رملن با سبکی جالب و خواندنی، در این دوره قرنطینه خانگی و دوران کرونایی جالب بود ارزش خوندن دارد

در "سقوط فرشتگان" "تریسی شوالیه" با کنار هم قرار دادن دو خانواده "واتر هاوس" و "کولمن" به تقابل سنت و مدرنیته پراخته است. یکی شیفته و معتقد به ارزش های سنتی عصر ویکتوریایی و دیگری مجذوب تغییرات سریع جهانی که به سمت نو شدن می رود.
ماجرا توسط راویان متعدد بیان می شود. تقریبا همه ی شخصیت های درگیر ماجرا، با نگاه خود قسمتی از ماجرا را بازگو می کنند.
رمانی که به سادگی و روان پیش می رود و شما بی دغدغه به دنبالش می روید بدون وجود نکته خاصی.. فقط پیش می رود تا تمام شود همین.
من این کتاب را با ترجمه نینا فراهانی که نشر چشمه به چاپ رسانده، خواندم.

Devastating by the end. Just made me feel so heartbroken. And in some ways this is a historical novel where not a lot happens, there's no big historical thing to experience and the way it is written makes it feel very light. It's all written in the first person and jumps around a lot of different characters, all with short chapters. I'm not always the biggest fan of first person narration and with so many in here I was a bit uncertain, but in the end I really liked the style.

Set in London at the turn of the century, Queen Victoria has just died and two local families, the Colemans and the Waterhouses, meet whilst visiting their own graves. Because yes, the obsession with death is there and families not only purchase the grave plot but also the grave monument well in advance of death. Hence why two girls can sit on their own graves and have a chat.

I don't know if the cemetry was supposed to be Highgate or somewhere else, I don't know London all that well. There's a gravedigger's son, Simon, who befriends the girls and is their guide into the cemetry world and all the complications of moarning, gravedigging, and the grim realities of life.

The families represent two different phases of society. The Waterhouses are old school, with the mother content to have children, keep house and be mother. The eldest daughter, Lavinia, is self absorbed and brattish at time, and very involved in social rules and all the pomp that goes with Victorian moarning. The Colemans on the other hand are more progressive, or at least the mother is. Kitty is restricted by the traditional wife role and wants something more out of her existence. Joining the suffragetes gets her out of a depression after a backstreet abortion, but she gets so obsessed with it that she forgets about everything else. Seeing the utter disintergration of mother-daughter relationship between Kitty and Maude is so sad. Kitty isn't there at all for Maude at all the coming of age moments, and really isn't bothered that she missed it either. I don't know whether this is trying to say something about the suffragettes, but in the midst of the rally, women's rights, in the form of the girls are utterly trampled upon and yet no one seems to care. Kitty abandons Maude, Lavinia and Lavinia's little sister Ivy-May and they keep getting passed from suffragette to suffragete, no one being too fussed to look after them. Lavinia is molested in the crowds listening to the speeches, then they lose Ivy May. Who tragically is found dead, strangled, and the inference with the creepy man loitering in the shadows is that she was abused. It's just awful - and these are all massively awful infringements on women's rights, and yet... it happened and it never feels like a big deal.

I don't know. It is a light and entertaining read, although utterly devastating at the end. I can't even say whether she is actually trying to say something about the period or just telling a good yarn. But it feels like in trying to become free and themselves, eligible to vote and to live, something gets lost in the mix for the women and they let down the next coming generation of women.

I really liked how thoughtful the characters were formed. Love the writing style and the plot. I felt like actually living in each character‘s life.

I totally enjoyed this book even though I didn't give it a 5 star. But it was a "period" book that gave a glimpse of the historical importance of cemetaries for "preambling" and for showing the wealth and position that each person held. But, even more than that, what it was like for ladies of the time to live in the parameters of the lives they were destined for. And the children who also fell into that society and what is expected of them. Fascinating stuff -- to me. Well written book and would recommend to anyone who likes historically based fiction. Second book I've read by Tracy Chevalier (Girl with the Pearl Earring), but think I'll be readying more.

Hmpf.
Hmpf,hmpf.
This book was a bad try at writing dark.
Well all the books from this author are that,but still!
I had a real problem whit the destiny of the main character and her mother.
At least she was the main character to me.
All the others were so horrible you wanted to beat them whit a stick!
So,the mother dies.And the girl does not get the boy she wants because of her winy bratty friend that indirectly messed up her and her mothers life.
Go figure.
I just have enough of injustice to look at in real life.Why read about shallow evil people that tend to make life miserable for the marginally good ones?

I gave it the second star because it was not badly written when it comes to form.Just when we consider the plot.

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.

Ok, this is my third Tracy Chevalier book, and I think I'm done with her now. I really, really enjoyed Girl With a Pearl Earring, which had a lovely atmosphere and focused on subject matter very interesting to me.

This one didn't have those draws. I picked this up because it's right around Election Day and I thought it was all about the women's suffrage movement. Instead, I find it's a story about two families at the turn of the century, and their seriously petty, semi-dysfunctional problems. Wow. Right from page one it's like Chevalier's mission is to say "hey, sex and dark stuff went on in every time period!" And yes, that's true. But I guess I just don't want to read about it, personally. I get that the author was trying to show how confining women's roles could be at that time, when the fact that women could get an education (based solely on how forward-thinking the men in her household were) in some cases just taught her how much she was really confined.

