Falling Angels

by Tracy Chevalier Narrated by Anne Twomey

Overview

In 1901 London, as the precise social order of the Victorian era winds down and the forward-looking Edwardian order takes wing, three strangers meet in the city's stony Highgate Cemetery. Beautiful Lavinia revels in the elaborate trappings of the past. Plain Maude strives to shape the future. Simon Fields, a boy their age, is bound by poverty and professional to the cemetery.

As they explore the prejudices and flaws of a changing time, they bring their very different families together and ultimately discover that their fates are intertwined.

Editorial Reviews

bn.com

The bestselling author of Girl with a Pearl Earring dazzles readers once again with an elegant, daring, and compelling story of politics, prejudices, and family life in early Edwardian London.

People

...a thoughtful exploration of the ways people misread each other by being trapped in their own perspectives.

Janice P. Nimura

I read Falling Angels in an afternoon. The next day, I sat down and read it again. For several days afterward, I found myself revisiting its people and places, as if I'd just returned from travelling. This is Tracy Chevalier's singular gift: through the particular perspectives of a few finely drawn characters, she is able to evoke entire landscapes...Chevalier manages to delve beneath what we think we know about turn-of-the-century Britons -- there are no stock characters here, none who are perfectly comfortable in the niche society has assigned them.
— New York Times Book Review

Spanning the years 1901 to 1910, this book by the author of Girl With a Pearl Earring begins at a New Year's party, where several guests engage in wife swapping. Richard Coleman, thinking jealousy might motivate his lovely wife, Kitty, to let him back into her bed, decides to participate. But Kitty, who has become emotionally and intellectually restless, remains unimpressed with her husband. One day, during a visit to a nearby cemetery, the Colemans meet the Waterhouses, owners of the family plot next to theirs. Despite their class differences, Kitty's five-year-old daughter, Maude, becomes friendly with the Waterhouses' self-dramatizing elder daughter, Lavinia, with whom she begins to spend time exploring the cemetery grounds. Meanwhile, Kitty, who feels increasingly trapped in her marriage, meets suffragette Caroline Black. Kitty's passionate decision to join the feminist cause changes her life but ultimately leads to tragedy. Told from alternating points of view, this moving, bittersweet book flaunts Chevalier's gift for creating complex characters and an engaging plot.
—Ann Collette

Publishers Weekly

No small part of the appeal of Chevalier's excellent debut, Girl with a Pearl Earring, was its plausibility; readers could readily accept the idea that Vermeer's famous painting might indeed have been created under circumstances similar to Chevalier's imaginative scenario. The same cannot be said about her second novel. While Chevalier again proves adept at evoking a historical era this time, London at the turn of the 19th century she has devised a plot whose contrivances stretch credibility. When Maude Coleman and Lavinia Waterhouse, both five years of age, meet at their families' adjoining cemetery plots on the day after Queen Victoria's death, the friendship that results between sensitive, serious-minded Maude and narcissistic, melodramatic Livy is not unlikely, despite the difference in social classes. But the continuing presence in their lives of a young gravedigger, Simon Field, is. Far too cheeky for a boy of his age and class, Simon plays an important part in the troubles that will overtake the two families. Other characters are gifted with insights inappropriate to their age or station in life. Yet Chevalier again proves herself an astute observer of a social era, especially in her portrayal of the lingering sentimentality, prejudices and early stirrings of social change of the Victorian age. When Maude's mother, Kitty, becomes obsessively involved with the emerging suffragette movement, the plot gathers momentum. While it's obvious that tragedy is brewing, Chevalier shows imaginative skill in two neatly accomplished surprises, and the denouement packs an emotional wallop. While not as accomplished a work as Girl, the ironies inherent in the dramatic unfolding of two families'lives ultimately endow this novel with an impressive moral vision. Agent, Deborah Schneider. (Oct. 15) Forecast: The popularity of Girl with a Pearl Earring among reading groups and its record as a bestseller will provide a ready audience for Chevalier's new effort. The perennial appeal of books set in post-Victorian England should be another asset. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

