The Third Angel: A Novel - Dark Publications

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Product Description
“Alice Hoffman is my favorite writer.”
–Jodi Picoult

Alice Hoffman is one of our most beloved writers. Here on Earth was an Oprah Book Club selection. Practical Magic and Aquamarine were both bestselling books and Hollywood movies. Her novels have received mention as notable books of the year by the New York Times, Entertainment Weekly, the Los Angeles Times, and People magazine, and her short fiction and nonfiction have appeared in the New York Times, The Boston Globe Magazine, Kenyon Review, Redbook, Architectural Digest, Gourmet, and Self.

Now, in The Third Angel, Hoffman weaves a magical and stunningly original story that charts the lives of three women in love with the wrong men: Headstrong Madeleine Heller finds herself hopelessly attracted to her sister’s fiance. Frieda Lewis, a doctor’s daughter and a runaway, becomes the muse of an ill-fated rock star. And beautiful Bryn Evans is set to marry an Englishman while secretly obsessed with her ex-husband. At the heart of the novel is Lucy Green, who blames herself for a tragic accident she witnessed at the age of twelve, and who spends four decades searching for the Third Angel–the angel on earth who will renew her faith.

Brilliantly evoking London’s King’s Road, Knightsbridge, and Kensington while moving effortlessly back in time, The Third Angel is a work of startling beauty about the unique, alchemical nature of love.

From the Hardcover edition.

Customer Reviews: Read 41 more reviews...

5 out of 5 stars

Atonement April 10, 2008
34 out of 34 found this review helpful

This book can break your heart. Alice Hoffman writes with delicacy and compassion about life and death, about loving someone with such desperation that nothing else matters. She writes about how people must forgive themselves.

The three chapters in this book are set in different times, and have different characters. The stories, all centered in London, move back in time from 1999 to 1966 to 1952. All three are interconnected, and it's not until the end that the whole picture becomes clear. All involve hopeless, betrayed love.

In the first, "The Heron's Wife," a young woman has an affair with her sister's fiance. "Lion Park" is about a young woman seduced by a drug-addicted rock musician. "The Rules of Love" involves a precocious 12-year-old girl who innocently causes the violent death to two people in a lover's triangle.

Many themes weave throughout the book -- love, weddings, abandonment, birds, rabbits, the power of the written word... and in the end, atonement.

An extraordinary doctor explains about the Third Angel. There is the Angel of Life and the Angel of Death, neither of which can be controlled. The Third Angel, however, walks among us. He's the angel that makes mistakes. Like all of us, he sometimes needs rescuing.

5 out of 5 stars

"The One Who Walks Among Us." April 19, 2008
34 out of 36 found this review helpful

Alice Hoffman's latest novel THE THIRD ANGEL consists of three stories connected by the same characters and places over different periods of time, beginning with the most recent events and going backward: I, "The Heron's Wife," 1999; II, "Lion Park," 1966 and III, "The Rules of Love," 1952. The stories also hang together because the same themes run through each of them. Who is better to say what Ms. Hoffman writes about than the author, herself? In a recent reading, she told the audience that her books are always about love and loss. In "The Heron's Wife," Maddy falls in love-- she thinks-- with her sister's fiance Paul, when she goes to London for her sister Allie's wedding. In "Lion Park"-- the name of a hotel in London where much of the action takes place over the years-- Frieda, who later becomes the mother of Paul, falls for a rock star addicted to hard drugs although he is in love with someone else. Finally in "The Rules of Love" the twelve-year-old Lucy (later the mother of Maddy and Allie) gets caught up in a tragedy where another character is in love with a women who marries someone else.

Ms. Hoffman's characters in this novel fall in love with the wrong person, or with the right person but too early or too late. Then they may settle-- in the case of Frieda-- for a "nice man." Although love may be simple, it is not rational. The author also writes about the love of parents for children. As one character puts it: "You won't believe how much you'll love your child." Even though Hoffman's complex characters are flawed, seldom turning out the way their parents had hoped they would (sound familiar?), and may do bad acts, betraying those they love, they also often have redeeming qualities as well. They mend their broken lives and sometimes become that third angel, described so beautifully by Frieda's doctor father whom she remembers as a "very serious, lovely, practical man." In addition to the Angel of Life or the Angel of Death, one of whom would ride with him in the back of his car when he made house calls, there was the mysterious Third Angel: "'You can't even tell if he's an angel or not. You think you're doing him a kindness, you think you're the one taking care of him, while all the while, he's the one who's saving your life.'" He walks among us.

Ms. Hoffman is so good at creating events that remind us that, yes, this is just the way it is or the way a similar event in our own lives affected us: for example, the sudden shock and suffocating loneliness of learning that a person-- perhaps an old friend we have lost contact with or someone we once cared about deeply-- whom we thought was alive has been dead for months or even years. She writes as eloquently and movingly about death as anyone I can think of-- passages from Thomas Wolfe's LOOK HOMEWARD ANGEL and Alan Gurganus' PLAYS WELL WITH OTHERS come to mind; and her writing is filled with a magic-- i.e., blue herons and white rabbits-- worthy of the best of Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

Although Ms. Hoffman's prose has not one unnecessary word or phrase, it is beautifully descriptive and often poetic. Consider this: "It was that silver-colored time between night and morning, when the sky is still dark, but lights are flicking on all over the city. It was quiet, the way it is in winter when snow first begins to fall."

If you are not careful, you will be undone by this novel for it gives a poignant picture of what it means to be human.

1 out of 5 stars

Third Angel April 20, 2008
15 out of 24 found this review helpful

Alice Hoffman has been my favorite writer for years. But I was totally disappointed with her new novel. I must be getting old. I didn't like the characters, the language, the story. I read 50 pages and then skimmed through the remainder. I then wanted to look at the reviews on Amazon and was shocked to see all the starred reviews and that I was the lone dissenter. Oh well, I will still look forward to her next book.

1 out of 5 stars

This Angel Misfired May 28, 2008
5 out of 11 found this review helpful

A man who sleeps with his financee's sister on the eve of their wedding. A drunk, drug addicted would be singer who steals the lyrics of his muse's songs and then marries another. These are the sort of men who populate the three loosely connected novellas that make up this novel. The problem is there is nothing interesting about these guys or the women who love them who are moody, self-centered, beautiful and self-destructive. I didn't care one wit for any of them. What saves this novel somewhat is the last story of a young girl who is unwittingly used to further a love affair and is traumatized by the unexpected events that occur.

5 out of 5 stars

The vagries of life... April 18, 2008
4 out of 6 found this review helpful

Having recently read Here on Earth and Seventh Heaven, I was anxious to get my hands on a copy of Alice Hoffman's latest offering. In this impressive heart stirring novel Hoffman delves into the lives of three women with intersecting lives. The time frame is the last half of the 20th century, but the story does not follow in chronological order. It starts in 1999 London where Maddy Heller, big time NYC attorney has just touched down after having an affair with her sister Allie's fiance, Paul. She has a lot to think about, not just the upcoming marriage but the fact that Paul is dying. The story then swings back to 1960s London where we meet Paul's future mother Frieda Lewis. Frieda is in love with a singer song writer on the edge of stardom, but she knows in her heart it won't work and there is a black cloud over her lover. But now Hoffman dig deeper into the past and takes back to meet Maddy and Allie's mother at 12 years old when she inadvertently activates events beyond her imagining. The surprise is how all these events tie together, and how events form people and have effects years into the future. Hoffman's talent for creating complex characters is on display here.

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