Angels in the Morning

By Sasha Troyan

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1579620833
• ISBN13: 9781579620837
• Release Date: January 2003
• Publisher: Permanent Pr Pub Co
• Length: 176 Pages
• Weight: 1.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.5" x 0.8" x 5.5"

Customer Reviews

This is real literature

Wow! I loved this book! What a story. What a writer! I wish I couldstill be floating down that river at night with Gabriel and Alex.I definitely disagree with the guy who took it apart because it "isn't aMonet". What is he, crazy? No, it's not Jerry Maguire, thank God.It's classy, it's crafted, it's not slick, it's not mindless, it's notmade for a tone-deaf TV-deadened American pop movie audience. It's*literature*.First of all, I love the narrator, the child Gabriel. She's so realit's almost eery. She makes you remember what it was really like to beten years old. I don't know a single bestselling author of today whowouldn't have tried to make her into a nostalgia piece, a smarmy, gooey,sentimental, imitation-kid, all pathos and self-absorption and fakesympathy for her disabled little sister. Instead, she'sstraight-forward and perfectly ordinary. She simply tell you what shesees--and sometimes what she sees isn't what you or I would see, becauseshe's only ten and doesn't yet know what to look for to tell her what's"important" and what's not; so when she and Alex ransack theirgoverness' room, they find bottles with pictures of beefeaters on thembut don't know what that means; and when she sees her father on hishands over her mother in bed, she doesn't know what he's doing or eventhat she shouldn't see it; and when her Granny dies, she has thefantastic presence of mind to put her stockings back on her before shecalls the adults.And on the subject of the deaf sister, I have to say this is one aspectof the book that I admire the most. Again, it would be so easy to getsloppy sentimental about it. This is one of those issues that's almostimpossible to handle without getting gooey. But Troyan doesn't--shesticks to her narrator's point of view, and you realize that forchildren growing up with something like this, it just doesn't run theirlives. They've got more important things to think about, like what touse for blood when you play soldiers (blackberry juice), how to annoygrown-ups at the dinner table (talk about farting), and how to swim withyour leg tied to someone else (it's not easy). I mean, these kids'lives are so real. They're not the "abled" one and the "disabled" one,they're just a pair of sisters with the same love-hate,manipulation-cooperation, trust-distrust relationship that all closesisters have. Where would Troyan get an idea like making the childrenshare the hearing aids? That's brilliant!And I love Troyan's sense of humor. The things she picks out forGabriel to notice are always worth it and very often funny. One of myfavorite moments is when Gabriel is riding to the funeral and discoversthat she has unthinkingly picked all the petals off of the flowers she'sholding and now has a bunch of stems.Of course, the biggest point (and I think the Jerry Maguire fan missedthis completely) is that while Daddy is running after his newgirlfriend, and the neighbor is running after Mummy, and old Aunt Ethelis running around after