January 1901. Queen Victoria is one day dead; two families visit their respective family graves to mourn, and two girls meet, become friends, and bring their relatives together in unexpected ways. As in her first novel, Girl with a Pearl Earring, Chevalier excels at capturing subtle social nuances and setting historical scenes. Key among the characters who narrate parts of the story is beautiful and frustrated Kitty Coleman, who, as the times shift from Victorian to modern, embraces the change with a bid for personal freedom. Her secrets and lies have disastrous consequences. The novel is infused with enriching details the proper fabric for mourning handkerchiefs, how to host an "at home" (an open house), and the route the suffragettes took on their march to Hyde Park. Like an E.M. Forster novel filtered through a modern sensibility, Falling Angels takes us back to the early 20th century and keeps us there, waiting to see what Kitty and her crowd will do next. Boldly plotted and beautifully written, this impressive novel is highly recommended for all public libraries. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 6/1/01.] Yvette W. Olson, City Univ. Lib., Renton, WA Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

School Library Journal

Adult/High School-An insightful look at the social, political, and economic issues of Edwardian England as well as a compelling story with well-drawn characters. Three children form an unlikely friendship in a London cemetery. The family of five-year-old Maude Coleman has a plot adjoining that of the family of five-year-old Lavinia Waterhouse. Both families are uncomfortable with the other's choice of memorial. The Waterhouses' sentimental angel offends the Colemans' more elegant taste and their ornate urn is seen as pretentious by their neighbors. Petty irritations concerning the mourning dress of the women on the occasion of Queen Victoria's death emphasize the superficial constraints of English society and ironically foreshadow societal changes to come. The two children from similar backgrounds but different social classes are drawn to one another and to the young son of the cemetery's caretaker, clearly an unsuitable playmate by the standards of the day. Simon is as outrageous and worldly as Maude and Lavinia are cautious and innocent. Over the next 10 years, the girls become close companions whose favorite activity is to cavort with Simon among the tombstones. The children, their parents, and the other minor but significant characters provide short narratives that begin with superficial concerns deeply felt and end with a series of tragic events. The changes in first-person voice are effective in portraying the characters' emotions as they interact and serve as an interesting device to move the plot. Teens will anguish over the fate of Maude's mother and Lavinia's sister and shake their heads as they ponder the consequences of the customs and mores of those earlier times.-Jackie Gropman, Kings Park Library, Burke, VA Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Chevalier's enormous hit with Vermeer and the 17th century (Girl With a Pearl Earring, 2000) is followed by a novel so familiar-the forces of change at 19th- century's end put cracks in domestic life-that the hyperverisimilitude of its period-color seems almost done by number. Things aren't going so well in Kitty and Richard Coleman's marriage, though by appearances all's fine: they're a respectable couple in London's middle-high society, live in a fine house, keep maid and cook, and remind readers of the upstairs family in, well, Upstairs, Downstairs. But under the surface is what matters-fulfillment, self-expression, dynamism, sex-and that's where Richard Coleman, though charming as fiance, reveals himself to be old-fashioned, "ordinary," even authoritarian as husband. When Kitty withdraws from him sexually, the germ of plot-trouble is sown-and would seem to be reaped when Kitty's single fling brings her the need of a secret abortion that's followed by long, deep depression and dire health. But really it's just the start, for when Kitty discovers and then actively joins the Suffragists, her health and life are both transformed-though Richard grows only the more angry and disapproving at the folly and impropriety of it all. As events move toward a terrible end (there's a vast Suffragist rally, a freak accident, two awful deaths) Chevalier proves herself ringmaster of the symbols she puts through their paces: the London cemetery, for example, that functions as social center (people stroll through to admire their families' urns and angels), brings Kitty to her single-fling lover (he's the graveyard manager), and provides a playground for young daughter Maude to meet her vain friendLavinia, a kind of Becky Sharp of the past to Maude's gradually emerging prototype of the educated woman of the future. All takes place between the death of Victoria and the death of Edward, time when one world was born, one died, and houses got electricity and phones. Chevalier offers pleasures enough, indeed, though on an outing taken countless times before.

