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    Falling Angels
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    Falling Angels
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    Falling Angels
    Audiobook8 hours

    Falling Angels

    Written by Tracy Chevalier

    Narrated by Eve Matheson

    3.5/5

    ()

    Unavailable in your country

    Unavailable in your country

    About this audiobook

    The girl reminded me of my favourite chocolates, whipped hazelnut creams, and I knew just from looking at her that I wanted her for my best friend.

    Queen Victoria is dead. In January 1901, the day after her passing, two very different families visit neighbouring graves in a London cemetery. The traditional Waterhouses revere the late Queen where the Colemans have a more modern outlook, but both families are appalled by the friendship that springs up between their respective daughters.

    As the girls grow up, their world changes almost beyond measure: cars are replacing horses, electric lighting is taking over from gas, and emancipation is fast approaching, to the delight of some and the dismay of others…

    “Vividly imagined.” SUNDAY TELEGRAPH

    “Sex and death meet again in a marvellous evocation of Edwardian England.” DAILY MAIL
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherW. F. Howes Ltd
    Release dateApr 30, 2015
    ISBN9781471293726
    Unavailable
    Falling Angels
    Author

    Tracy Chevalier

    Tracy Chevalier is the author of eleven novels, including A Single Thread, Remarkable Creatures and Girl with a Pearl Earring, an international bestseller that has sold over five million copies and been made into a film, a play and an opera. Born in Washington DC, she moved to the United Kingdom in 1986. She and her husband divide their time between London and Dorset.

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    Reviews for Falling Angels

