Falling Angels
Tracy Chevalier HarperCollins, 401pp, £12.99
ISBN 0007108257
In among the gritty excesses of much contemporary fiction, a very different kind of novel is daintily but determinedly climbing the bestseller lists. Shockingly polite stories - the likes of Miss Garnet's Angel by Salley Vickers and Tracy Chevalier's Girl With a Pearl Earring (both published by HarperCollins) - are enjoying such word-of-mouth success as to make their hipper, edgier rivals even more miserable. These pretty books appeal to all ages, and especially to women - the main buyers of fiction. It is no coincidence that they are similar in design to their non-fictional precursor Longitude and its legion of imitators. Within the covetable covers of these squat, handbag-sized hardbacks, the reader is assured of erudition and accessibility - high themes, if not high prose.
Taking a detail from history, Girl With a Pearl Earring tells the endearing story of the young maid who became Vermeer's model, speculating on the little that is known about Vermeer and his sitters. Visitors to the current Vermeer exhibition at the National Gallery are no doubt encouraged to buy a copy along with a Kitchen Maid tea towel.
While it is easy to be suspicious of such artful marketing, Chevalier's wide-eyed heroine is as disarming on paper as she is on canvas. Although we are already familiar with 17th- century Holland (remember the recent literary tulipomania), it is virgin territory compared with the turn-of-the-century Victorian setting of Chevalier's latest novel.
Falling Angels begins with the Queen's death, but England is still very much in her shadow, caught between the promise of the new century and the values of the old. It is an altogether darker affair, set for the most part in a cemetery. The novel's central oppositions are carved out in the sculptures on two family burial plots, the Coleman urn (tradition, reason, class) and the Waterhouse angel (fashion, sentimentality, bourgeois aspirations). Despite this clear narrative structure, sense and sensibility are recklessly distributed between the two families - the lovely Kitty Coleman longs to loosen her stays, while Gertrude Waterhouse is a model Victorian wife and mother.
Chevalier's readers, well versed in matters art historical, will immediately know that the title refers to Coventry Patmore's immortal "angel in the house", the subject of countless Victorian paintings along with her sorry opposite - the fallen woman. Some of the other omens for ladies who have misbehaved are easier to miss: the day before poor Kitty comes over all Lady Chatterley with the cemetery guv'nor (beneath an angel, naturally), another angel crashes to the ground, losing her head. Sweet angelic engravings record the passing years every few pages (padding the novel to twice its actual size) and we almost expect to find a decapitated torso marking the significance of Kitty's transgression. When she adds insurrection to infidelity by becoming a suffragette, we know it won't be long before she joins the stony sisters whose heavenly presence is so heavily felt.
The novel is unexpectedly brutal at its centre, but, despite its grave obsessions, Falling Angels remains stubbornly cheerful. Shadowy modern allusions can be found in the Diana-like hysteria over Victoria's death and the silent horror of child abduction. Where Girl With a Pearl Earring captures the simplicity of its subject, Falling Angels, a succession of first-person monologues, falls into caricature. There is no mistaking the world of the historical novel when posh folk are "weary", "fond" and "wretched" (and that's just the five-year-olds) while the riff-raff are blooming hearty, missus.
Chevalier has stripped the Victorian novel to its petticoats: snobbery, forbidden sex and a strong storyline. She spices things up and does away with all the conversation and description that make the real thing so heavy to carry on the Tube. The occasional reference to those little-known 19th-century writers, Tennyson and Dickens, is not quite enough to give the book period depth. Chevalier is a naturally gifted storyteller, but here she seems to have lost the innocence that made Girl With a Pearl Earring so seductive.
Lisa Allardice is deputy arts and books editor of the NS
Post this article to
We want to encourage people to comment on our content and to exchange views with other readers and hope this will be done on a courteous basis. However, if you encounter posts which are offensive please let us know by emailing comments@newstatesman.co.uk and we will take swift action where necessary.
