Salley VickersCritiques
Auteur de Miss Garnet's Angel
Critiques
Miss Garnet's Angel par Salley Vickers
https://nordie.wordpress.com/2016/02/16/book-review-the-cleaner-of-chartres-by-s...
Lucky for readers, we get to hear about it in great detail, but rather than reading a dry tourist book about it, this book uses the cathedral as background for the story of Agnes Morel, a cathedral cleaner. The details of her life are told using a mix of current scenes and flashbacks, as well as employing a variety of points of view from the central characters.
Agnes was an orphan, raised by strict and often punitive nuns. She was not taught to read, but was taught to clean, at which she excels. As a child and young girl, she was lacked confidence and was mistreated, leading to some horrific abusive situations. But her quiet manner and industriousness help her earn a living as an adult.
Working at the cathedral, a place which she loves, she meets a number of characters who come to play a role in her life, including:
Abbe Paul, the current dean of the Cathedral who offers Agnes the cleaning job
Abbe Bernard, an elderly canon who has lost faith but is terrified of Satan and confides in Agnes
Philippe Nevers and his sister Brigitte, for whom Agnes used to babysit
Robert Clement, an artist for who Agnes occasionally models
Alain Fleury, one of the cathedral restorers
Professor Jones, who relies on Agnes to organize his papers and photos
Jean Dupere who found Agnes in a basket
Sister, then Mother, Veronique from the convent in which Agnes was raised
Denis Deman, a psychiatrist who treated Agnes when she was younger
Madame Louise Beck, a busybody who resents Agnes (and everyone else, for that matter)
In addition to fascinating information about the cathedral, we also are exposed to a variety of religious views from the characters. Abbe Paul in particular is realistic in his assessment of the Church and its teachings, and the fear of Satan it inspired in believers. Abbe Paul held that “the only true Satan was the idea of Satan.” Regarding Abbe Bernard’s supposed lack of faith he told Agnes, “It seems to me he believed too much. Wasn’t it Satan he was afraid of? The Church has much to answer for, Agnes. Not least in the fright it can implant in a child’s mind.” (Alain had a more sardonic response to the situation, telling Agnes: “He didn’t believe in God but he still believed in Satan. That says plenty about the Catholic faith.”)
Some mysteries about the lives of the characters are revealed in layers as the plot unwinds, with an Afterword suggesting what happened to them later on in life.
Evaluation: Vickers has excellent insight into the psychological drivings of her characters (she apparently is a former psychoanalyst), which gives the story depth lacking in many novels. I also loved the extensive background on Chartres, and how it was cleverly presented in such an interesting way. And last but not least, Agnes’s story is well worth reading.
I have listed Salley Vickers as a "new to me author" although I'm pretty sure I have read one title by her at least, but possibly decades ago.
This to me was a reminder that sometimes you just need to read books that explore relationships, rather than always solving murder mysteries. There are mysteries in THE GARDENER but they are not the primary focus.
A gentle read
They tell of relationships and events that had a profound effect on all of their lives. I did find the changing timeline and overlapping stories at times a little confusing.
The pace is good, the conversations believable, and the descriptions work well without being too wordy. The children are quite different too: practical Billy, dreamy literary Rose and the cool, fashion-conscious Kitty. Each has a very special love for their grandmother (or surrogate grandmother). They all have parents too, but they are a lot more shadowy, perhaps deliberately.
Not much plot, but if you like character-based books with some depth, I would recommend this.
Longer review here: https://suesbookreviews.blogspot.com/2021/06/grandmothers-by-sally-vickers.html
**Art, Venice and mid-life self-discovery - a refreshingly different novel.**
`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.' Thus opens the novel.
Julia Garnet and her long-standing companion and flatmate Harriet decide to retire from work together, on the same day, but when two days later Harriet unexpectedly dies, Miss Garnet decides it is time to take a trip abroad and settles upon six months in Venice. Cautious, dignified and unadventurous by nature, Julia is also a virgin and inexperienced in matters of the heart. Venice is quite a revelation.
