What We Thought: Falling Angels by Tracy Chevalier

Falling Angels

by Tracy Chevalier

“When daddy saw the angel on the grave next to ours, he cried, 'What the devil!'"
-- from Falling Angels, when Maude Coleman saw the marker on the family plot of where Lavinia and Ivy May Waterhouse were standing.

Readers compared Falling Angels to The Age of Desire, a previous book club selection by Jennie Fields. They were interested in the descriptions of life in Victorian England on the cusp of the Edwardian era, but felt they were not detailed enough to satisfy interest in historical fiction. Some were disappointed in the author’s treatment of the characters. They expected a book more like Girl with the Pearl Earring. A few readers said that based on their experience with Falling Angels they would not care to read any more of Chevalier’s works. Others said that they enjoyed her books and plan to read more of them. The majority of the group was not enthusiastic about this month’s selection.

Although the behavior of the characters was typical of the time period, the discussion centered on why they acted the way they did. People are a product of their times and some are rebellious and some go along with the status quo. The majority of the discussion was about funerals, burial customs then and now, cremation and urn design. The beginning of the suffragette and women’s rights movement was briefly discussed and then the group moved on to dissect the marriages of Kitty and Gertrude Waterhouse and how their personalities influenced relationships with their husbands and each other. The supporting characters of the grave digger’s child, Simon, and Jenny, the maid, interested them more than the wealthy women and their husbands.

One reader summed up the book saying it was about children playing in a cemetery, suffragettes, and dying. The book is dark and brooding and, some said, very British, even though the author is an American. There was talk about the significance of falling angels in the title. The children said that they believed that shooting stars were angels carrying messages to the living. Readers agreed that the broken angel grave monument was proof of mortality, and then there was more talk about cremation. 

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This Month's Selection: Falling Angels by Tracy Chevalier

Falling Angels

by Tracy Chevalier

Tuesday, June 30

6:30 p.m.

January 1901, the day after Queen Victoria’s death: Two families visit neighboring graves in a fashionable London cemetery. One is decorated with a sentimental angel, the other an elaborate urn. The Waterhouses revere the late Queen and cling to Victorian traditions; the Colemans look forward to a more modern society. To their mutual distaste, the families are inextricably linked when their daughters become friends behind the tombstones. And worse, befriend the gravedigger’s son.

As the girls grow up and the new century finds its feet, Britain emerges from the shadows of  Victorian values to a golden Edwardian summer. It is then that the beautiful but frustrated Mrs Coleman makes a bid for greater personal freedom, with disastrous consequences, and the lives of the Colemans and the Waterhouses are changed forever.

Pick up a copy of this month's selection and add your thoughts to the discussion in the comments!