Book cover of Falling Angels

Book description

'Vividly imagined' Sunday Telegraph

'Sex and death meet again in [a] marvellous evocation of Edwardian England' Daily Mail

The girl reminded me of my favourite chocolates, whipped hazelnut creams, and I knew just from looking at her that I wanted her for my best friend.

Queen Victoria is dead. In…

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Why read it?

2 authors picked Falling Angels as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

January 1901: Queen Victoria is dead and her subjects nervously await a new king and a new century. Two families—the aristocratic Colemans and middle-class Waterhouses—meet at their adjoining plots in London’s elegant Highgate Cemetery. Their five-year-old daughters form an immediate bond. The lives of the two families entwine over the next decade as they struggle with social change, betrayal, and grief. Surprisingly, Highgate offers a release from the confining decorum of their everyday lives. The two girls play among the graves with a gravedigger’s son, while adult members of their households indulge in forbidden liaisons there. Chevalier’s crisp prose creates…

For modern fiction dealing with Edwardian women's suffrage, I recommend Chevalier's moving account of two girls growing up as the new century begins. It's a beautiful, atmospheric handling of the turbulent period of social change. The Victorian idealisation of the 'Angel of the House' falls from grace and the outcome is heartbreaking.

From Mary's list on the lives of suffragettes.

If you love Falling Angels...

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Bessie by Linda Kass,

Drawing on biographical and historical sources, Bessie reimagines the early life of Bess Myerson, a Jewish woman and piano prodigy, who, in 1945 at age twenty-one, remarkably rises to become one of the most famous women in America.

This intimate fictional portrait reveals the transformation of the nearly six-foot-tall, self-deprecating…

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