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Available
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Publication
NYRB Classics (2012), Edition: Reprint, Paperback, 272 pages
Description
Writing stories that are extravagant and fanciful, fifteen-year old Angel retreats to a world of romance, escaping the drabness of provincial life. She knows she is different, that she is destined to become a feted authoress, owner of great riches and of Paradise House . . . After reading The Lady Irania, publishers Brace and Gilchrist are certain the novel will be a success, in spite of - and perhaps because of - its overblown style. But they are curious as to who could have written such a book: 'Some old lady, romanticising behind lace-curtains' . . . 'Angelica Deverell is too good a name to be true . . . she might be an old man. It would be an amusing variation. You are expecting to meet Mary Anne Evans and in Walks George Eliot twirling his moustache.' So nothing can prepare them for the pale young woman who sits before them, with not a seed of irony or a grain of humour in her soul.… (more)
User reviews
LibraryThing member Smiler69
I absolutely loved this book about a character who, almost from the first, I couldn't help loving to hate, and yet, also from the first, couldn't help liking a little bit too. Angel (for Angelica) Deverell has always lived in a fantasy world of her own making, and while some would have called her a
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liar as a young girl, she would have retorted that she was simply imagining a better living for herself, well within her reach. In the earliest years of the 20th century, we find Angel at fifteen being taken to task for using vocabulary in a composition which is much too sophisticated for her, smacking of plagiarism. Though she lives above the grocery shop owned and operated by her mother, Angel likes to imagine herself living at Paradise House and being waited upon by an army of hired help, though she's never laid her eyes on the place, nor does she wish to—and risk diluting her perfect fantasy of it—and the only real information she has on the great house is provided by her aunt Lottie, who has worked there as lady's maid for eighteen years, since "Madam" herself arrived there as a young bride. When word gets around she’s telling lies to her schoolmates, Angel decides her schooling is over and resolves to become a successful writer, in spite of the many protestations and outrage this decision causes her mother and aunt, this latter having paid for her niece to attend a private school so she can have better chances in life. When it becomes clear Angel will not budge from her decision, aunt Lottie comes back with a job offer from the great house as a lady's maid to the young lady Angel has been named after. Angel is outraged and in characteristic fashion, thoroughly insults her aunt for making such a suggestion. Feigning sickness to buy herself time, Angel pens her first masterwork, The Lady Irania, which in reality is a farce of a novel, florid and utterly lacking in sophistication, albeit it tells a story set among the highest strata of English society. Determined to find a publisher, she sends the manuscript around, undeterred by rejection, until one publisher, Theo Gilbright of Gilbright & Brace, sees a potential moneymaker in what might become a party-piece and face utter ridicule or become a runaway bestseller; his letter suggests a generous advance and invites Angel to a meeting in London. The partners expect to meet a doddering old maid smelling of camphor, and are confronted instead with the humourless young girl, who categorically refuses to make any changes whatsoever to her book, even though she has someone opening a bottle of champagne with a corkscrew as one of many glaring mistakes. The gamble pays off, and Angel becomes the fabulously wealthy author she had determined to become, which only encourages her to continue indulging her every whim and vanity. This was my second novel by Elizabeth Taylor, and it made me want to get my hands on everything else she's ever written, although I'm assured by various readers that this novel is not typical of her work. All the same, this is a wickedly entertaining little book which I have no doubt I'll be reading again. My NYRB edition features an introduction by Hilary Mantel; I wisely kept it for the end which definitely helped to prolong the pleasure. Show Less
LibraryThing member souloftherose
Angelica Deverell, otherwise known as Angel, is one of those characters you love to hate and I think Elizabeth Taylor must have had a lot of fun writing this book. Unusually for one of Taylor's novels, the story covers Angel's life from when she starts to write her first book at 15 all the way
This is Angel's publishers' reaction to her first book:
Gilbright and Brace had been divided, as their readers' reports had been. Willie Brace had worn his guts thin with laughing, he said. The Lady Irania was his favourite party-piece and he mocked at his partner's defence of it in his own version of Angel's language.
"Kindly raise your coruscating beard from those iridescent pages of shimmering tosh and permit your mordant thoughts to dwell for one mordant moment on us perishing in the coruscating workhouse, which is where we shall without a doubt find ourselves, among the so-called denizens of deep-fraught penury. Ask yourself - nay, go so far as to enquire of yourself - how do we stand by such brilliant balderdash and live, nay, not only live, but exist too..."
"You overdo those 'nays'," said Theo Gilbright. "She does not."
"There's a 'nay' on every page. M'wife counted them."
Angel's character matches her writing: she's vain, completely without empathy or humour, unable to accept any criticism or to see criticism as anything other than a personal attack, a self-proclaimed lover of animals and yet she doesn't properly care for or control the pets she owns. Angel is a bit of a monster and seems to live mostly in the world she has created inside her head.