I just didn't FEEL anything about this book. The characters were mostly unsympathetic, and did such ridiculous things in some cases that I just couldn't bring myself to care about them.

I felt very similarly about The Lady and the Unicorn, which was racy and ridiculous in all the same ways. I don't think I'll be picking up another book by this author.

سقوط فرشتگان از آن دست رمان هایی است که داستان شما را با خود به درون خود می برد و براحتی امکان تصویر سازی از داستان را برای شما امکان پذیر می کند. داستان که زندگی دو خانواده انگلیسی و روابط آنها و دختران آنها را در اوایل قرن بیستم روایت می کند بیشتر سعی در تصویر کشی وضعیت زنان در یکی از آزادترین کشورهای جهان در ابتدای قرن بیستم را دارد بطوریکه درگیری روابط زناشویی و آزادی زنان را نشان می دهد و بطور واضح در انتهای داستان حضور شخصیت های داستان در راهپیمایی های حق رای برای زنان را نمایش میدهد که مرگی سمبولیک را برای دو شخصیت داستان را به ارمغان میاورد. اما این مبارزه منجر به قبول تصمیم شخصیت اصلی داستان جهت ادامه تحصیل در دانشگاه و قبول آن از طرف پدر نشان از نوعی پیروزی است.
برای خواندن رمانی در چند روز رمان مناسب و گیرایی است و توصیه می کنم آنرا بخوانید.

Victorians were obsessed with death and sex. This book opens with the death of Queen Victoria, and ends with the death of King Edward, placing it squarely in Edwardian times, but the Victorian obsessions of death and sex are the two themes of this novel, pushing and pulling each other forward to modern times or back towards the Victorian age.

The book follows two rival families sharing adjacent cemetery plots and who eventually become next door neighbors. The two little girls become friends, the fathers play cricket and go to pubs together, but the mothers are constantly comparing themselves to the other in every way.

Through the point of view of all of the different family members, servants, and the gravedigger's son, the nature of the families' friendship and rivalry is uncovered. This style of shifting 1st person narration was very effective for this book. With headings indicate who was writing, it was never confusing, and the plot unfolded itself slowly and beautifully as motivations for past actions others observed became clear.

Death surrounded these families. The girls were just old enough to understand death when Queen Victoria died. They live next door to the cemetery and visit their family plots. They learn how to mourn. They live in the shadow of death every day.

Sex was ever present as well: the wife that turned her husband away; the husband that went to wife swapping parties; sexual escapades with men who work at the graveyard, and the consequences of those actions. Sexual roles were explored as well, as men are told to handle their woman as one handles a horse, and an accidental encounter with a leading suffragette leads one of the wives deep into that movement.

Eventually, the families become too entangled with each other and with the Suffragette movement so that even the smallest things that these rivals and friends do will have unintended and drastic consequences.

This was an excellent novel.

A very enjoyable story taking place from 1901 to 1910, from Queen Victoria's death to the day Edward VII dies. This was a decade of social and political change in England, which the storyline depicts perfectly through the two neighboring families, one with a progressive mother and somewhat tolerant daughter, and one with a much more conservative mother and daughter. The husbands are still in their "Lord and master" roles. All the characters are so well defined and evolving, making it all so interesting and gratifying. I highly recommend.

I had the audiobook only (I have really no idea why I picked this one up), so can’t provide any of the many, many quotes that made me laugh.

The tone of the book was wonderful. Very irreverent in some parts and very intentionally unintentionally funny – i.e. very uptight Victorian attitudes were written so stiffly that they made me giggle. For large parts, this book read like a satire.

And this is where my problem with the book lay: the very light tone narration (each character gets a turn to tell the story from their point of view in alternating chapters) didn’t quite fit the story.

We first meet all of the protagonists when two Victorian London families meet in a graveyard, having bought adjacent family plots, and fall out over the hideousness of the adornments they each bought for the graves: a huge urn on one and a grotesque angel on the other.

We then follow the families as their daughters strike up a close friendship and see how their lives unravel, as the angels fall, as one mother suffers from depression, there is an unwanted pregnancy, etc., the engagement in politics as one member joins the suffragettes, a murder that gets absolutely not talked about, and so on.

There are a plethora of serious issues that Chevalier takes up in her book, but they all seem to get glanced over.

For example, the cause of the suffragettes is criticised by the household staff as being of no use to them because they would not get the vote under what the suffragettes were proposing (votes for “some” women, but not all at this stage) and the way that the suffragettes are portrayed is outrageously self-indulgent and actually leads to catastrophe. Yet, I as a reader found it hard not to take issue with the portrayal because even that criticism was left largely unexplained. I had a hard time following the author’s choices in this one.

I was missing some complexity and depth in this book which left me feeling that this was more of an exercise in creative writing (of historical fiction) than an actual story that had a point.

Still, I laughed quite a bit at some of the characters.

Review first posted on my blog:
https://brokentuneblog.com/2021/07/05...