Well I thought it would be difficult to make another book as good as the The Girl with the Pearl Earring which was superb. Don’t get me wrong this was still a great book. Simple story focusses on two families and their daughters in the period from the day of Queen Victoria’s death to that of the King who succeeded her. Incorporating the Suffragette movement.

Short paragraphs alternate with POV’s of the main characters. Most of the action taking place within and about the local cemetery. The Author captures the feeling of the times well. As with the Pearl this is a sad book. I will look out more books by this author. They are modern day classics.

This book finished on day 1 of current ( yes another) Madeira holiday

Straordinariamente brava la Chevalier anche in questo romanzo storico/sociale molto introspettivo e non solo per ciò che riguarda la scelta della struttura narrativa, una sorta di diario a POV alternati che coinvolge tutti i protagonisti, anche quelli minori. Una storia che presenta un plot tutto sommato sobrio ma che fa emergere, attraverso la voce e i comportamenti dei vari protagonisti i contrasti, le diversità, gli scontri, i pensieri, le interiorità, i disagi di ognuno di loro. Tutto si svolge in un arco di tempo piuttosto limitato: i dieci anni del breve regno Edoardiano (il romanzo inizia nel 1901 nel giorno della morte della regina Vittoria e finisce nel maggio del 1910 nel giorno della morte di Edoardo VII) che presenta i primi germogli di una modernità che scalpita per liberarsi dalle arcigne radici ideologiche vittoriane e questo scontro coinvolge e sconvolgerà, alla fine, due famiglie, due classi sociali diverse, due modi essere, di pensare che incarnano l'apertura ma anche la resistenza e il rifiuto del nuovo... E attraverso le loro vicende, anche tragiche, la Chevalier tocca tantissimi temi di questo decennio di storia inglese: i cambiamenti che si producono nelle idee, nei costumi, nei comportamenti, nella moda, il progresso, le nuove invenzioni. Ma sopratutto la presa di coscienza della donna che afferma il suo diritto, non solo al voto, ma anche allo studio, all’uso della sua intelligenza, alla sua sessualità. L'autrice lascia che siano i suoi personaggi a parlare – i Waterhouse, i Coleman, le bambine, due donne di servizio, la nonna Coleman aristocratica e snob, Simon il figlio del becchino. Ognuno ha la sua voce, la sua identità sociale riconoscibilissima, ognuno espone il suo punto di vista: rigido, frivolo, pungente, saggio, tacito, ribelle. Ognuno ci dice di sé e degli altri. A volte gli interventi sono brevissimi: una sola ma toccante riga per la sorellina di Livy, “Da sopra la sua spalla ho visto cadere una stella. Ero io.”...
Punto di incontro, punto di ritorno, il cimitero di Highgate, là dove la Londra degli inizi del ‘900 amava passeggiare e venerare i morti. Il cambiamento si produrrà anche lì...

I love this book so much - its one of my absolute all-time favourites. I like to re-read it every year or so - if you haven't read it, you must

This was my fourth (or fifth?) book from Tracy so I had an idea what should I expect- nearly perfect historical research, beautiful language, and original topic. So I didn´t mind waiting more than 60 pages, because… it is Tracy and Tracy normally has smooth but quite slow starts.
What was the result? It was definitely worth waiting! The book was not as witty as “The Lady and the Unicorn”, nor so good written as “Girl with a Pearl Earring” but I enjoyed. I liked the idea of “linked diaries” which enable a neutral position of the writer, was excited to read about cemetery as a place full of life and I felt in love with Simo and Ivy May.
So thank you, Tracy. I hope we will see each other soon again.

loved how individual each character’s narration is

در دنیای واقعی کارکتری مثل "لیوی" یا بقول خودش "لاوینیا" فقط در دنیای بچگانه ش دوستداشتنیه، تازه اونهم زمانیکه جنبه های منفیشو نادیده بگیریم اما وقتی بزرگ میشه تبدیل میشه به یکی مثل "کیتی کولمن". امیدوارم دو گروه "روشنفکرها" و "روشنفکرنماها" دست از بزرگ کردن بیخودی کارکترهایی مثل کیتی کولمن و خانم بوواری بردارند! آدمای خودخواه و بی مسئولیتی که اطرافیانشونو ذله میکنن. اگر کسی خلاف این فکر میکنه چطوره نظرشو درمورد داشتن یه همچین مادر، خواهر یا همسری بپرسیم؟
کتاب حرف خاصی برای گفتن نداشت! یه ماجرای خیلی معمولی از زندگی یکنواخت و معمولی دوتا خانواده ی کاملا معمولی! نویسنده همه سعیشو بکار گرفت تا یکم هیجان چاشنی کارش کنه اما چیزی که از کاردراومد صرفا یه تراژدی بود و بس

I enjoyed this melodramatic novel complete with fainting women and smelling salts.
Told in very brief alternating chapters from eight points of view and spanning the years from 1901 through 1910. The device of points of view gives the reader a broad overview of English middle and lower class society over those years. The battle for a woman’s right to vote plays a large part in this work. Some of the melodrama in the work is a bit over the top but I did enjoy the characters and am glad I read the book.

