The Third Angel
By Ashley Simpson Shires, Special to the Rocky
Published April 18, 2008 at 10:35 a.m.
* Fiction. By Alice Hoffman. Shaye Areheart Books, $25. Grade: A
Plot in a nutshell: Hoffman has created another work of magical fiction, a tale of three women, all terribly in love with the wrong men. The novel is expertly constructed in three sections, narrated in three different time periods. The women in each section stay on the seventh floor of the haunted Lion Park Hotel in London.
The first woman, Maddy Heller, stays at the Lion Park in 1999 for her sister's wedding. Her story is compelling in that she is secretly and tragically in love with her sister's fiance. In 1966, the second woman, Frieda Lewis, falls in love with a guest at the hotel: an American rock star and drug addict who happens to be engaged to someone else. And in 1952, the third woman, Bryn Evans, betrays her fiance at the Lion Park, to disastrous results.
At the very end of the novel, Hoffman reveals the tragedy of the Lion Park ghost, the suspenseful event that connects all the women in powerful and mystical ways.
Sample of prose: "Lucy opened her door wider and slipped into the hall. She felt fuzzy, as though she were a sleepwalker. She felt drawn to the screaming; it was like a magnet. She could hear a woman screaming now. She knew the voice. She started to feel something like chills, the way she felt when she had a fever."
Pros: The characters in the book are fascinating, flawed individuals looking for love after experiencing the traumas of divorce and cancer. And they inhabit the landscape of London beautifully: Hoffman evokes three vibrant eras: the period following Princess Diana's death in the 1990s, the era characterized by the Doors in the 1960s and that of the Beatles in the 1950s.
Cons: None
Final word: The characters in The Third Angel make gripping, tragic mistakes in the face of love and loss. But in the end, in her own unique way, Hoffman offers them the redemptive power of forgiveness. Her bewitching style and mysterious subject matter culminate in a powerful, dreamy novel.
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