    3.5/5

    1,005 ratings48 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Great story about two families beginning with New Years 1900 in England. I love how it shifts from the point of view of the various characters.
    • 3/5
      This is a very different book from "Girl with a Pearl Earring."This book takes place in London from 1901-1910, following the lives of two families, the COlemans and the Waterhouses. We hear numerous voices here too - adults, children, scullery maid, grave digger, doyene. Chevalier's gift here is making us care about these various people - especially Maude - who grows physically, emotionally and intellectually through the timespan of the book.
    • 3/5
      Set in Edwardian London, Falling Angels by Tracy Chevalier takes place from January 1901 to May 1910 and was a joy to read. This historical novel confidently covers themes of mourning, mourning etiquette, class and the suffragette movement with an engaging and natural writing style.The chapters are narrated in the first person by several of the main characters, although each character picks up the thread of the story and continues with it, rather than re-living the same events from their point of view. Each of the voices are unique, making it impossible to confuse the characters. My favourite character by far was Simon Field, the gravedigger's son and the conversations that take place in the cemetery were some of my favourite parts of the book.I recommend Falling Angels for those interested in the mourning etiquette of the Victorian and Edwardian periods and readers looking for something a little different.
    • 4/5
      This book is so well read and written it literally comes to life as the story and characters so effectively unfold.
      This is my second book by the author and love how she weaves in the historical importance of the time in such a poignant and personal way.
      My ‘go to’ author and definitely the reader!
    • 5/5
      I absolutely loved "Girl with a Pearl Earring," so I felt compelled to read this one, now that it had sat on my shelf for a few years untouched. To think that such a treasure has been in my possession without me knowing it!"Falling Angels" is the story of two families in Victorian England, who live next door to each other. Both rivalry and friendship are involved in the Coleman and the Waterhouse's relationship, and the reader watches the members of the families age and grow up over a number of years. At first, this book was merely average in my eyes.I loved how the author wrote from different character's points of view, and I felt that it really filled out the story and made the people of her book more lifelike.However, not very much happened. Mrs. Waterhouse worries about Mrs. Coleman's home decor being superior to hers, a feisty in-law tries to take over care of the household, two young girls develop a friendship. Not the most riveting of events.And, the book seemed to wander along with the carefree ease of two of its main characters - silly, sheltered girls.But about halfway through, I was suddenly unable to put the book down. I had fallen in love with the characters, and felt as if they were my longtime friends.I realized that Tracy Chevalier had pulled a very clever trick.In the midst of my searching in vain for an exciting plot-line, I had missed what she had been building up the entire time: a story of people. A story of life (and death), and a group of people trying to make their way through the two. "Falling Angels" is gracefully beautiful, and powerful - but not the knock-you-off-your-feet sort of powerful. It doesn't need to be. This book is simply stunning, and certainly gets better and better as it goes.I found the slightly Gothic feel to this book a curious, and memorable aspect. The book opens with Queen Victoria's death, and ends with King Edwards. A prominent scene in the book is a graveyard. Instead of playing tea parties and doll houses, the two young girls in this book (Livy and Maude) play at the graveyard all day. Their best friend is a young gravedigger, and instead of looking through books of ponies and kittens, they enjoy perusing tombstones.I loved the character development of Maude's mother, Kitty Coleman. We see her introduced as a lively, beautiful young woman and slide into selfishness and neglect of her daughter. A skillful twist of this side of her is that her selfishness involves a just cause - the Suffragette movement, which provides the author with a complex, fine lined sub-plot that she pulls off flawlessly.Even more minor characters, such as the cook, or Maude's snooty grandmother, are realistic and personable.I love how all of the characters in this book came to life.I didn't think that I would be able to say this, but, "Falling Angels" definitely bests "Girl with a Pearl Earring" easily.I am so glad that I read it! An amazing book.
    • 5/5
      4.20.19 This book has even more poignancy than when I first read it many years ago. Tracy Chevalier deftly tackles sentimentalism in death culture, transitions from Victorian to Edwardian culture, class hierarchy, and women's activism. The chapters are short and move quickly. Each narrator helps weave a perspective into a rich tapestry that makes up the narrative. One of my favorite historical fiction novels.
    • 5/5
