Miss Garnet's Angel

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How do you feel about the popular critical and commercial practice today of sorting contemporary novels into tidy categories: women’s fiction, men’s fiction, gay fiction, romantic comedy, literary fiction, etc.? To what categories have you most often found Miss Garnet’s Angel assigned? A projected non-fiction book about The Book of Common Prayer and entitled Sweet and Comfortable Words was never published.

This is a book of stories —stories within stories, stories complementing stories, stories refracting and reshaping the elements of older stories. The strange beauty of Venice, with its spectacular architecture and abundance of art pregnant with history and ancient mysticism, storms Miss Garnet’s staunch English reserve and challenges her socialist ideology. For the first time in her life she falls in love —with Carlo, a charming art dealer with twinkling eyes and a white moustache —and her spirit, once awakened, is liberated further by her friendships with a beautiful Italian boy called Nicco and an enigmatic pair of twins engaged in restoring the fourteenth-century Chapel-of-the-Plague. It is her discovery of a series of paintings in the nearby Church of the Angel Raphael, however, that leads finally to Julia’s transformation and reassessment of her past. Intrigued by the paintings, Julia begins unraveling the story they tell of Tobias and the Archangel Raphael, an ancient tale depicting a quest of faith and redemption. At the same time, she embarks on a quest of her own to recover losses —not only personal losses but also a priceless angel panel that goes missing from the Chapel, along with one of the twins restoring it. I’ve honestly lost count of how many times I’ve read this book..four times, maybe five.....there is something about it that appeals to me, and I list it among my all time favourites.

The Coptic Orthodox church names the archangels as Gabriel, Michael, Raphael, Suriel, Zadakiel, Raguel and Aniel. A rich, moving, and satisfying tale of a woman engaged at last with the great mysteries of love and life. Beautifully wrought and impressively wise. Her retirement, the loss of a friend, and an unexpected legacy have a polarising effect on her, and quite out of character, she decides to spend six months in Venice, renting a small apartment in this beautiful city. Synth Single Review: "Nightride" by Arcade Ocean Miss Garnet's Venice Where fiction and reality meet

The novel came out of me almost uninterrupted. But once I had written it I became fascinated with the origins of the story of Tobit and did much research on it —of which a fraction appears in the ‘Authors Note’. I discovered the story has strong Zoroastrian antecedents —and I became very enamoured of the Zoroastrians. It is a religion which, the more I learned of it the deeper its appeals to me. It still exists —and the Parsees are its main inheritors —but what attracts me to it most is its great stress on tolerance —especially religious tolerance, which all of us who have lived through recent troubles must agree has become an urgent necessity in our time. Something which occurred in many small ways throughout the writing of the book: I had written the Epiphany scene before I had realised that the Magi, who visit the Christ child at Epiphany, are for the tribe of the Medians who are Zoroastrian priests; then I had written the important scenes which occur on the bridge by the church of the Angel Raphael, before I had learned that the bridge is a key Zoroastrian image for the threshold of worlds. Perhaps most of all I loved uncovering the role of the dog i the Tobit story —dog’s were not at all popular with the Jews and Tobias’s dog is the only one who gets a good press in the Hebrew scriptures. This is almost certainly because the dog is part of the Zoroastrian element in the story, and for the Zoroastrians the dog was sacred —a psychopomp, one who leads the soul across the threshold of life and death. As the story of Miss Garnets sojourn in Venice unfolds, the story of Tobias and his Angel unfolds alongside, adding a wonderful extra dimension to this book. You wouldn't think that Miss Garnet's Angel would be the book to get me out of my slump. It was definitely not SO GOOD or SO WONDERFUL, but it did keep me engaged (ish. More on this later). Describe the change Julia Garnet undergoes over the course of her stay in Venice. What effects do the events and discoveries of her visit have on her sense of self, as a communist grounded in atheism and as a woman generally wary of life’s “irrational” realms, whether romantic, mystical, or spiritual? What —and who —are the catalysts for this change? This charming book weaves together the apocryphal tale of Tobias with his guardian angel, Raphael, and the story of Miss Garnet's adventures in the magical setting of the city of Venice.We cannot commission desire,” Julia reflects at one point, referring not only to herself but also to Carlo. To what degree, and on what grounds, does Julia come to feel a sense of solidarity with Carlo, of all people? Explain.