From the Publisher

"Entirely successful: distinct, inhabited, vivid, and real." —The Washington Post Book World

"Chevalier's ringing prose is a radiantly efficient as well-tended silver." —Entertainment Weekly

"Chevalier not only authentically details the era's social mores, tensions, and contradictions, she writes the book we want to read." —New York Daily News

"I read Falling Angels in an afternoon. The next day, I sat down and read it again." —Janice P. Nimura, The New York Times Book Review

"Brilliant...a rich story that is true to the era." —The Cleveland Plain Dealer

"Chevalier's second novel confirms her place in the literary firmament...deeply affecting.... This is a beautiful novel, not soon forgotten." —Minneapolis Star Tribune

"Part of the secret of Chevalier's success is her uncanny ability to bring a lost world to life.... Just as Vermeer's work helps to explain his world in Chevalier's earlier novel, so the symbolic art of the graveyard illuminates Victorian culture in Falling Angels." —The Baltimore Sun

"Accomplished and powerful..." —Booklist

 

APR/MAY 02 - AudioFile

Anne Twomey’s unrushed pacing and gentle, melodic voice capture the listener from the first moments of this deceptively simple story about the friendship of two London girls from very different families and the ways in which those families cope with the end of the Victorian era. Chevalier, author of the bestselling Girl With a Pearl Earring, lets each character tell her version of the unfolding drama in the first person. Anne Twomey doesn’t try to create a radically different voice for each character; instead she reveals the characters’ varying person-alities, social classes, and ages with fine-tuned changes in the rhythm, tone, and pitch of her voice. It’s a quiet tour de force that makes this intriguing tale enthralling. A.C.S. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine

Product Details

BN ID:	2940171389253
Publisher:	HighBridge Company
Publication date:	09/05/2001
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

FALLING ANGELS
by Tracy Chevalier

 

INTRODUCTION

Falling Angels chronicles the lives of two girls whose families own adjacent plots in a London cemetery—one decorated with a sentimental angel, the other with an elaborate urn. During a ceremonial stroll through the graveyard grounds, an act of mourning for the recently deceased Queen Victoria, Maude Coleman and Lavinia Waterhouse meet, forging a fast friendship.

Despite their distinct personality differences, Maude being more precocious and contemplative and Lavinia leaning to the impulsive and dramatic, the girls are instantly drawn to each other to the dismay of their mothers. Despite being neighbors, Kitty Coleman and Gertrude Waterhouse occupy different positions in the British class system—the Waterhouses are lower-middle class, while the Colemans are upper-middle class, with a larger house and garden, and live-in servants. The women have little in common, and their views on the changing political climate fall on opposite ends of the spectrum. Kitty looks forward to a more modern society, while the Gertrude reveres the late Queen Victoria and clings to Victorian traditions.

The death of Queen Victoria marked the end of an era. Britain emerged from the shadows of oppressive Victorian values to a more liberal Edwardian lifestyle. With these relaxed social standards came other advances—one of which was the growing interest in the women's suffragist movement, a topic that divides Kitty and Gertrude, as it did many women of the era. As with most periods of political turmoil, the fight for the right of women to vote had its own victim of change, as felt by both families.

A poignant tale of two families brought reluctantly together, Falling Angels is an intimate story of childhood friendships, sexual awakening and human frailty. Yet its epic sweep takes in the changing of a nation, the fight for women's suffrage and the questioning of steadfast beliefs.

 

ABOUT TRACY CHEVALIER

"I was born and grew up in Washington, DC. After getting a BA in English from Oberlin College (Ohio), I moved to London, England in 1984. I intended to stay 6 months; I'm still here.

"As a kid I'd often said I wanted to be a writer because I loved books and wanted to be associated with them. I wrote the odd story in high school, but it was only in my twenties that I started writing 'real' stories, at night and on weekends. Sometimes I wrote a story in a couple evenings; other times it took me a whole year to complete one.

"Once I took a night class in creative writing, and a story I'd written for it was published in a London-based magazine called Fiction. I was thrilled, even though the magazine folded 4 months later.

I worked as a reference book editor for several years until 1993 when I left my job and did a year-long MA in creative writing at the University of East Anglia in Norwich (England). My tutors were the English novelists Malcolm Bradbury and Rose Tremain. For the first time in my life I was expected to write every day, and I found I liked it. I also finally had an idea I considered 'big' enough to fill a novel. I began The Virgin Blue during that year, and continued it once the course was over, juggling writing with freelance editing.

"An agent is essential to getting published. I found my agent Jonny Geller through dumb luck and good timing. A friend from the MA course had just signed on with him and I sent my manuscript of The Virgin Blue mentioning my friend's name. Jonny was just starting as an agent and needed me as much as I needed him. Since then he's become a highly respected agent in the UK and I've gone along for the ride."

 

AN INTERVIEW WITH TRACY CHEVALIER

What inspired you to set Falling Angels in post-Victorian England? Is there something in particular about the Victorian era that interests you?