      I loved this book for a lot of reasons. It was immediately engaging, tragic, humorous in spots and always interesting. It’s told through several first-person accounts and they were all great. I especially liked and felt empathy for Kitty. I would have felt all her frustration, hopelessness and helplessness if born in her place and time. Especially when it came to kids. Ugh. Her daughter Maude doesn’t seem to crave her attention though, so she’ll probably turn out just fine if she does get to University.I guess if there has to be a person to dislike it’s Livy. She’s just a spoiled brat and already vapid at age 5. Maude’s complaints about her are spot on, but Livy just thinks she’s the perfect little lady. I could barely force myself to read what she did with the Suffrage banners. The movement, while positive in so many respects, was nothing but tragedy for the Colemans and the Waterhouses. I didn’t expect Ivy May’s fate and it shocked and saddened me. Her one and only chapter was so wrenching. From reading history and novels written in Victorian times, child abduction, murder and abuse was pretty rampant and because children weren’t a protected class in the sense they are now, crimes against them just piled up with no end.I wish a little more focus was put on the Suffrage movement than was the bereavement practices of Victorians. They were positively suffused with death - gloried in it, reveled in it, milked it for all the emotional drama it could afford. I guess since women above the working poor had nothing to do, it filled their days. I think that’s why the women who weren’t afraid of their own intellects and wills went into the Suffrage movement so thoroughly even though they knew nothing was likely to change in their lifetimes. It appalls me to read the sentiments of “mother” Coleman. Women who thoroughly believe that women are second class citizens and ought to remain basically slaves to men. It’s incredible. They’re so afraid it would be funny if it weren't so pathetic and dangerous. Women still think like that today. Some reviews of this book characterize Kitty as selfish. Why, because she doesn’t bow down and serve every last convention? Because she isn’t a doormat? Because she has thoughts and ideas of her own? Because she wants to have some agency? OMFG it’s stupid how some women think. Blinkered, frightened fools. I really liked the way Tracy silenced her in the end. Pity she didn’t give us another mother Colman viewpoint after she lost her tongue. That would have been fun. She should have been Mrs. Waterhouse’s mother in law. They would have gotten on like a house on fire if Trudy could have had an ounce of self-esteem. Simon, Mrs. Baker and our Jenny fill in the voices for the servant class. Jenny’s fate is easy to see coming, but I was surprised that she made her way back. Simon seemed a little to free to do what he wanted through the whole novel. I think most boys his age were basically worked to death. He was fun and needed to have freedom to be able to move the plot forward in several ways. Overall a lot of fun, insight and one of her best books.
    • 4/5
      I didn't really expect to like this book as much as I did. I picked it up, not knowing what I would make of it but I enjoyed it.I do love short chapters in books so this was a bonus for me. I easily went from character to character and found that I enjoyed all of the different prospectives. I liked each person having their own voice and 'hearing' their point of view on the same matter.The characters were mostly likeable and I liked the little chapters from the likes of Simon who although features quite heavily is not a part of the main story. I found that the book flowed well and was very easy to read.
    • 5/5
      Chevalier is a new author for me so I was surprised to see how many other people already know her! and looking at the list of the number of things she has written---how did I miss her for so long? I thoroughly enjoyed the historical aspects of this story---wonderful details about the way things were. I particularly liked the jumps from character to character and from year to year---excellent audio by Anne Twomey.
    • 4/5
      It is 1901 and with the death of Queen Victoria, one age has ended and another begun. Through a variety of first-person narrators, the reader is introduced to two middle-class London families, the Colemans and the Waterhouses, as well as their servants, a cemetery manager and the son of a gravedigger, each contributing with their distinctive voice to the plot, which details the fortunes of each family by focusing on the two daughters.As can be expected from the author of Girl with a Pearl Earring, the atmosphere and the sense of being transported through time are excellent (in particular the sections covering the customs concerning the etiquette for mourning), but while the characters and their individual fates are engaging, the book never provides the wow! factor that is the sign of an outstanding read, and in the end there were few real surprises. The plot is almost exclusively character driven and hence on the slow side, and it is only in the last quarter of the book that events spiral out of control. Appropriately for a series of character studies there is a lot that remains unsaid, and the reader is required to read between the lines. And though I was always happy to spend time in the company of the protagonists, I didn't feel the urge to return to the novel at every possible opportunity. Still, as an exploration of days gone by it is very well done, and is certainly an eye-opener as to how much the Victorians and Edwardians turned death into a business (with the etiquette to be ignored at a person's peril!).The Times reviewer remarks in the novel's blurb that the book "shows both the strangeness of the world as it was and its closeness to our own time". I wholeheartedly agree with the first part of the sentence, but in my view it is only in the closing pages that I got the sense that progress had been made and society was entering the modern age.