This is probably a book that will delight anyone who has been (or is about to visit) Venice. Sadly I can't claim either of those but I enjoyed it very much. The themes of religion and art, historical restoration and philosophy were excellent and all things I enjoy ready about but the real focus of the book are the reflections of Julia Garnet and the best thing about the book is the writing. Her father was a committed supporter of Irish republicanism, and her first name 'Salley' is spelled with an 'e' because it is the Irish for ' willow' (cognate with Latin: salix, salicis), as in the W B Yeats poem, " Down by the Salley Gardens", a favourite of her parents. [ citation needed]Miss Garnet will take you on the most wonderful tour of Venice and the places she visits are wound around and into the story of Miss Garnet's Angel. I read this novel when it was first published. That was in the year 2000! This is a novel that has really withstood the test of time and it is a book I often suggest to people who are off to Venice. Reading it offers an even greater cinematic experience of the city (is that even possible?). It is a gentle story, told with charm and detail, that carries the reader along at a thoughtful pace. This is the story of Julia, now in retirement, in many ways an unremarkable woman – and yet. She chooses to spend 6 months in Venice, exploring the city and its treasures, gaining a variety of friendships and experiences. As the time passes, she learns to re-evaluate some of her core beliefs and to trawl her deeper soul in quiet contemplation. Miss Garnet's Angel is a clever and beautiful tale infused with a touch of mysticism and wonder. Miss Garnet is a very rational retired teacher with communist sympathies who late in life discovers that there is far more to life than her narrow outlook. As Miss Garnet's prejudices are gradually swept away she discovers friends in unexpected places and becomes increasingly caught up in the story behind a old painting of Tobias and the Angel. Image courtesy of Creative commons. Venice by Oliver-Bonjoch This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. The Story of Tobias and the Angel A tale within a tale Tell us about your research into the Apocrypha, the Middle East of ancient times, and Venice. Can we look forward to reading more about these topics in upcoming books?

Julia Garnet, a retired teacher who has never been in love, seems to belong to that group of disappointed women trapped in the bleak lives that Anita Brookner's readers know so well. But Miss Garnet, soon Julia to everyone she meets, is more robust and adventurous. And she's not exactly conventionally middle-class either: she's a communist and an atheist who disapproves of wealth, religion, and sensual beauty. But much changes when Harriet, the teacher she's lived with in London, dies and Julia decides to go to Venice for six months. There, as she steps off her water taxi at the Campo Angelo Raffael to move into the apartment she's rented, she notices, high up on the Campo's church, statues of an angel, a boy, and a dog. She soon learns that they represent the story from the Apocrypha of Tobias and the Angel Raphael, who exorcised the demons from Tobias's wife Sara (the ancient story is told in sections paralleling the changes in Julia's life). Formerly shy and reserved, Julia now makes friends with her landlady and her son Nicco; an American couple; a charismatic monsignor; and the handsome Carlo, an art historian with whom she falls in love. As she explores Venice, she meets the mysterious twins Toby and Sara, who are restoring a 14th-century chapel where they've found a painting of the Angel Raphael. When both it and Toby disappear, Julia, though by now disappointed in love, rallies to find the painting, help Sara, and live to the full in the city that has taught her how "to learn and enjoy." Give us the inside scoop on your writing regimen: How many hours a day do you devote to writing? Do you outline the complete arc of your narrative early on? Do you draft on paper or at a keyboard? Do you have a favourite location or time of day (or night) for writing? What do you do to avoid distractions? She went on to teach English at the Open University, Oxford and Stanford, specialising in Shakespeare, the 19th-century novel and 20th-century poetry. Her first major career move came when she left academia to become an analytical psychologist. "I eventually thought that literature is not a very good academic subject," she explains. "The great writers didn't write to be analysed, they wrote to entertain and to share a vision of human life. It's lovely to sit around drinking coffee and talking about books at Cambridge, but I sort of felt that English is a cheat subject." Consider the way the author’s narrative establishes dual meanings for “blindness”: as a physical, unalterable condition on one hand, and as a more abstract reference to one’s capacity for empathy, love, or self-awareness on the other.Oh dear —should a writer, I wonder, be allowed the luxury of an ideal reader? Since you’ve tempted me I suppose I might hope to have deepened the reader’s sense of life’s rich possibility, and sense of the value inherent in apparently unimportant people and things. I have an acute sense of life’s prodigality —its hidden resources and splendour if we only care to look. And I have a special dislike of the conviction of being ‘right’ —I hope the book might dislodge some certainties and liberate a kind of creative subversiveness. I adore Venice, it's quite unique, and somewhat bewitching, so it's not difficult to imagine how strait laced retired British history teacher and virgin, Julia Garnet, succumbs to its magic, and falls head over heels in love for the first time in her life.