This book is filled with dark humour so although I don't think this was Elizabeth Taylor's best novel, for me, it was certainly her funniest. As Hilary Mantel writes in the introduction of the new Virago edition: "Angel is a book in which an accomplished, deft and somewhat underrated writer has a great deal of fun at the expense of a crass, graceless and wildly overpaid one."
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through to old age. Unlike Taylor, Angel is a terrible writer yet, also unlike Taylor, her books are remarkably popular.This is Angel's publishers' reaction to her first book:
Gilbright and Brace had been divided, as their readers' reports had been. Willie Brace had worn his guts thin with laughing, he said. The Lady Irania was his favourite party-piece and he mocked at his partner's defence of it in his own version of Angel's language.
"Kindly raise your coruscating beard from those iridescent pages of shimmering tosh and permit your mordant thoughts to dwell for one mordant moment on us perishing in the coruscating workhouse, which is where we shall without a doubt find ourselves, among the so-called denizens of deep-fraught penury. Ask yourself - nay, go so far as to enquire of yourself - how do we stand by such brilliant balderdash and live, nay, not only live, but exist too..."
"You overdo those 'nays'," said Theo Gilbright. "She does not."
"There's a 'nay' on every page. M'wife counted them."
Angel's character matches her writing: she's vain, completely without empathy or humour, unable to accept any criticism or to see criticism as anything other than a personal attack, a self-proclaimed lover of animals and yet she doesn't properly care for or control the pets she owns. Angel is a bit of a monster and seems to live mostly in the world she has created inside her head.
This book is filled with dark humour so although I don't think this was Elizabeth Taylor's best novel, for me, it was certainly her funniest. As Hilary Mantel writes in the introduction of the new Virago edition: "Angel is a book in which an accomplished, deft and somewhat underrated writer has a great deal of fun at the expense of a crass, graceless and wildly overpaid one."
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LibraryThing member thorold
This is a rather uncharacteristic book for Taylor, but it is based on her usual mix of sharp humour and comfortable pessimism. It's an extravagant, satirical fantasy about an appallingly bad and very successful popular Edwardian novelist. The only one of Taylor's books to be set in part outside her
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own lifetime, it opens in 1900 and ends sometime in the 1940s. Although the fictional Angel Deverell's life and work seem to bear more than a passing resemblance to those of the real (but still gloriously improbable) novelist Marie Corelli, Taylor is obviously also doing a "there but for the grace of God..." thing, weaving in elements from her own experience as a beginning novelist and imagining how she might have ended up if she had been born without a sense of humour and the self-protective instinct to hide herself in conformity. Both of these lacks leave the unfortunate Angel extremely vulnerable to being hurt by the people she comes across, and it's paradoxically this very vulnerability that also makes it possible for a few people in her life to love her. It's a gloriously funny book, but also a surprisingly touching and sad one. Not to be missed! Show Less
LibraryThing member Petroglyph
This book, about a writer’s life from around 1900 through the 1960s, started off as great fun and grew more serious as it went on. But all of it was good. As an introduction to Elizabeth Taylor it’s certainly made me want to read more by her.
The best comparison I can make is that Angel startsHer manuscript sees print on a lark, by a publisher who laughed themselves silly at Angel’s so-bad-it’s-hilarious efforts . In later sections of the book Angel will become a wealthy, highly successful author whose career and emotional life will see the impact of the events of the 20th century.
I have a penchant for books about what I call magnificent megalomaniacs, larger than life characters who take their obsessions so seriously they become absurd. And that is definitely what Angellica Deverell is: she goes all the way and pursues her (petty and ridiculous) goals with a seriousness that commands respect. And in many ways, that is how this book feels on a meta level, too: Elizabeth Taylor definitely sees the funny side of Angel, tongue firmly in cheek, and she makes sure that at least a few of the other characters are prone to snarkiness and eager to egging things on just to see how far they will go. But Taylor herself does not relent in supporting Angel all the way: any meanness in the humour is entirely the characters’. Like any good parent, Taylor stands by her creation and insists on seeing them develop on their own terms, socially awkward though they may be. That is the space in which this novel develops, and Taylor did a masterful job of being fair to all sides.
In all, I think this was a lovely character study of a slightly absurd, magnificently megalomaniacal writer. A very charming surprise, but a book I loved and one which I recommend warmly!
The best comparison I can make is that Angel starts
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like a female, teenage version of Hadrian the Seventh, that wonderfully self-indulgent catholic fan-fic written by Frederick Rolfe: that one, too, deals with an impossibly smug writer convinced of their natural superiority and utterly unwilling to compromise. Angellica Deverell (to give Angel her full name) is a confident teenager who is bored with her and her timid mother’s bland life above a shop they keep for someone else, and decides randomly to start writing a novel. The end product reflects Angel’s values: great flights of fancy, purple prose and a firm conviction that her imagination is a superior substitute to real life -- in short: over-wrought romance among the upper classes. I have a penchant for books about what I call magnificent megalomaniacs, larger than life characters who take their obsessions so seriously they become absurd. And that is definitely what Angellica Deverell is: she goes all the way and pursues her (petty and ridiculous) goals with a seriousness that commands respect. And in many ways, that is how this book feels on a meta level, too: Elizabeth Taylor definitely sees the funny side of Angel, tongue firmly in cheek, and she makes sure that at least a few of the other characters are prone to snarkiness and eager to egging things on just to see how far they will go. But Taylor herself does not relent in supporting Angel all the way: any meanness in the humour is entirely the characters’. Like any good parent, Taylor stands by her creation and insists on seeing them develop on their own terms, socially awkward though they may be. That is the space in which this novel develops, and Taylor did a masterful job of being fair to all sides.