    • 4/5
      Set in the 10 years between the death of Queen Victoria and the death of King Edward VII, this book tells the story of two girls, next-door neighbors and best friends, as they grow up. Though it is told by multiple narrators, the author is always clear about who is speaking and when; I so much appreciate this. You learn a bit about mourning customs, cemeteries and the women's suffrage movement during a time when social customs were changing. It's an easy read but gripping read.
    • 4/5
      I enjoyed Chevalier's "Girl with a Pearl Earring' so I picked this up as well.
      It's a character-driven historical novel of two families, especially their daughters, who grow up as neighbors, their lives intertwining and becoming complicated through the cemetery by their homes, from the death of Victoria (1901) to the end of the Edwardian era (1910). Along the way, there's friendship, enmity, rivalry, class issues, women's suffrage, abortion, infidelity, and always, the role of death and the cemetery in this society...
      Very well-written, enjoyable book.
    • 4/5
      A well written microcosim of Victorian England tols to us through the perspective of cemeteries, funerals, headstones and young girls.Chevalier is such an easy writer to read. She does not make her characters in "Falling Angels" ridiculous but real people with distinct personalities that allow us a glimpse into life during these times. Chevalier gives us the voices of life in 1908 from the insufferable Edith Coleman, a typical Victorian matron, to the vain and self absorbed Lavinia Waterhouse who at 10 yrs of age has written a young person's guide to mourning ettiquette. Simon Fields is a young gravedigger fascinated by Lavinia and Maude and a world he can only observe. Kitty Coleman's voice is of a young married woman constricted by marriage until she becomes a suffragette. Through her daughter Maude's voice we observe the changing climate of a young girls's life. At the end we are quite certain that Maude will attend university.
    • 3/5
      Very odd atmosphere, characters and writing. Chevalier has always written books which seem just short of fantastic to me and my main complaint has always been that they feel unrealistic (the mixture of political events and common people, I suppose), forced, and cold. This is no exception. Though Maude is a lovely character, I was never sure what on earth the author was trying to say about the suffragette movement and why she chose to portray it in such a way. Again, there's always an area that's more or less related to women in her books (in that only women are interested in in Remarkable Creatures it's fossils, in The Runaway it's quilting)- here, it was death, and the Victorian obsession with mourning. It wasn't void of interest but she could have done so much more with it and I found that by the end I hadn't learned much more than I already knew. Bizarre book. It feels really unaccomplished.
    • 3/5
      I read The Lady and the Unicorn for my book club in 2005. I remember being bored, and my notebook annotation says simply, “Pretty flat.” This one was not boring. It was a lightning-fast read, in fact, although it was very odd.The falling angels of the title are a couple of girls, Maude Coleman and Lavinia Waterhouse, who become friends in childhood after meeting in a graveyard where their parents own plots. Maude’s mother is discontented in her marriage and eventually becomes involved in Britain’s radical suffragist organization, the Women’s Social and Political Union. Poor Maude seems an afterthought. Lavinia’s mother in more conventional, and so is Lavinia, who is annoyingly fixated on all that is proper and ladylike. The mothers, the daughters and various other characters get their turn at narrating the book.I said the book was odd. It was hard to get a handle on all of the characters, since the chapters presenting their voices were so, so short. Lavinia was the strongest presence and she was insufferable. In fact, the book was not overfilled with likeable characters. Both sets of parents seemed so careless of their children. If I were a reader who judged books based on my moral judgments of the characters, I would have disliked this book, but it was a good story, and that’s enough for me.
    • 2/5
      I finished the book in one day without even noticing it. Yet the story wasn't much to my liking. On the plus side, it is very easy to read.
    • 5/5
      Wonderful & deeply moving book by Tracy Chevalier. I loved the twists and turns of the 2 families and how their lives intertwined. The historical setting was brilliantly portrayed and set you right in the middle of the early 1900's, England. The story makes you think about consequences of your actions and the domino effect it has on all those around you.  
    • 4/5
