Gotta Find Me An Angel

By Brenda Brooks and Alex Brown

The narrator, a film projectionist at a second-run cinema, finds herself at an existential crossroads. Driving the drama are her poet roommate Billie, her unconventional editor Claudia, and the unattainable object of everyone s affection, artist Julia Riding. Enter the ghost of 15-year-old Madeline, a spirit which knows an unbearable secret and has an icy grip on our heroine's heart. One dark night, the narrator recounts Madeline's failed attempts at finding true love in a passionate, wickedly funny lament. On that night, in vibrant prose, Brenda Brooks reveals the secrets behind this unusual love story."

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1551927179
• ISBN13: 9781551927176
• Release Date: February 2006
• Publisher: Raincoast Book Dist Ltd
• Length: 219 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.0" x 0.8" x 5.8"

Customer Reviews

Not so hot

I baught this book because I was doing a project on Brenda Brooks for my poetry class. She is a very good poet, but I didn't enjoy her novel as much.

A nice surprise

"Gotta Find me an Angel" is a story about love lost and possible healing. The narrator of the book, is a film projectionist in her thirties, whose childhood best friend and also first and only love, Madeline, has drowned at fourteen. The unnamed narrator lives with Billie, a wannabe poet, who introduces her to a painter, Julia, with whom they both fall in love. The narrator has lived most her life detached from other people and unable to love again. It is her relationship with Billie, and mostly her attraction to Julia, that are the catalysts for her finally having to deal with "twenty years' worth of pent-up grief and tears". Julia, by being able to make her feel things that she has been able to bury, unravels emotionally the narrator, who starts having panic attacks and to withdraw within herself again. One night she starts addressing Madeline inside her head, telling her what has happened in her life since she drowned, especially in the last year, when she met Billie and Julia, in order to try to finally get closure. The narration also allows us to understand what led to Madeline's drowning. Although the book's main theme is quite heavy, one of the great things about this book, besides the quality of the prose, is the self-deprecating and cynical humour of the narrator that permeates the whole story. I found myself laughing out loud at the description of Billie's attempts at learning to play the guitar and sing Aretha Franklin's "Gotta Find me an Angel", or at her cynical look at intellectual lesbian writers such as Billie's rival, ffiona perks. There are some minor inconsistencies in the plot and I would probably have liked to know more about both Madeline and Julia, but overall this is a very good book.

Unique, intelligent, colorful, complex, memorable, and altogether enjoyable

The debut novel of Brenda Brooks, Gotta Find Me An Angel is the imaginatively engaging story of a 30-something female film-projectionist whose haunting dreams of an old friend, having been dead for about twenty years, becomes reality as the young girl's ghost makes regular visits to her. With its distinctively vivid style of authorship, Gotta Find Me An Angel is also the compelling tale of an aspiring writer addicted to late night re-runs of "I, Claudius", his unconventional editor, as well as the intimate (albeit despondent) relationship of a young ghost and the story's narrator and heroine. Unique, intelligent, colorful, complex, memorable, and altogether enjoyable, Gotta Find Me An Angel is very strongly recommended reading that establishes Brenda Brooks (who has previously published two books of poetry, "Somebody Should Kiss You" and "Blue Light in the Dash") as a writer to take note of.