In all, I think this was a lovely character study of a slightly absurd, magnificently megalomaniacal writer. A very charming surprise, but a book I loved and one which I recommend warmly!
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LibraryThing member Kasthu
This is the third of Elizabeth Taylor’s novels that I’ve read: Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont, which I enjoyed and In a Summer Season, which I couldn’t finish. However, Angel is amazing—probably one of the best novels I’ve red all year.
Set at around the turn of the century, the novel’s
Angel’s only redeeming quality is her love of animals—which often gets eclipsed by her bad qualities. She has a way of completely unsettling the people around her—her husband, her publisher, her publisher’s wife, and her sister-in-law/live-in companion (was I the only one who got the subtext of this relationship? Or maybe I’m reading too much into it?). So she’s basically an un-heroine. It’s perhaps for the best that this book is only about 250 pages long, otherwise the reader might get tired of Angel and her behavior pretty quickly.
It wasn’t the author’s intention to make Angel likeable, but I was completed fascinated with her and her story—even as I knew that things weren’t going to turn out quite how she’d planned. In a way, this is a sad kind of commentary—how someone like Angel can rise and then fall so hard over the course of the 30 years this novel is set in. The novel is satire, though—Angel has absolutely no sense of humor, and takes herself too seriously, which is where some of the fun of the novel comes from. My only complaint is that the book seemed rushed sometimes--eg, it jumps from WWI to WWII without filling in the gap between.
Set at around the turn of the century, the novel’s
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heroine, if such she can be called, is one of the most fascinating characters I’ve come across in a long time. Angelica Deverell lives in a drab English town with her mother. A girl with irrepressible imagination, Angel grows up to become a famous novelist who churns out bad novels that her reading public nonetheless loves (Elizabeth Taylor apparently modeled Angel’s novels on those of Ethel M. Dell, who was a famous writers of romances in the early 20th century). Angel has an inflated sense of her own importance. She is obstinate, self-righteous, narcissistic, eccentric, arrogant, insensitive, and has a hard time showing emotion. And yet, I couldn’t stop reading this novel.Angel’s only redeeming quality is her love of animals—which often gets eclipsed by her bad qualities. She has a way of completely unsettling the people around her—her husband, her publisher, her publisher’s wife, and her sister-in-law/live-in companion (was I the only one who got the subtext of this relationship? Or maybe I’m reading too much into it?). So she’s basically an un-heroine. It’s perhaps for the best that this book is only about 250 pages long, otherwise the reader might get tired of Angel and her behavior pretty quickly.
It wasn’t the author’s intention to make Angel likeable, but I was completed fascinated with her and her story—even as I knew that things weren’t going to turn out quite how she’d planned. In a way, this is a sad kind of commentary—how someone like Angel can rise and then fall so hard over the course of the 30 years this novel is set in. The novel is satire, though—Angel has absolutely no sense of humor, and takes herself too seriously, which is where some of the fun of the novel comes from. My only complaint is that the book seemed rushed sometimes--eg, it jumps from WWI to WWII without filling in the gap between.
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LibraryThing member starbox
Utterly entertaining novel, the account of the increasingly eccentric, self obsessed and anti-social Angelica Deverill. Daughter of a lowly widowed shopkeeer, Angel has great plans for her literary career, producing inadvertently hilarious novels set in grand stately homes (put me in mind of Daisy
Angel is a wonderful creation; Taylor's powerful characterization never falters, we believe in her impossible nature totally.On being told by someone "I read one of your books", "she blinked, jolted by what he had said. She always supposed that everyone had read all of her books and had them nearly by heart, that they thought about them endlessly and waited impatiently for the next one to appear."
And as old age sets in, Angel (complete with peacocks, umpteen cats, a mouldering stately home and an outlandish wardrobe) becomes increasingly alienated from normal folk.
Laugh out loud funny in numerous places (especially the bits about cats). For all her unutterable awfulness, I rather liked Angelica. At times she almost felt like a soul -mate!
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Ashford's 'Young Visiters' )(sic), the whole a product of imagination and stories heard from her aunt - a lady's maid. Because unlike other young literary wannabes, Angel doesn't read...she is only interested in her own creations.Angel is a wonderful creation; Taylor's powerful characterization never falters, we believe in her impossible nature totally.On being told by someone "I read one of your books", "she blinked, jolted by what he had said. She always supposed that everyone had read all of her books and had them nearly by heart, that they thought about them endlessly and waited impatiently for the next one to appear."
