Book review - Falling Angels by Tracy ChevalierThis wasn’t a bad book but it’s a bit

Book review - Falling Angels by Tracy Chevalier

This wasn’t a bad book but it’s a bit of an odd one. Told primarily from the perspectives of two neighboring couples, their daughters, their household staff members, and Simon the gravedigger’s boy in many short alternating chapters, the book focuses mainly on the girls Maude and Lavinia who meet at 5 years old at the graveyard and grow up to be friends. It takes place at the beginning of the 19th century in London as the families who have neighboring plots at the graveyard meet there for the funeral of the queen. The couples don’t really like each other, but the girls become best friends so their lives get entwined. Although nothing too morbid happens for the first two thirds of the book, the primary setting is still the graveyard because the girls like to play there with Simon and look at the stone angels.

Maude is pensive and mature, while Lavinia in contrast is silly and has a flair for dramatic. Maude’s mother is not a particularly likeable character - she is discontent in her marriage and her family suffers for it. While she becomes a suffragette and much of the focus of the book is on that movement, she is not an extremely admirable character because while she fights for other women’s rights, she neglects her daughter emotionally to the point of cruelty, knows it, and doesn’t care. She is also concerned with only educated women’s right to vote, but has the audacity to ask her underpaid staff members for donations to the cause, and is condescending towards Lavinia and her mother.

Eventually, the actions of Maude’s mother lead to death and heartbreak in her own family, Lavinia’s, and Simon’s. The book, which had previously been rather light in tone despite all the foreshadowing with the graveyard theme, becomes very dark very fast towards the end. Nonetheless, it is a rich story that keeps the reader engaged because it flows so fast and the full context is revealed with each character’s point of view. I really liked the character of Simon and his friendship with the girls.