Julia discovers feelings of passion for the first time when she comes across the Guardi panels in the Chiesa dell'Angelo Raffaele (Church of Angelo Raffaele), which depict the Apocryphal story of Tobias and the Angel. As she views the paintings ...'Something rusty and hard shifted deep inside Julia Garnet', and she goes on to make further emotional discoveries through her friendships and discoveries in the city of Venice. Julia discovers that for the first time in her life she is able to befriend others, and counts among her friends a couple she accused of queue jumping the taxi rank on her first day, a young boy, Nicco, the unsuitable and overly-attentive Carlo, a couple of young English church restorers, and a charming priest.
The ancient Jewish story of Tobias and the Angel is deftly interwoven amongst Julia's story of re-awakening and discovery. Tobias undertakes his journey of ancient times as Julia travels in the present day, and there are subtle threads between them.
Quite a surprise and not at all what I was expecting, `Miss Garnet's Angel' is a breath of fresh air to read. The unsophisticated anti-heroine, Julia, is so down-to-earth, so dignified, and for her years so naive, that she is quite plausible, believable and ultimately delightful, as she discovers each new experience and her confidence grows. A thoroughly enjoyable novel of travel and discovery and one I have no hesitation in recommending to anyone.
The book shares moments from the lightly interconnected lives of three grandmothers, initially strangers to each other, as they spend time with their grandchildren and with each other.
Salley Vickers showed a remarkable ability to take me inside the heads of thoroughly imagined women, with very different backgrounds and current circumstances, and keep me interested in each of them. There's none of that "Oh dear, do we HAVE to go back to THIS character now?" that I sometimes get when one character is less interesting than the others.
For once, the publisher's summary describes these three women well:
"fiercely independent Nan, who leads a secret life as an award-winning poet when she is not teaching her grandson Billy how to lie; glamorous Blanche, deprived of the company of her beloved granddaughter Kitty by her hostile daughter-in-law, who finds solace in rebelliously taking to drink and shoplifting; and shy, bookish Minna who in the safety of shepherd's hut shares with her surrogate granddaughter Rose her passion for reading."
There are some big themes here about being a mother and a grandmother, about being old, about being alone and about being aware on a daily basis of one's mortality but the power of the book is that it doesn't start there. It starts with the people. You feel as though the issues arise only because of who the people are rather than that the people have been created to illuminate the issues.
I felt most at home with Nan. I admired the way she confronted the world rather than hiding from it. I was pleased by the realistic way in which Nan's introversion and natural inclination for solitude were described as a facet of her personality and not as an issue to be managed. The quietly comfortable image of Nan's made-to-measure wicker coffin, standing in her living room, doing service as a bookshelf until she needs to use it, captured a lot of how I feel about death.
This is a book full of strong emotions and scenes that feel as strong as my own memories. It's also a book that gave me two new (to me) tools for understanding what is going on around me.
The first is the metaphor of "The Leper's Squint" as a means of grappling with the diversity of way in which we experience life. I've put a slightly longer than usual quotation in here because I think it demonstrates the style of the book as well as articulating the concept. Nan and her grandson, Billy, have been at the seaside. While Billy was digging in the sand, Nan used a phrase from my childhood, "If you keep digging like that, you'll reach Australia." Billy, who is clever and curious but has a tendency to be literal, finds this statement to be absurd. Nan comes back to it when the two of them are having fish and chips a little later.
One of the truths Nan had divined early is that it is the hardest thing in the world to grasp that other people see life from a perspective often quite unlike one's own. "The trouble is, we all see through our own Leper's Squint", she had once said to her husband, who had confirmed the point by asking what on earth she was on about. She tried out the same idea on their grandson.
"What's a Leper's Squint?" he asked, as she had hoped he might.
"You know about leprosy?"
"When bits of you drops off?"