And as old age sets in, Angel (complete with peacocks, umpteen cats, a mouldering stately home and an outlandish wardrobe) becomes increasingly alienated from normal folk.
Laugh out loud funny in numerous places (especially the bits about cats). For all her unutterable awfulness, I rather liked Angelica. At times she almost felt like a soul -mate!
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LibraryThing member Liz1564
What an engrossing novel! Taylor has created a protagonist who has no redeeming points for me and yet I was fascinated to follow this woman's life from adolescence to old age. Angel Deverell is a highly successful popular novelist who wrote fantastic, silly fiction aimed at imaginative shop girls
The reader first meets Angel at school. Her mother who owns a little shop and her aunt who is in domestic service sacrifice to send her to a decent girl's school where Angel dumbfounds her teachers with huge amounts of purple prose. Unable to believe that a mere schoolgirl could write such tripe, the English teacher searches through bad authors to find Angel's source. When accused of plagerism, Angel rightfully denies it (she is not a reader; reading bores her). Unappreciated, she takes to her bed and, even though the doctor sees right through her sick pose, she persists in fooling her mother that she is too ill to return to school. As a teen 'invalid' she writes her first novel.
So begins her long career. Her book is accepted because the canny publisher realizes her fiction will fill a hole in the market. Bad reviews only fuel interest in her novels. She and her adoring fans see the reviews as a conspiracy by the reviewers who are just jealous of her talent! In the coming years she gains a worshipping secretary/companion, the companion's handsome twin brother as a husband, and a cranky and loyal chauffeur /handyman. She buys her fantasy home Paradise House complete with white peacocks.
But bad writers go out of fashion and Angel's overblown style and dubious idea of history could not withstand the realities of World War I. As her income declines the house begins to fall apart, the gardens overgrow, and the peacocks molt and leave droppings on the terrace for no groundsmen remain to clean up. Angel floats from dusty room to decaying fruit orchard wearing evening gowns with torn straps and frazzled hems. Her automobile is kept together with the 1920's equivalent of duct tape. Still, in her head, she is the queen of fiction..
Taylor's Angel is a cuckoo, a strange bird thrust into the nest of a working-class shopkeeper where she is allowed to indulge her fantasies I loved laughing at her because I really saw her as a harmless eccentric so full of herself that she was not even aware of her downfall. I did not pity her or dislike her. After all, whom did she hurt? She made lots of money for her publishers who knew quite well they were printing garbage. Her bad reviews sold newspapers. She allowed Nora her companion to adore her and provided Nora with a reason for living. Her husband was too lazy to be a painter, even if at one time he may have showed a small talent. He would not have amounted to much, with or without Angel.
Only one person in the novel is truly to be pitied. Angel's hardworking mum loves her daughter and sacrifices her life for the cuckoo. She clings to her roots, even when Angel moves her to the fancy new house full of servants. Poor Mrs Deverell sees nothing wrong with telling a reporter that Angel was raised above a shop and showing him treasured pictures of a naked baby Angel and an awkward little girl. She still mourns a hardly remembered young husband and is hurt when Angel puts out the story (which Angel may even believe) that Angel's father was a nobleman who loved and abandoned Angel's mother for the good of his country. Think Student Prince. Mrs. Deverell is so cowed and in awe of her daughter that she downplays her final illness and Angel is too self-centered to recognize her mother's sufferings from the cancer that killed her.
Actually, now that I think of it, a few other characters in the book were injured by Angel. As Lady Bountiful, she stalked her poor neighbors, provided them with inferior jam and insisted on reading to the sick. One irate woman demanded that Angel leave her husband to die in peace because she scared him with her visits!
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yearning for romance. The crux of the novel is that Angel herself is her target readership and she firmly believes that what she is creating is real life. In one amusing scene Angel expresses her deep disappointment in Greece because it bears no resemblance to descriptions in her books which are the correct descriptions.The reader first meets Angel at school. Her mother who owns a little shop and her aunt who is in domestic service sacrifice to send her to a decent girl's school where Angel dumbfounds her teachers with huge amounts of purple prose. Unable to believe that a mere schoolgirl could write such tripe, the English teacher searches through bad authors to find Angel's source. When accused of plagerism, Angel rightfully denies it (she is not a reader; reading bores her). Unappreciated, she takes to her bed and, even though the doctor sees right through her sick pose, she persists in fooling her mother that she is too ill to return to school. As a teen 'invalid' she writes her first novel.
So begins her long career. Her book is accepted because the canny publisher realizes her fiction will fill a hole in the market. Bad reviews only fuel interest in her novels. She and her adoring fans see the reviews as a conspiracy by the reviewers who are just jealous of her talent! In the coming years she gains a worshipping secretary/companion, the companion's handsome twin brother as a husband, and a cranky and loyal chauffeur /handyman. She buys her fantasy home Paradise House complete with white peacocks.
