Salley Vickers: Miss Garnet's Angel
Nov. 16th, 2018 10:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustOne result of talking books with J & J in York was that while I was at the Lit & Phil (for Ellen's book launch) I borrowed their copy of Salley Vickers's Miss Garnet's Angel. J had been to an author event at which Salley Vickers talked about her latest book, The Librarian, and had been very taken with the subject matter: a children's librarian in the 1950s introduces children to precisely those books which we had read and loved as children. Besides, J. spent much of her working life as a librarian. I got the impression that The Librarian had failed to live up to these expectations, and J. was a little wistful: she had loved Salley Vickers's first book, Miss Garnet's Angel. "But," she said, "I read it while we were on holiday in Venice, which may have helped."
I can see how it would have been a delightful book to be reading in Venice; it is pretty much a love letter to the city and the art thereof, and Vickers writes very well about both. Unsettled by the death of her friend Harriet, Miss Garnet arrives in Venice and is smitten, specifically by recurring images of the angel Raphael, and the story of Tobias. These were the parts of the book I enjoyed, to the extent that I made the mistake of looking up the church of the Angelo Raffaele, and its Guardis, and I liked the picture of the real thing very much less than the picture in my mind. My mental 'Tobias and the Angel' will aways be the Verrochio in the National Gallery and my default 'beautiful old church' is probably romanesque or gothic. So the Venice I was enjoying was a purely imaginary one: well, this is fiction, so why not?
More of a problem was the complete dismissal of Julia Garnet's life pre-Venice. I appreciate that the author wants to show what a wonderful change the city brings about for her, and as she explains on her website, that Miss Garnet's first experience of Venice reflects her own, when she first visited the city as a young woman. It also reminded me strongly of A Room with a View, and some of Forster's short stories, to the extent that I wondered when it was set: was Miss Garnet an Edwardian spinster of the same type as Lucy Honeychurch's cousin Charlotte? The book is copyright 2000, and there is no indication that is set at any time other than the present day (that long ago pre-internet present day, but even so). If Miss Garnet retired at 65, she must have been a reasonably enterprising young woman to make her escape from home by going to university - and to Cambridge at that. Her conversion to communism and her holidays in Eastern Europe seem to be signs of narrow-mindedness, rather than a curiosity about a wider world (I don't know why, given that Vickers's parents were, like mine, active and committed members of the Party) but even setting that aside, I couldn't believe in the cold, limited, uninterested person she had been before. Justifications are offered for this, mostly to do with acute shyness and fear of rejection, but I still felt she was a bit of a caricature of a repressed spinster, magically transformed by angelic intervention. Harriet, too, puzzled me throughout the narrative, but I think I now know why she was as she was (for reasons which it would be a spoiler to explain).
The book contains two stories, told in parallel. Alongside the story of Julia Garnet and her new life in Venice runs the story of Tobias and the angel, from the Apocrypha. There is a rational reason for its presence, given the popularity of the story of Tobias in Venetian art, and the probability that the reader won't be familiar with it and will benefit from having it explained. Names and themes echo and reflect between the two stories, but I'm not sure this adds anything more than a decorative richness. What does go deeper, though, is the understanding of the angel Raphael, as revealed by Miss Garnet's researches and reflections. Are these the views of the author? Whether this reflects a lifelong belief in angelic intervention, I don't know, but within the confines of the book, yes, I think they are, and I am not the right audience for this. I'm fine with Miss Garnet reading the book of Tobit, and seeing parallels with her own life (or indeed, failing to see the parallels which have been placed there for the benefit of the reader). But I resisted being presented with a theology of angels cooked up by Miss Garnet, as if it were something real.
There's something odd about the retelling of the material from the book of Tobit, too. The narrative argues that it is an oddity in scriptural terms, that it feels like a folk tale, and I have no reason to dispute this. It may or may not be rooted in something which is not Jewish in origin, I wouldn't know. But it is Jewish in the version we have, and the characters are Jewish: yet repeatedly the text of the retelling is not Jewish. Can this be inadvertent? What is in the author's mind when she has Tobit speak of the feast of Pentecost? when Tobias's mother prepares ox-blood sausage for him to take on his travels (alongside sheep's milk cheese, for that matter)? When Tobias finally declares that he no longer worships the God of the Jews, I was oddly less bothered by this than that he writes in full the name of the God in whom he no longer believes. Why do I feel got at by this?
One way and another, I struggled with various aspects of Miss Garnet's Angel. It's only fair to record, though, that once I was through the first few chapters, I found it very readable, and tore through it at quite a speed. I didn't love it, but I admit to being curious about The Librarian!