"Well not as bad a that but horribly certainly. In the days when leprosy was common and people were afraid it was catching, there were tiny windows made in churches so the lepers could see into the church while the Mass was being said. Mass is a name for a church service." she added hastily.
"Why did they want to?"
"Why did the lepers want to see into the church?"
"Yes. What did they want to do that for?"
"In those days, most people believed in God."
Billy dipped a chip into some tomato ketchup while he pondered this.
"Why?" he asked again.
"That's what I was trying to explain. It was normal then to believe in God and not being allowed to mingle with the other people in the church, they saw as a terrible consequence of the illness. Nowadays, it's more normal not to believe. They, the lepers and the other folk would have found it weird, as you would say, not to believe in God, while I think you find it weird that they did."
Though of this, she wasn't sure. Billy sometimes interrogated her views on religious questions and she welcomed that. She was open to doubt herself. She continued on more substantial ground.
"You see, pet, in your way of thinking, it's ridiculous to suppose that by digging a hole you could reach Australia, but in my world, I like to imagine that I could."
"Even if you knew that you really couldn't?"
"Yes," Nan said.
Aside from loving him, this was what she liked best about her grandson. He was willing to explore things.
"Even though, with another part of my mind, I knew quite well that I couldn't".
I will tuck this metaphor away and challenge myself to look through other people's Leper's Squints from time to time and to be aware of the limited view from my own.
The second new-to-me concept, also introduced by Nan, was interanimation. I had to look it up. Now I have a word for it, I'm seeing it everywhere and I realise that it's one of the few things that gets stronger as I get older. Here's how the concept is explained. Nan wakes in the night in a holiday cottage and looks out the window:
Moonlight was silver-plating the grass. A full moon, vast and auspicious-seeming, was hanging like a child's lost balloon in a darkly violet sky. She'd stolen that image from someone. Who the hell was it?
That was one of the snags of age. that who you were and what you'd been and what you'd done, read or been told had become so interanimate that there was no telling any more what was what.
Interanimate. There, a case in point. But what does it matter, Nan thought, as she trod wearily of hidden perils, malicious stair-rods for example, down dusty stairs to a kitchen with a And who would care anyway?"
"Grandmothers" is a beautiful example of perfectly executed, authentic, insightful and compassionate interanimation.
My enjoyment of the book was greatly increased by Barbara Flynn's narration. If you have the opportunity, I strongly recommend listening to the audiobook version of "Grandmothers".
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MikeFinnFiction | 1 autre critique | May 16, 2020 |
MikeFinnFiction | 1 autre critique | May 16, 2020 | I was quite disappointed with this one, sadly. Perhaps I was expecting something else from the vibe I got from the book, but I did feel like it wasn't exactly what I was hoping for. But that's okay. It has a rich book theme from start to finish, and the general librarian angle was enough to keep me awake. But the story itself really did not reach the potential it could have, so that's a shame.
What kept me from fully falling in love with this book though was how much it hopped back and forth in time, with little to no notice. I listened to the audio version of this, and so it made it even more difficult to get my footing every time we were thrown back to the days of young Agnes. On top of that, as the book neared its end, I felt myself becoming less and less interested in where things were headed. Agnes felt like she stalled in her growth as a person, and then the ending itself was far less than satisfactory. In fact, and this is coming from a reader who is very open minded, the ending left me with some really uncomfortable moral quandaries. I'm still not sure how I feel.
So, for a plot that kept my attention for the most part, a character whom I did enjoy, and a narrator who did a fairly good job, I'll give this two stars. I finished this book, and it was interesting journey. I just wouldn't read it again.
I never thought I would find myself finding a book by Salley Vickers a disappointment! Having read and enjoyed all her previous novels, I had looked forward with so much anticipation to her latest story but had this been my first experience of her story-telling, I’m not sure I would have felt encouraged to read any of her earlier work. For me, one of the hallmarks of her writing has always been her creative use of her psychotherapy training, not only in her explorations of the complexities of her characters’ personalities but also in the themes she develops. However, in this novel I found the writing style naïve and rather one-dimensional, to the extent that I wondered at which age group the story was targeted. I can imagine that most of its content would appeal to very young teenagers, although certain explicit sexual descriptions would be inappropriate for this age group.