But bad writers go out of fashion and Angel's overblown style and dubious idea of history could not withstand the realities of World War I. As her income declines the house begins to fall apart, the gardens overgrow, and the peacocks molt and leave droppings on the terrace for no groundsmen remain to clean up. Angel floats from dusty room to decaying fruit orchard wearing evening gowns with torn straps and frazzled hems. Her automobile is kept together with the 1920's equivalent of duct tape. Still, in her head, she is the queen of fiction..
Taylor's Angel is a cuckoo, a strange bird thrust into the nest of a working-class shopkeeper where she is allowed to indulge her fantasies I loved laughing at her because I really saw her as a harmless eccentric so full of herself that she was not even aware of her downfall. I did not pity her or dislike her. After all, whom did she hurt? She made lots of money for her publishers who knew quite well they were printing garbage. Her bad reviews sold newspapers. She allowed Nora her companion to adore her and provided Nora with a reason for living. Her husband was too lazy to be a painter, even if at one time he may have showed a small talent. He would not have amounted to much, with or without Angel.
Only one person in the novel is truly to be pitied. Angel's hardworking mum loves her daughter and sacrifices her life for the cuckoo. She clings to her roots, even when Angel moves her to the fancy new house full of servants. Poor Mrs Deverell sees nothing wrong with telling a reporter that Angel was raised above a shop and showing him treasured pictures of a naked baby Angel and an awkward little girl. She still mourns a hardly remembered young husband and is hurt when Angel puts out the story (which Angel may even believe) that Angel's father was a nobleman who loved and abandoned Angel's mother for the good of his country. Think Student Prince. Mrs. Deverell is so cowed and in awe of her daughter that she downplays her final illness and Angel is too self-centered to recognize her mother's sufferings from the cancer that killed her.
Actually, now that I think of it, a few other characters in the book were injured by Angel. As Lady Bountiful, she stalked her poor neighbors, provided them with inferior jam and insisted on reading to the sick. One irate woman demanded that Angel leave her husband to die in peace because she scared him with her visits!
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LibraryThing member LyzzyBee
(30 June 2012)
I had to buy this one new (well, from Green Metropolis, so new to me) as I had managed not to acquire my own copy over the years. So I didn’t think it was a reread, until I came to a bit about the somewhat monstrous teenage Angel insisting on writing in hardback exercise books with
A marvellous portrayal of a bad novelist – a monster, but portrayed humanely and with understanding. As the introduction says, is this a portrayal of the monster that lies within all writers? The tiny details are amazing and hilarious, as Taylor really goes to town and appears to be enjoying herself greatly: of particular note was Angel with a dress cut so low that you could see the top rows of her ribs; sitting up in bed with her apricot armpits; and walking across her acres accompanied by a troupe of cats. And the creative process is minutely described, even if what she is writing is more akin to the works of Marie Corelli, on whom she is based (is she an early E.L. James, of “Fifty Shades of Grey” fame, I wonder!) than to the works of Taylor herself. The pathos, of course, comes in, too, particularly in relation to her publisher, although there are some delightful scenes with the publisher, too.
On rereading: I didn’t remember much of the plot, but did remember the atmosphere of the book – and obviously admired Angel more in my own teens than I do now!
I had to buy this one new (well, from Green Metropolis, so new to me) as I had managed not to acquire my own copy over the years. So I didn’t think it was a reread, until I came to a bit about the somewhat monstrous teenage Angel insisting on writing in hardback exercise books with
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marbled covers and having a tortoiseshell comb, at which I had a flashback to my mid teens and procurement of the same! So this must have been an early Virago read for me, under the influence of my neighbour who introduced me to Virago and Taylor.A marvellous portrayal of a bad novelist – a monster, but portrayed humanely and with understanding. As the introduction says, is this a portrayal of the monster that lies within all writers? The tiny details are amazing and hilarious, as Taylor really goes to town and appears to be enjoying herself greatly: of particular note was Angel with a dress cut so low that you could see the top rows of her ribs; sitting up in bed with her apricot armpits; and walking across her acres accompanied by a troupe of cats. And the creative process is minutely described, even if what she is writing is more akin to the works of Marie Corelli, on whom she is based (is she an early E.L. James, of “Fifty Shades of Grey” fame, I wonder!) than to the works of Taylor herself. The pathos, of course, comes in, too, particularly in relation to her publisher, although there are some delightful scenes with the publisher, too.
On rereading: I didn’t remember much of the plot, but did remember the atmosphere of the book – and obviously admired Angel more in my own teens than I do now!
