Miss Garnet's Angel - Salley Vickers

I am supposed to love this book. It is recommended to me (according to the cover) by John Bayley, John Julius Norwich, Joanna Trollope, Phillip Pullman, and countless literary reviewers and publications. So, as I opened the book at the first page, I had a sense of a treat in store and settled down to have my mind fed with a really worthwhile read. Miss Garnett’s Angel is set in Venice. And in one sense Venice is the subject of the story. Its waterways, churches, bridge and great squares form the backdrop to the book, but more than a back-drop, they influence the characters and bring changes into their lives. Salley Vickers captures the mystery of ...

Julia Garnet ('Miss, not Mrs') is a retired history teacher. She has never fallen in love, she is a communist, and her only real friend has just died. As a result she rents out her apartment in London and travels to Venice to stay there for six months in an aprtment near the Campo Angelo Raffaele. The sculpture outside featuring the Angel Raphael, a boy holding a large fish, and a dog, sparks her interest and sets her on a quest to discover what it means. On the way she discovers for the first time how alone she has been, love, and the bitterness of betrayel. Miss Garent's story is onterwoven with a re-telling of the Book of Tobit, a lost tale from ...