This is real literature

Wow! I loved this book! What a story. What a writer! I wish I couldstill be floating down that river at night with Gabriel and Alex....It's classy, it's crafted, it's not slick, it's not mindless, it's notmade for a tone-deaf TV-deadened American pop movie audience. It's*literature*.First of all, I love the narrator, the child Gabriel. She's so realit's almost eery. She makes you remember what it was really like to beten years old. I don't know a single bestselling author of today whowouldn't have tried to make her into a nostalgia piece, a smarmy, gooey,sentimental, imitation-kid, all pathos and self-absorption and fakesympathy for her disabled little sister. Instead, she'sstraight-forward and perfectly ordinary. She simply tell you what shesees--and sometimes what she sees isn't what you or I would see, becauseshe's only ten and doesn't yet know what to look for to tell her what's"important" and what's not; so when she and Alex ransack theirgoverness' room, they find bottles with pictures of beefeaters on thembut don't know what that means; and when she sees her father on hishands over her mother in bed, she doesn't know what he's doing or eventhat she shouldn't see it; and when her Granny dies, she has thefantastic presence of mind to put her stockings back on her before she calls the adults.And on the subject of the deaf sister, I have to say this is one aspectof the book that I admire the most. Again, it would be so easy to getsloppy sentimental about it. This is one of those issues that's almostimpossible to handle without getting gooey. But Troyan doesn't--shesticks to her narrator's point of view, and you realize that forchildren growing up with something like this, it just doesn't run theirlives. They've got more important things to think about, like what touse for blood when you play soldiers (blackberry juice), how to annoygrown-ups at the dinner table (talk about farting), and how to swim withyour leg tied to someone else (it's not easy). I mean, these kids'lives are so real. They're not the "abled" one and the "disabled" one,they're just a pair of sisters with the same love-hate,manipulation-cooperation, trust-distrust relationship that all closesisters have. Where would Troyan get an idea like making the childrenshare the hearing aids? That's brilliant!And I love Troyan's sense of humor. The things she picks out forGabriel to notice are always worth it and very often funny. One of myfavorite moments is when Gabriel is riding to the funeral and discoversthat she has unthinkingly picked all the petals off of the flowers she'sholding and now has a bunch of stems.Of course, the biggest point (and I think the Jerry Maguire fan missedthis completely) is that while Daddy is running after his newgirlfriend, and the neighbor is running after Mummy, and old Aunt Ethelis running around after Granny nagging her, the children are left in thecare of an abusive alcoholic. I mean, that's the point of the wholebook. Here are th

Breathtakingly beautiful

This is a book to take your breath away. The prose is beautiful, exact, and subtle. The story is layered so skillfully that multiple readings reveal the profundity hidden inside a deceptively simple narrative. Each character is unique, complex, flawed, and heartbreakingly human. What seems on the surface to be the tale of an ordinary child--suffering an ordinary, if painful, loss of innocence--turns out to be a delicate and enigmatic tale of life from the very heart of experience. . .this is a novel to teach us what it means to be alive.Troyan is an extraordinary writer. She evokes the believable nostalgia of Willa Cather and the perfect detail of Virginia Woolf along with the purity of eye of the best of Jean Rhys. With this amazing first novel, Troyan takes her place among their ranks.

RICH IN DESCRIPTIVE PROSE

Quietly unassuming yet rich in descriptive prose "Angels In The Morning" is the story of one summer in the life of 10-year-old Gabriel. Anticipated as a happy, carefree time, Gabriel arrives with her family to spend the warmer months in the Loiret region of France, at a charming stone house they have occupied during summers past. In addition to Gabriel those eager for the countryside include her beautiful mother, not yet 30 years of age; her beloved Granny and great-aunt Ethel from South Africa; nanny Juliet, an Agatha Christie reading, moody, tippler; chauffeur Luis; and younger sister, Alex, who is almost deaf but quick at reading lips. They experience a less than auspicious arrival (the discovery that the housekeeper has died over the winter). Father, the children are told, has been detained but will join them shortly. His stay with them is brief - barely long enough to announce that he has fallen in love with another woman. This news perplexes the girls, and serves to make an already somewhat distant mother even further removed. For Gabriel's edification her father likens his predicament to the difficulty in choosing between chocolate and vanilla ice cream, assuming that one likes both the same. "Perhaps my father's teasing," Gabriel thinks. "He loves to tease us." As the doctor next door takes a romantic interest in Gabriel's mother, Granny steps in to lavish time and love on the young girl. They take long barefoot walks together and listen for the sound of larks as the older woman enjoys one of her forbidden cigarettes. Regrettably their days together come to an end when Granny suddenly dies. Upon being told her grandmother is now in heaven, the precocious young girl harbors thoughts of her own: "I think she's sitting in another vegetable garden eating tomatoes and smoking cigarettes." As the summer draws to a close so do the days of Gabriel's and Alex's tranquil innocence as they are left to face their tomorrows virtually alone. - Gail Cooke