I can see how it would have been a delightful book to be reading in Venice; it is pretty much a love letter to the city and the art thereof, and Vickers writes very well about both. Unsettled by the death of her friend Harriet, Miss Garnet arrives in Venice and is smitten, specifically by recurring images of the angel Raphael, and the story of Tobias. These were the parts of the book I enjoyed, to the extent that I made the mistake of looking up the church of the Angelo Raffaele, and its Guardis, and I liked the picture of the real thing very much less than the picture in my mind. My mental 'Tobias and the Angel' will aways be the Verrochio in the National Gallery and my default 'beautiful old church' is probably romanesque or gothic. So the Venice I was enjoying was a purely imaginary one: well, this is fiction, so why not?
More of a problem was the complete dismissal of Julia Garnet's life pre-Venice. I appreciate that the author wants to show what a wonderful change the city brings about for her, and as she explains on her website, that Miss Garnet's first experience of Venice reflects her own, when she first visited the city as a young woman. It also reminded me strongly of A Room with a View, and some of Forster's short stories, to the extent that I wondered when it was set: was Miss Garnet an Edwardian spinster of the same type as Lucy Honeychurch's cousin Charlotte? The book is copyright 2000, and there is no indication that is set at any time other than the present day (that long ago pre-internet present day, but even so). If Miss Garnet retired at 65, she must have been a reasonably enterprising young woman to make her escape from home by going to university - and to Cambridge at that. Her conversion to communism and her holidays in Eastern Europe seem to be signs of narrow-mindedness, rather than a curiosity about a wider world (I don't know why, given that Vickers's parents were, like mine, active and committed members of the Party) but even setting that aside, I couldn't believe in the cold, limited, uninterested person she had been before. Justifications are offered for this, mostly to do with acute shyness and fear of rejection, but I still felt she was a bit of a caricature of a repressed spinster, magically transformed by angelic intervention. Harriet, too, puzzled me throughout the narrative, but I think I now know why she was as she was (for reasons which it would be a spoiler to explain).
The book contains two stories, told in parallel. Alongside the story of Julia Garnet and her new life in Venice runs the story of Tobias and the angel, from the Apocrypha. There is a rational reason for its presence, given the popularity of the story of Tobias in Venetian art, and the probability that the reader won't be familiar with it and will benefit from having it explained. Names and themes echo and reflect between the two stories, but I'm not sure this adds anything more than a decorative richness. What does go deeper, though, is the understanding of the angel Raphael, as revealed by Miss Garnet's researches and reflections. Are these the views of the author? Whether this reflects a lifelong belief in angelic intervention, I don't know, but within the confines of the book, yes, I think they are, and I am not the right audience for this. I'm fine with Miss Garnet reading the book of Tobit, and seeing parallels with her own life (or indeed, failing to see the parallels which have been placed there for the benefit of the reader). But I resisted being presented with a theology of angels cooked up by Miss Garnet, as if it were something real.
There's something odd about the retelling of the material from the book of Tobit, too. The narrative argues that it is an oddity in scriptural terms, that it feels like a folk tale, and I have no reason to dispute this. It may or may not be rooted in something which is not Jewish in origin, I wouldn't know. But it is Jewish in the version we have, and the characters are Jewish: yet repeatedly the text of the retelling is not Jewish. Can this be inadvertent? What is in the author's mind when she has Tobit speak of the feast of Pentecost? when Tobias's mother prepares ox-blood sausage for him to take on his travels (alongside sheep's milk cheese, for that matter)? When Tobias finally declares that he no longer worships the God of the Jews, I was oddly less bothered by this than that he writes in full the name of the God in whom he no longer believes. Why do I feel got at by this?
One way and another, I struggled with various aspects of Miss Garnet's Angel. It's only fair to record, though, that once I was through the first few chapters, I found it very readable, and tore through it at quite a speed. I didn't love it, but I admit to being curious about The Librarian!
no subject
Date: 2018-11-17 03:24 am (UTC)I don't care about spoilers and I'm curious?
But it is Jewish in the version we have, and the characters are Jewish: yet repeatedly the text of the retelling is not Jewish.
That would make me feel weird. It does, when I run into it.
Spoiler alert!
Date: 2018-11-17 11:54 am (UTC)OK, the clue is in the title: you could take Miss Garnet's angel as being Raphael, who presides over her discovery of Venice, and therefore of life.
But the book ends with a vision of Harriet crossing the bridge into brightness: and I began to think about the way Harriet appeared in Julia's life (the only response to her ad for a flat-share), her tenacity in what Julia, with the remorse of hindsight, sees as lack of appreciation, ingratitude. It is her death which finally jolts Julia into moving to Venice (and her hat which helps transform the dowdy ex-teacher into someone wealthy Americans might take for a duchess). And finally, the bequest to Julia in her will is treated as a massive and life-changing sum (and I'm not saying it isn't, especially in 2000, just that it is not that much more than the sum for which Julia sells her London flat). So perhaps Harriet is also Miss Garnet's angel, and her function in the book is more about the way she intervenes in Miss Garnet's life than as an actual person.
Re: Spoiler alert!
Date: 2018-11-17 06:41 pm (UTC)That makes sense! Thank you.