      Set among the sweeping skirts and social upheavals of Edwardian London, the central characters are two young girls of the same age, whose family plots are situated side-by-side in a cemetery. Lavinia Waterhouse is respectably middle-class, devoted, like her conventional, doting mother, to the right way to do things, although suspiciously well- schooled in subjects like funerary sculpture and the English practices of mourning. Her friend Maude Coleman comes from a slightly more privileged and free-thinking background. In contrast with Lavinia's mother, Maude's mother Kitty Coleman is well-educated by the standards of the day, and it has made her restless and irritable. But neither her reading, nor her gardening, nor her affair with the somber, high-thinking governor of the cemetery is enough for Kitty. She comes alive only when she discovers the women's suffrage movement, and her devotion to the cause takes her away from Maude in every sense. Disaster occurs when Lavinia and Maude attend a women’s suffrage march. What follows is the breakdown of relationships and families
    • 3/5
      Library book club pick.
      I liked this more than I thought I would. The writing isn't amazing, but the characters were interesting, and at the end I wanted it to keep going. It was melodramatic, but in a satisfying way.
    • 2/5
      I found this book a rather boring read.
    • 3/5
      An interesting portrayal of Victorian times, a good, solid read.
    • 3/5
      Ostensibly a work of historical fiction, period has little to do with this tale of how one woman's selfishness destroys everyone around her. Could as well have been set in present day (substitute Darfur for women's sufferage) as in past. Alas, human selfishness is eternal. Gimmick of switching narrators provides for readers the diversion of inferring each character's faults through the evidence of their own thoughts, perceptions, and self-justifications, which was enough fun to keep me reading. Unfortunately, however, the author makes little/no effort to provide psychological foundation or cause for the flaws and faults that define them - a fatal flaw since this keeps the reader from being able to connect with any of the characters. As a result, when all the angels began to fall (eventually so many of them that I stopped counting), I had a hard time mourning their passing. I understood why they "had" to fall (which flaws destroyed them, and why it was thematically necessary for them to fall) - but I just didn't care. In summary, couldn't help but feel that this author let herself be trapped by her gimmick and her story's title/theme into telling a story that was much smaller and shallower than it might otherwise have been.
    • 4/5
      A favorite even though it's been awhile since I read it. I love the part about cemeteries being more for the living than the dead! I'd never looked at it that way before reading this book.
    • 5/5
      Review for the Abridged Audio Book.This is probably my favourite Tracy Chevallier book and I had read it in book form before listening to the abridged audiobook several years later. It was beautifully narrated by Isla Blair and Jamie Glover and did not feel at all like an abridged version. Their two voices worked particularly well as the story is written in split narrative form and all the characters have a chance to speak, however briefly.Centering around Maud and Lavinia, who meet on the day of Queen Victoria's death, we meet both families and households. Although there is a well depicted class difference between the families, the girls become best-friends. Much of the action takes place in the cemetery, where Simon, the grave digger's lad and his father work. There are vivid descriptions of the cemetery, and death features largely as we move from mourning Queen Victoria to the death of her son and heir, Edward VII.As the girls mature with the changing times, Maude's mother becomes involved with the Suffragettes and this is viewed from the many viewpoints of Chevalier's wonderful characters.A wonderful book and brilliant audio CD. Recommended.
    • 3/5
      Falling Angels was another LibraryThing generated recommendation. I had tried Tracy Chevalier's Girl with a Pearl Earring and not finished it. This book describes a new Edwardian England with enough detail to assume a lot of research into women's prisons, suffragettes, funeral and mourning customs, and sexual mores was undertaken by the author. It is an interesting story but I feel that it was not well served by narrating it through each character's perspective. I found that switching from character to character (cued by the person's name at the top of the page)prevented me from sinking into the story and was a distraction, a constant reminder that I was "reading". I am guessing that Chevalier had a lot more raw material she could have used and the story might have been more satisfying if it were longer.
    • 5/5
      One of the few works of fiction I've ever read that makes use of multiple POV narrators to tell a story in linear time. This one's a tour de force.
    • 5/5
      The story is set in Edwardian London between 1901 and 1910 and follows the interconnected worlds of two families. The Waterhouses are a conventional middle-class family and the Colemans are from a more privileged class. The two daughters from these families, Lavinia Waterhouse and Maude Coleman, become friends despite their differences. Maude's mother Kitty sits at the heart of the novel. She's dissatisfied with her life and eventually gets involved with the Suffragette movement.Chevalier rotates the narrative between the many characters, giving the reader a chance to see how everyone is affected by the decisions of others. Though the plot sounds simple enough, it's the characters I became attached to. Through their eyes we learn about the power of friendship, love, class distinctions, neglectful parenting, and so much more. It's by far my favorite from Chevalier.
