Falling Angels

By Tracy Chevalier
Read: October 2998
Rating: Victorian

Can I rate something as being Victorian? It sums up quite a bit. Really, it’s on the cusp, beginning with the death of Queen Victoria. More Edwardian–plenty of cultural change going on.

It’s hard not to love this one. Two little girls who both decided that they would be best friends. A boy on the edge of their circle who would make a much better friend to at least one of them. Death, tombstones, and graves at the center of their lives. (That’s the Victorian part.) When they grow older, things change. The girls begin to grow apart, but hang on to each other because they swore they would.

It’s not a light hearted book at all. There’s death in this one. Deep shame. Cruelty. And kindness, the kind that happens in hard times.

Of course, I have a soft spot for anything involved womens’ history. Here, the suffragettes! Maude’s mother becomes wrapped up in the cause, and falls prey to what working women have for generations… can you really be a good mother and work at the same time? She wasn’t a very good mother to start with. Or perhaps she could have been, if she had lived differently.

I do hope that there’s a sequel. I feel the need for one.