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LibraryThing member janeajones
This is the tale of the rise and decline of a popular novelist, Angelica Deverell. Born into the Edwardian lower middle class, raised by her shopkeeper mother and lady's maid aunt, Angel leaves school when she faces humiliation for lying about her background. Scorning an offer to join the household
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staff of her aunt's employer, she determines to write a novel -- and write one she does -- a lurid, risque romance that eventually finds a publisher and an adoring audience. Angel is not a particularly attractive protagonist, but she is rather fascinating, and her life is set against the inanity and decay of the English class system during the first half of the 20th c. Taylor creates a memorable cast of characters and a great escape read. Show Less
LibraryThing member iansales
This book was, in a roundabout fashion, my introduction to the fiction of Elizabeth Taylor – or rather, I learnt of her writing thanks to this book. Well, thanks to François Ozon’s adaptation of it, starring Romola Garai, which I reviewed many years ago for videovista.net. I liked the film so
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much, I kept an eye open in charity shops for books by Taylor… and it’s taken till now before I finally stumbled across a copy of Angel (after first finding and reading Blaming and A Wreath of Roses). And the first thing I noted about Angel the novel was its differences to the film adaptation. The plots are pretty much identical – opening in the last years of Queen Victoria’s reign, working-class teeenager Angelica Devereux, Angel, writes a florid romance novel, publisher takes a chance on it, book is a success, Angel goes onto become a successful – if critically mocked – writer, falls in love with Esmé, an impoverished upper-class painter, who marries her for her money but cheats on her, he is wounded in WWI and dies in an accident soon after, her books are by then no longer popular, and she lingers on in poverty… The film has Esmé’s work re-evaluated after his death, so he becomes critically lauded, while Angel’s books continue to be seen as trashy potboilers. The film also makes Angel more of a figure of fun, and so more sympathetic, than the novel, although they make use of the same events. In that respect, in that Angel is an unsympathetic character, and not played for light laughs, the book is a tougher read than the film is a viewing. But Taylor’s prose is so very good, reading it is never a hardship (which is not say Ozon’s direction is bad, although he does film it in a very artificial, almost pantomime, style, which suits his treatment of the material). I’ve now read Angel, but I’ll continue to keep an eye open for Taylor’s novels – and I have her Complete Short Stories on the TBR… Show Less
LibraryThing member nocto
The Angel of the title is Angelica Deverell, the daughter of a grocer from the not terribly nice town of Norley, who decides to write novels to bring her life up to the level she wishes to become accustomed to. The books she writes are hideous in the opinion of pretty much every other character in
The beginning of the book where Angel is dreaming, lying and writing was great - it grabbed me from the very beginning. The supporting cast, like Angel's mother and Aunt Lottie, are fabulous creations, realistic foils to Angel's fantasies. The problem for me was that once Angel became successful, even though you knew this couldn't last, and started playing out her fantasies in the real world, it all became a lot less absorbing to read. The supporting characters later in the book are no match for those at the start, and it all became a bit too comic and silly for me.
I'll be looking out for more of Taylor's books, I enjoyed this one, but just felt it lost it's way a bit as it went on.
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the book but these unresearched fantasies of lords and ladies go down well with the general public. This story is about the rise, and eventual fall, of Angel.The beginning of the book where Angel is dreaming, lying and writing was great - it grabbed me from the very beginning. The supporting cast, like Angel's mother and Aunt Lottie, are fabulous creations, realistic foils to Angel's fantasies. The problem for me was that once Angel became successful, even though you knew this couldn't last, and started playing out her fantasies in the real world, it all became a lot less absorbing to read. The supporting characters later in the book are no match for those at the start, and it all became a bit too comic and silly for me.
I'll be looking out for more of Taylor's books, I enjoyed this one, but just felt it lost it's way a bit as it went on.
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LibraryThing member melydia
First off, the Elizabeth Taylor who wrote this book is not that Elizabeth Taylor. Just had to get that out of the way because that's what I thought at first. Anyway, this is the story of Angel, a terribly spoiled girl and generally horrible human being who spends half her time daydreaming while her
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mother toils away to support her, and the other half writing awful novels that, miraculously, get published and even sell fairly well despite being utter drivel. She's heartless and self-absorbed and watching her slow descent is surprisingly engrossing. (And maybe there's a little bit of satisfying schadenfreude in there too.) This not the sort of book I would have picked up on my own, but the writing was gorgeous enough to draw me in and want to find out what happens to Angel and the people pulled into her orbit. Surprisingly good. Show Less
LibraryThing member arubabookwoman
Elizabeth Taylor is one of my favorite underrated authors, and my favorite of hers is Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont. I liked this NYRB reissue a lot, although it wasn't quite up to Mrs. Palfrey.
Angelica Deverell, becomes a best-selling author in her teens--she's so bad she's good, tasteless and
Hilary Mantel, who wrote the introduction to the NYRB version, described Angel as a "high priestess of schlock", and said, "Angel is a book in which an accomplished, deft and somewhat underrated writer has a great deal of fun at the expense of a crass, graceless and wildly overpaid one."