I set the book when I did because I am interested in periods of change, of shifting from one set of values to another, and the fall-out that results. More specifically though, I knew I wanted to set the book in Highgate Cemetery, a famous Victorian cemetery in north London. It was a magnificent, beautifully kept place, but is now crumbling and overgrown, and I was interested in when and why things changed there. It seemed to me that such a change in attitudes to death and mourning reflected a broader change in society. I pinpointed the time when the cemetery's fortunes began to shift to the first years of the twentieth century, and so I set the novel then.

What type of research was necessary to tell this story?

I spent several years doing volunteer work at the cemetery—helping with a gardening group and giving tours. Any readers who have been on a tour of the cemetery may have had me as their guide and not realized it! The rest of the book is set near by in the neighborhood I live in, so I got to know it's history as well. I also read a lot of books about Victorian mourning and rituals and the planning and maintenance of cemeteries, as well as histories of the suffragette movement, and of Victorian and Edwardian house styles.

Did you know how Falling Angels was going to end before you wrote the story, or did the ending become clear as you were writing?

I knew something of an ending—e.g. what would happen to Kitty—but not everything. It was only as I was writing that it became clear what would happen to Ivy May. Actually, I knew from the start some of what happens beyond the ending—originally the book was meant to go through 1918. I may have to write a sequel to get it out of my system!

Of Maude, Lavinia, Kitty, and Gertrude, with whom do you identify most?

Maude, I think. In most books, I tend to identify with the character who learns the most, and I think she does. Of the minor characters I have a soft spot for the cook, Dorothy Baker. She doesn't say much, but when she does, it's forceful.

What are you working on now?

I'm writing a novel about some medieval tapestries that hang in the Cluny museum in Paris called the Lady and the Unicorn tapestries. It's set in fifteenth-century Paris and Brussels and is about why and how the tapestries were made, and the effect they had on everyone who worked on them.

 

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

1. Chevalier alternates the narrative point of view to reveal the layered complexities of characters, events, and issues. Which character's perspectives were the most revealing? Which characters do you relate to the most? How does having so many characters affect how you perceive the story?
   

2. The turn of the century found England in a state of transition. How did the death of Queen Victoria signify a new era, a more modern climate? How do the conflicting opinions on death and mourning define the characters? In what ways do these differing attitudes indicate the social changes to come?
   

3. When the Waterhouses and Colemans first meet in the cemetery, what do the characters' first impressions of each other—and of the other family's grave ornament—expose about themselves?
   

4. How do the issues the female characters face differ with those women are facing now, a century later? What obstacles still exist? How might this story differ if it were set now?
   

5. While the entries from the male characters are concise and limited in number, these narratives reveal a good deal about their impressions of their wives, their neighbors, and other individuals and events. Discuss the various excerpts "penned" by Albert Waterhouse, Richard Coleman, and Simon Field. Which of these characters relates best to his female counterparts? Do they all view women in a similar way?
   

6. The peripheral characters of Jenny Whitby, Simon Field, and Dorothy Baker play key roles in several events. How do these individuals affect the lives of the Colemans and the Waterhouses?
   

7. The cemetery is a curious place to set a novel. On the one hand, it mirrors the outside world, with rigid rules of conduct that mourners are expected to follow. On the other hand, both children and adults experience a degree of freedom there. How does the making and breaking of rules there reflect on and affect the characters?
   

8. Lavinia, Simon, and Maude appear to represent the past, present, and future respectively. Does this change at all throughout the novel? Do they learn from each other?
   

9. What is Ivy May Waterhouse's role in the book? Why does she meet such a fate?
   

10. They say and Englishman's home is his castle. How do Kitty's and Gertrude's houses reflect their characters and class differences?
    

11. Does this book have a heroine? If so, who is it?
    

12. None of the characters is perfect—all have their flaws and irritations. Does this help or hinder the narrative?

Suggested Reading

The Victorian Celebration of Death by James Stevens Curl (2001)

Death in the Victorian Family by Pat Jalland (1996)

The English Way of Death by Julian Litten (2002)

Emmeline Pankhurst by Jane Purvis (2002)

Edwardian House Style: An Architectural and Interior Design Source Book by Hilary Hockman (2002)

—the section on Falling Angels—there is a lot of information there on suffragettes, Victorian mourning customs, etc...

—the official site for the Highgate Cemetery, where Falling Angels is set

—an unofficial site, but very good photographs of Highgate Cemetery.

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