    • 4/5
      This was a pretty good book with historical insight into post-Victorian England and the early days of the Women's Suffrage Movement. Interesting, multi-dimensional characters with depth, intrigue, secrets, and human imperfections who grow and change over time, for better and for worse.
    • 4/5
      This novel (a New York Times Bestseller in 2001) is a sweeping period piece of the stratified society of London in 1906, just as Queen Victoria dies, and the Edwardian age is ushered in. Set against a backdrop of the Women's Suffrage movement, it is essentially the story of two young girls (in today's parlance they'd be BFFs) who live next door to each other. The story is eloquently told from the voices of nine different characters, with additional ample views of three others. Ordinarily, that would be about 8 points of view too many, but Chevalier makes it work in a glorious way. We watch as time goes by for: Maud Coleman - the only child of Kitty and Richard, serious, intelligent, and subconsciously understanding that many of the rules of Victorian England are essentially meaningless and best left behind. She longs for a friend and finds one inLavinia (Vinnie) Waterhouse - the devil may care (but only if carefully constrained within the bounds of proper society) oldest child of Gertrude and Albert. She also longs for a friend (while trying desperately to shed herself of her hanging on younger--but much wiser--sister Ivy May.) Maud and Lavinia meet in the cemetery where they discover their family graves are next to each other. Lavinia even writes a 'book' about the proper way for a lady to get through formal mourning. That section alone is a treasure. Together Maud and Vinnie spend many an afternoon scampering through the graveyard where they meetSimon Field - the young gravedigger who, with his father, spends his life watching the comings and going of all levels of society and gains the wisdom to see that in the end, everybody ends up under the ground. Simon gives us (and the girls) a grounding in reality, and is able to go where the 'proper ladies' can't. He sees much, hears much, knows much, and manages to keep most of it to himself, until the knowledge needs to be shared.Kitty Coleman - the restless and disenchanted wife of Richard, mother of Maud. She was traumatized by childbirth, and further shocked to the core of her being when, during a New Year's house party, her husband engages in, and insists that she does also, what is today known as 'wife swapping'. Her withdrawal from him (and from life in general) is brutal and substantial. Only later will she recover and join the Women's Suffrage movement, risking all to play out her desire for personal freedom.Richard Coleman - a proper English gentleman of the era. He knows nothing about anything going on in his household (that is a woman's domain) and cares only for cricket, star-gazing, and doing exactly what he is told to do by his motherEdith Coleman - a grand dame of staggering (and perhaps swaggering?) mien....she causes her son, her daughter-in-law, and her granddaughter to kow-tow to whatever she says is 'proper' and refuses to hear of any other way of doing things. Even the Coleman's cook threatens to quit whenever Edith appears on the doorstep. Her most egregious act comes when she tries (over the objections of Kitty and Maud and Mrs. Baker the cook) to dismissJenny Whitby - the maid. Jenny's story gives us the other side of the coin. Young girl with no education, no dowry, no prospects, living in poverty who comes to the big city to go 'into service' in exchange for room, board, and a few coins to send home to her starving family. No SPOILERS, but her story is central.Gertrude and Arthur Waterhouse - the gentle couple who live next door to the Colemans. Their financial circumstances are not as good as (nor would Edith Coleman allow that their blood lines are either) their neighbors. Gertrude tries to follow society's dictates, tries to keep a rein on Vinnie - but can't help spoiling her--and actually detests the Colemans and what they stand for. Arthur is simply grateful to be able to play cricket with Richard on Sunday afternoon, and happy that his wife and daughters have suitable family companions in the ladies next door.When all these stories are spun together in the setting of the cemetery with the Suffragette Movement providing excitement,and the Cemetery "Guvner" John Jackson providing a humanizing and humane personna, it is a riveting and poignant story. What happens to these women and how their actions influence and impact one another is in many ways the universal story of sisterhood, in others the never-ending story of sin and a chance for redemption. Whether redemption occurs is left to the reader to discover.
    • 5/5
      Warm sensitive exploration of the transition from the formal gothic romanticism of Victorian England to the more relaxed pragmatism of the Edwardians as told in the first person by some eight protagonists linked by family or neighbourhood and by events at Highgate cemetery for the nine years of Edward VII's reign. Each character is carefully delineated with a sympathetic wit that makes even the most repellant of them credibly comprehensible. The contrasts of the two cultures are reflected in the novel's structure and its voices creating a curiously stark evocation of its time.