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Angelica Deverell, becomes a best-selling author in her teens--she's so bad she's good, tasteless and
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ignorant. We follow her from her childhood poverty, through her early successes, bringing her fabulous wealth, through to her old age, when her fortunes have declined and she is no longer in style. Through-out it all, she lives a life of humorous, but at the same time sad, self-deception. Hilary Mantel, who wrote the introduction to the NYRB version, described Angel as a "high priestess of schlock", and said, "Angel is a book in which an accomplished, deft and somewhat underrated writer has a great deal of fun at the expense of a crass, graceless and wildly overpaid one."
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LibraryThing member rmckeown
I must confess: when I was in seventh grade, I had a tremendous crush on Elizabeth Taylor. Molecules of that crush remain today. When I first noticed a novel by Elizabeth Taylor, I quickly dismissed the writer as no relation to the violet-eyed goddess. Then, the name kept popping up in odd places,
According to the bio in the New York Review Books Classics, Taylor was born in 1912 into a middle-class family in Berkshire, England. She worked as a librarian and governess before marrying in 1936. Nine years later, the first of her eleven novels appeared. She also authored four collections of short stories. Two of her novels, including Angel were made into films. I just added that one to my Netflix queue.
Angelica Deverell is a thoroughly despicable character. Most of the time, readers like to admire the main characters in the novels they read, but every once in a while, one comes along with such an absorbing story, we can’t stop reading.
Angel lives with her mother over a shop in a poor section of town. Angel’s Auntie Lottie is in service as a lady’s maid to a wealthy family nearby at Paradise House. She offers to introduce her niece to service to help out her sister and “Angel stared at her. ‘Do you really dare to suggest that I should demean myself doing for a useless half-wit of a girl what she could perfectly well do for herself; that I should grovel and curtsy to someone of my own age; dance attendance on her; put on her stockings for her and sit up late at night, waiting for her to come back from enjoying herself? You must be utterly mad to breathe a single word of such a thing to me’” (46). One must admire her spirit, drive, and determination.
Angel hears stories about Paradise House, the grounds, the peacocks, and the servants. However, she will not visit there, because, Taylor writes, “My mother lost her inheritance because she married beneath her. She can never go back, so don’t ever mention anything to anybody about Paradise House for that reason” (10). Secretly, Angel has a growing obsession with the house.
At an early age, Angel decides she is going to become a famous writer. She writes her first novel at about the age of 16. She sends it off to the only publisher she has ever heard of – Oxford University Press – and quickly receives a rejection. She denigrates the editors, and her wild imagination began to reshape her life. Taylor writes, “Her panic-stricken face would be reflected back at her as she struggled to deny her identity, slowly cosseting herself away from the truth. She was learning to triumph over reality, and the truth was beginning to leave her in peace” (15).
Angel’s dreams grew and expanded. Taylor writes, “She had never had any especial friends and most people seemed unreal to her. her aloofness and her reputation for being vain made her unpopular, yet there were times when she longed desperately, because of some uneasiness, to establish herself; to make her mark; to talk, as she thought of it, on equal terms: but since she had never thought of herself as being on equal terms with anyone, she stumbled from condescension to appeasement, making what the other girls called ‘personal remarks’ and offending with off-hand flattery” (16-17).
The prose is wonderful, the story absorbing, the characters all interesting. I can’t wait to find more of her novels. Angel, by Elizabeth Taylor. 5 stars
--Jim, 2/3/15
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a mention here and there, without any elaboration. Finally, I decided to find out about Liz the second. The first novel I could find was Angel. According to the bio in the New York Review Books Classics, Taylor was born in 1912 into a middle-class family in Berkshire, England. She worked as a librarian and governess before marrying in 1936. Nine years later, the first of her eleven novels appeared. She also authored four collections of short stories. Two of her novels, including Angel were made into films. I just added that one to my Netflix queue.
Angelica Deverell is a thoroughly despicable character. Most of the time, readers like to admire the main characters in the novels they read, but every once in a while, one comes along with such an absorbing story, we can’t stop reading.
Angel lives with her mother over a shop in a poor section of town. Angel’s Auntie Lottie is in service as a lady’s maid to a wealthy family nearby at Paradise House. She offers to introduce her niece to service to help out her sister and “Angel stared at her. ‘Do you really dare to suggest that I should demean myself doing for a useless half-wit of a girl what she could perfectly well do for herself; that I should grovel and curtsy to someone of my own age; dance attendance on her; put on her stockings for her and sit up late at night, waiting for her to come back from enjoying herself? You must be utterly mad to breathe a single word of such a thing to me’” (46). One must admire her spirit, drive, and determination.
Angel hears stories about Paradise House, the grounds, the peacocks, and the servants. However, she will not visit there, because, Taylor writes, “My mother lost her inheritance because she married beneath her. She can never go back, so don’t ever mention anything to anybody about Paradise House for that reason” (10). Secretly, Angel has a growing obsession with the house.
