also opens with a death. However, Julia does encounter the twins who are restoring the Chapel-of-the-Plague (which Salley Vickers seems to have invented for the novel), similar to the sort of work carried out by Donald Sutherland's character in Don't Look Now. However, there is the scene where Julia abandons her guidebook by the Reverend Crystal in St. Mark's Basilica (a reference to A Room with a View perhaps?), and this is where she meets Carlo for the first time. St. Mark's Basilica is very beautiful, but as Carlo tells Julia, all the art has been nicked from other cultures and appropriated by the victorious Venetians of past history. One could say that Salley Vickers has gone about doing the same thing (especially with regards to her new novel), yet there is a more apt simile to describe what she is doing here. Like Gianantonio Guardi, Salley Vickers could be said to be borrowing poses or motifs from other artists, but she recasts them in her own vivid manner (to paraphrase Emil Kren and Daniel Marx's description of Guardi's painting 'The Angel Appears to Tobias'). The quotes that Salley Vickers uses in this novel always seem appropriate, and always seem to be leading somewhere, whereas the quotations in The Instances of the Number 3 seem forced and appropriated. Although I thought there could be more behind Salley Vickers' naming Julia's school as 'St Barnabas and St James'. There's a thread throughout the novel concerning St Mark, who let down St Barnabas and St Paul by returning home early from one of their first journeys, and I couldn't see a link between St Barnabas and St James. Towards the end of the novel, Julia traces Tobias's journey on a map. In so doing, she's conveying the importance of such journeys, to our common history and our own personal development. For interested readers, I've created a page concerning the cultural context of this novel.We are invited to see Julia as several archetypal figures. She could be Saint Ursula, watched over by the Angel Raphael as in the cover picture of the book, cropped from

What a joy to read this lovely book shortly after returning from a trip to Venice. Steeped in the art and history of Venice and in an obscure story from the Apocrypha, the novel is multitextural, haunting, and ethereal just like the serpentine streets of that most Serene of Cities. The subject matter sounds weighty but it is never dull. Elements of a mystery are part of this story of the spinster English school teacher Miss Jula Garnet who is changed forever by her stay in Venice and the people she meets there.I kept turning pages to find out what would happen next. Just a wonderfully literate,and thoughtful book. It will stay in your memory.