Throughout the story there are repetitive reflections on several contemporary social iniquities, particularly the divisive nature of the 11+ exam, class divisions and women’s lack of power. All were important in 1950s Britain and were evocatively described, but I found the author’s approach too repetitive, over-determined and preachy, to the extent that I frequently felt like shouting “Enough – I’ve got the message!” From someone who usually makes every word count in her writing, this came as a huge surprise.
I thought that the various children were convincingly portrayed but found that most of the adult characterisations, although recognisable, bordered on being stereotypical caricatures. Again, this came as a shock because another hallmark of this author’s previous books has been her convincing, nuanced depictions of all her characters.
Approximately the final ten percent of the story is devoted to a “sixty years on” update on the lives of some of the characters but I found this too forced and overly sentimental. I would much preferred to have been left to reflect for myself on their futures. However, I do recognise that for anyone who prefers loose ends to be neatly tied up, this section of the book will probably hold more appeal.
From all that I have written so far it would be easy to assume that I didn’t get any enjoyment from reading this story so, as that isn’t true, I will end this review by sharing the aspects I did enjoy! As someone whose highlight of the week as a child was going to the library to take out as many books as I was allowed (without being restricted to the “age-appropriate” choices available in the classroom!), Salley’s portrayal of the importance of an understanding and enthusiastic librarian brought back many happy memories. I can still recall how exciting it felt to be offered so many opportunities to explore different worlds, and to lose myself in the magical world of reading – a pleasure which continues to this day! This sharing of a passion for reading cannot be over-estimated and is just one reason why we should all be doing everything we can to ensure that libraries aren’t closed!
I loved being reminded of so many of the books which held such importance for me as a child. Inevitably, there were some of her choices which I can recall disliking, as well as favourites of mine which she didn’t include, but what a lively discussion theme this would be for reading groups! I also appreciated how well she captured the era in which the story was set and thought that she achieved a realistic balance between reflecting a freer, more innocent time for children with some of the restrictions of choice, choices so often determined by a more rigid social-class divide.
Finally, no review of this book would be complete without some reference to how exquisitely beautiful the hardback copy is. With its pale-green cloth-effect cover and its flowery end papers, it’s a joy to hold, something which always adds a pleasurable dimension to my reading experience.
A cautious recommendation from me, then!
What kept me from fully falling in love with this book though was how much it hopped back and forth in time, with little to no notice. I listened to the audio version of this, and so it made it even more difficult to get my footing every time we were thrown back to the days of young Agnes. On top of that, as the book neared its end, I felt myself becoming less and less interested in where things were headed. Agnes felt like she stalled in her growth as a person, and then the ending itself was far less than satisfactory. In fact, and this is coming from a reader who is very open minded, the ending left me with some really uncomfortable moral quandaries. I'm still not sure how I feel.
So, for a plot that kept my attention for the most part, a character whom I did enjoy, and a narrator who did a fairly good job, I'll give this two stars. I finished this book, and it was interesting journey. I just wouldn't read it again.
The story is about Agnes who just turns up in Chartres, a cathedral town and takes up cleaning for a living. She is ready to put her past behind her when it soon catches up with her, threatening the new life that she had made for herself. Vickers does a good job of revealing the past and present to great effect through alternative chapters. A great device that builds up the story well and takes it to the point when the past merges into the present.
The reason for giving three stars is that although the storyline was good the pace was a bit slow. Perhaps that was to endear the characters to the reader, but too much time is spent on the characters, at the cost of the storyline.
All in all, it is a feel good story with some colourful characters whipped up in an chocolat-style French setting. An enjoyable read.
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