At an early age, Angel decides she is going to become a famous writer. She writes her first novel at about the age of 16. She sends it off to the only publisher she has ever heard of – Oxford University Press – and quickly receives a rejection. She denigrates the editors, and her wild imagination began to reshape her life. Taylor writes, “Her panic-stricken face would be reflected back at her as she struggled to deny her identity, slowly cosseting herself away from the truth. She was learning to triumph over reality, and the truth was beginning to leave her in peace” (15).
Angel’s dreams grew and expanded. Taylor writes, “She had never had any especial friends and most people seemed unreal to her. her aloofness and her reputation for being vain made her unpopular, yet there were times when she longed desperately, because of some uneasiness, to establish herself; to make her mark; to talk, as she thought of it, on equal terms: but since she had never thought of herself as being on equal terms with anyone, she stumbled from condescension to appeasement, making what the other girls called ‘personal remarks’ and offending with off-hand flattery” (16-17).
The prose is wonderful, the story absorbing, the characters all interesting. I can’t wait to find more of her novels. Angel, by Elizabeth Taylor. 5 stars
--Jim, 2/3/15
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LibraryThing member janetf8
The most depressing book I have never finished. After an insightful start, the slow, steady decline becomes unbearable and I skim-read the last few chapters because I could not take any more. Quick, turn to Pickwick Papers to be cheered up ...
LibraryThing member brenzi
I read Elizabeth Taylor's Angel and I have to ask how in the world did Taylor create such a completely unlikable character in a book I ended up loving? Doesn't make sense. I should've hated this book because well, Angel is absolutely toxic. But Taylor's writing is so gobsmacking beautiful and
"At that first meeting, long ago in London, she had seemed to need his protection while warning him not to offer it: arrogant and absurd she had been and had remained: she had warded off friendship and stayed lonely and made such fortifications within her own mind that the truth could not pierce it. At the slightest air of censure in the world about her, up had gone the barricades, the strenuous resistance begun by which she was preserved in her own imagination, beautiful, clever, successful and beloved."
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descriptive that it's hard to get beyond that. Plus it's her genius, I think, that could create a character that's so repellent while being so absolutely fascinating. I won't soon forget her."At that first meeting, long ago in London, she had seemed to need his protection while warning him not to offer it: arrogant and absurd she had been and had remained: she had warded off friendship and stayed lonely and made such fortifications within her own mind that the truth could not pierce it. At the slightest air of censure in the world about her, up had gone the barricades, the strenuous resistance begun by which she was preserved in her own imagination, beautiful, clever, successful and beloved."
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LibraryThing member rosalita
I have to be honest. I had never heard of the author Elizabeth Taylor until I joined the 75-Book Challenge group. I started seeing her books popping up on threads here and there, and the reviews intrigued me. So I went looking at the library, and Angel was the first one I grabbed at random.
It's
Angel tramples on the feelings of the people in her life and is generally an unlikable personality. And yet, I couldn't help feeling sad and a touch of pity for her at the end of this novel, which is a compliment to Taylor's writing. I plan to seek out other Taylor novels in the future. I do hope some of them have some more pleasant protagonists, however.
It's
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always interesting to read a book in which the main character is not particularly likable. Angel is a novelist, a writer of the worst sort of overwrought, overwritten romance. She is seemingly oblivious to the contempt in which critics and her own publisher hold her, and is convinced that her books are fine literature. To the consternation of the critics (and the cynical pleasure of the publishers), Angel's books are hugely popular, bringing her the kind of wealth and fame she only dreamed about as a poor child.Angel tramples on the feelings of the people in her life and is generally an unlikable personality. And yet, I couldn't help feeling sad and a touch of pity for her at the end of this novel, which is a compliment to Taylor's writing. I plan to seek out other Taylor novels in the future. I do hope some of them have some more pleasant protagonists, however.
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LibraryThing member japaul22
This book started off strong, with an antagonistic main character, Angel, who is so full of herself you can't help but be amused. After all, she is only fifteen. She has a bad day at school, and takes to her bed, pretending to be sick. She prolongs this by deciding to write a novel - in bed. She's
And she gets published. And a certain segment of the population loves her books. And she becomes rich.
And then I got bored. Angel's adult life didn't really interest me at all, so the second half of this novel didn't really work for me. For me, this was one of the less interesting books that NYRB has published.
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convinced she is a genius, despite the fact she has little life knowledge, no background in reading any books at all, and a horrific vocabulary full of big words she uses incorrectly. And she gets published. And a certain segment of the population loves her books. And she becomes rich.
And then I got bored. Angel's adult life didn't really interest me at all, so the second half of this novel didn't really work for me. For me, this was one of the less interesting books that NYRB has published.
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LibraryThing member laytonwoman3rd
Excellent character study of a totally self-absorbed "Edwardian" novelist who unaccountably inspired great loyalty in a number of people who saw her flaws and loved her anyway, through thick and thin.
2008
2008
Subjects
Awards
Language
Original language
English
Original publication date
1957
Physical description
272 p.; 5 inches
ISBN
1590174976 / 9781590174975