I enjoyed this one, although this made for a heck of a book to finish just after giving birth to a baby girl. I mean, I can think of worse, but the sudden, violent death of a little girl was not exactly welcome just now.

Other than that, I found this to be a quick, engaging read. I enjoyed getting so many different perspectives, and appreciated that each change in point of view was clearly marked.

The book has plenty of literal angels in the cemetery, including a literal “Falling Angel,” but the title also made me think of the Victorian notion that a good wife should be the “angel of the home.” Gertrude Waterhouse is probably the closest to embodying that ideal: she seems content to run a peaceful home without antagonizing her husband the way Kitty Coleman does. And although I didn’t always agree with Kitty’s choices, I always felt sorry for how stifled she felt. Of course the lower class women, the maid and the cook, don’t have the liberty to stay home to be anyone’s “angel” - this is an ideal available only to the middle and upper class.

Other thoughts about the “Falling Angels” of the title: it can point to the various characters' moral failings, especially Kitty and Jenny, or the two deaths near the end of the book.

Speaking of which, we only hear from Ivy May that one time. Are we meant to believe that she always thinks so poetically? She’s such an odd, watchful presence. I really expected her role in the story to be something else entirely - maybe that she’d provide a key piece of information that everyone else missed because they weren’t as perceptive. Or at least that she’d be the one to grow up and be something unconventional for her day. But no.

On a different note, I loved watching the other two daughters, practical Maude and fanciful Lavinia, grow up together over the course of the book. Their personalities are so distinct and feel fully formed as they gradually figure out everything that is expected of them and begin to have their own feelings and opinions about it all.

In the last section of the book, I would have liked to see more of Maude’s thought process as she came to terms with her mother’s death and legacy. Growing from the girl who was mortified by her mother’s activism into the young woman who aspires to Cambridge surely didn’t happen overnight, and I would have liked a little more of that.

2.5

I didn't realize this was a slice of life novel, I'm not really a fan of those types of stories even though they tend to be well written a character rich, they just have nothing going on... That's what this book's main problem was. Nothing really happens for over 300 pages. But something inside of me wanted to finished it to the end.

I really like Chevalier's style of writing and generally like her books, but this books rambles on and on. There were points in the novel when it seemed like the plot would go somewhere but a letter would be burned, or the plot line would just end at the end of the chapter and never pick up again. Richard Coleman is so uninvolved in the story you could read his parts at any point in the book and would learn nothing new or different about his character. Kitty was a bratty wife who only cared about herself and never thought about anyone else even her own daughter Maude.

Over all like many people I'm left wondering, what's the point of this novel? what was the end goal or even the story? because as far as I could tell there wasn't one. The plus side is that it is relatively short and easy to get through. Chevalier's writing style is there just not her usual character development or story, oh well.

I've read all of Chevalier's novels and have always thought of this one as my favourite. A reread didn't change that, so I've bumped my rating up. I loved the neat structure that bookends the action between the death of Queen Victoria and the death of Edward VII, and the focus on funerary customs (with Highgate Cemetery as a major setting) and women's rights is right up my street. The switching between first-person POVs makes it such easy and engaging reading. She hits the absolute sweet spot between women's and literary fiction. Any and all melodrama is excused! The title is literal re: grave furniture, but also refers to shooting stars and erring humans.

A favourite passage:

(Kitty) "I have spent my life waiting for something to happen. And I have come to understand that nothing will. Or it already has, and I blinked during that moment and it's gone. I don't know which is worse - to have missed it or to know there is nothing to miss."

This takes place in Edwardian London, beginning the day after Victoria's death in 1901 and ending with the death of Edward VII in 1910. It concerns how the turn of the 20th Century affects two neighboring families, one of which hearkens back to the Victorian Era and one of which looks ahead to a new time. It especially concerns the incredibly stifling lives of women at the time. The mother in the forward family becomes a suffragette, pushing them forward perhaps a bit faster than they would wish to go. The climactic moment is a fictional account of a real event of the time, a huge demonstration demanding votes for women. It has tragic results for both families--the young girls of each family are especially affected. The novel is told in Spoon River Anthology style, with different characters taking the narrative voice of succeeding chapters, as if the reader were glimpsing into their personal journals. The differing reactions of one character to events deepen your understanding of the character who spoke before, and you piece out the story by taking in all the characters. There was an Upstairs, Downstairs quality as well because she gives a voice to everyone from the dictatorial grandmother to the poor upstairs maid to the barefoot boy who digs graves. It was a bit of a depressing book, but oddly uplifting when you finished seeing the whole picture. I enjoyed the author's "Girl with the Pearl Earring," and I enjoyed this one as well even though it was so different.

Just as a side note: it is incredible to me when I think of it that my own grandmothers were not allowed to vote until well after they became mothers. God bless those suffragettes.

I seem to keep checking out Tracy Chevalier books because she is very prolific and there are always audio books by her on my library shelves! I think she is an interesting, good writer. A lot of her stuff like "Girl With the Pearl Earring" has some historical basis, but this one is simply a novel. I quite liked it. But it won't change your life or anything. :) I need Brad Ferguson to write brilliant reviews for me.