Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #358851 in Books
• Published on: 2002-04
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 352 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
There is something very old-fashioned and reassuring about Sally Vickers' novel Miss Garnet's Angel. The themes, self-discovery and redemption have the air of a bygone age, despite the novel being set in contemporary Venice in a world of holiday apartment lets and Pizza Express-funded restoration works. Julia Garnet is a middle-aged woman who has been practising economies of the spirit for years. Hers is a closed-in world, dusty with Marx's theories and when her friend and flatmate of 30 years dies Julia decides to spend the six winter months in Venice to recuperate from her loss. Miss Garnet is a dignified, brusque heroine and Sally Vickers' prose is likewise unruffled and controlled. Miss Garnet's epiphanies are as quiet and subtle as the "oro pallido" (pale gold) light in early Italian Art because, of course, art plays a part in this Venetian tale of emotional reawakening. Julia is moved by the depiction of Raphael in Guardis Tobias and the Angel: "something rusty and hard shifted deep inside Julia Garnet as she stood absorbing the vivid dewy painting and the unmistakable compassion in the angel's bright glance." She falls in love with Carlo, an art historian with crinkly eyes, white hair and a moustache. There are trials and tribulations to be undergone, Julia must unlearn all her old regimented ways of life, and this brings about heart ache and hurt. However, Vickers handles this with delicate sympathy, giving Julia Garnet a new sensitive view of the world, and the reader a resonant story of transformation. --Eithne Farry

About the Author
Salley Vickers divides her time between London and Venice. Previously a university lecturer in English, when not writing she practices as a psychologist and still lectures widely on the connections between literature, psychology and religion.

Excerpted from Miss Garnet's Angel by Salley Vickers. Copyright © 2001. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved
Chapter 1 Death is outside life but it alters it: it leaves a hole in the fabric of things which those who are left behind try to repair. Perhaps it is because of this we are minded to feast at funerals and it is said that certain children are conceived on the eve of a departure, lest the separation of the partners be permanent. When in ancient stories heroes die, the first thing their comrades do, having made due observances to the gods, is sit and eat. Then they travel on, challenging, with their frail vitality, the large enigma of non-being.

When Miss Garnet's friend Harriet died, Miss Garnet decided to spend six months abroad.

I am an old man near the end of my life although my son lies and protests this is not so. (He is a good son, in spite of the lies.) You may ask what an old man of one hundred and eighty-five years can have to say to interest you? The secret of my longevity, perhaps? Well, it may be that our years are not reckoned as you reckon yours. But even allowing for differences I would say we live close to the cycle of the sun and moon, we rise and go to bed with the birds, labour hard, eat frugally and these things conspire towards longevity; hut I will hazard there is another thing more important than these: it may be we may live long because there is something we value above human life - I shall not give it a name!

Among our people the old are respected for their wisdom - I hope it may be the same with yours. However it is with you, if you are young now you might hold it in your mind that one day you too will he old and may find yourself glad then to he heard; if you are already old, perhaps like me you already have a story to tell (for all lives, I think, have some sort of a story in them)? Yet I do not tell my own because I wish it, or because I wish to instruct you in how to live, though I'll admit that might once have been my purpose. No, I tell you this because I was told to tell it by what you might call 'a higher authority' - and truth is, the thought of how to tell it has taxed me for many years.

Customer Reviews

reader from guildford
A gentle and thought provoking read.

Miss Garnet's journey of personal discovery set amidst the beautiful and ethereal background of Venice is for readers who enjoy a period of reflection at the end of their read. The parallel story of Tobias and the Angel is a very clever and effective literary device which I'm sure the sensitive reader will appreciate.

Miss Garnet's utilitarian approach to life is held up for scrutiny. In the religious and atmospheric location of Venice her life's 'standards' seem trivial. It is her in her retirement that she looks back on her strictly secular life as a spinster and school-teacher in West London. The story of Tobias and the Angel make her question her previous behaviour towards her friends (Harriet, her live-in friend, in particular), and also towards her pupils.

Read this with an open mind and you will love it.

Beautifully written
I didn't know what to expect from Miss Garnets Angel, I half anticipated an antiquated read, fairly stereotypical but potentially heart-warming. An old lady, art and Venice suggested to me a sedate book, good to read but nothing new. The reality was very different.
The subtlety and delicacy of the writing, the way the story is so well crafted, the strands of the older Tobias story woven in seamlessly stunned me. Salley Vickers does indeed eulogise over art and architecture but she's also not afraid to add a harsher realism to the story. Miss Garnet is not some ephemeral creature steeped in a life of sorrow she's a real, solid character.
This was a book I read slowly so as to not miss anything, I set aside time in the day to read it and made sure everything was quiet. Usually I snatch at books and gulp them down, taking every opportunity to read but I found I didn't want to with this book.
The quiet sadness of Miss Garnet, the lyrical descriptions of the paintings and Venice and the poignant and well-crafted ending make this a gem of a book.

a new take on death in Venice
Following the unexpected death of her friend, Miss Garnett starts a new life in Venice - at an age when most would be settled and unchangable.
She is transformed by the beauty of her new surroundings, and sheds the inhibiting skin of her old life.
It is wonderful to read a story centred around someone over retirement age, that is not bleak, but life affirming.
The story has a number of unexpected turns, with several finely drawn characters, and a depth of history founded on the Book of Tobit.
Only one character - Toby - diappoints, with unconvincing description and dialogue.
This book is worth reading more than once, and would be a wonderful choice for taking on holiday to Venice.