Miss Garnet's Angel Reviews

"Rich, complex and hauntin"
Sunday Times

"Beautifully and brilliantly controlled. A triumph"
John Julius Norwich

"Reveals itself as a surprising exploration of the mysteries of imagination and faith"
Joanna Trollope, Book of the Year, Daily Telegraph

"Subtle, unexpected and haunting"
Penelope Fitzgerald

"Easily the best novel that I readin 2000"
MARTYN GOFF, Administrator Booker Prize

"This enjoyable, multilayered novel contemplates existential themes – religion, life, death and love and the ways in which these themes are juxtaposed insists on the harmonious closure which is achieved in both narratives."
Times Literary Supplement

"Written with subtlety and charm"
JESSICA MANN, Sunday Telegraph

"Miss Garnet’s Angel is a remarkable novel, whose genuine originality is the result not of flashiness but something far more substantial: imaginative intensity. This is not revealed in weighty digressions but distilled into suggestive images and precise relations. It is a vivid and fresh novel, deliciously entertaining and – which is rare for good novels – a happy book."
London Magazine

"Cleverly weaving her graceful rendition of The Book of Tobit, from the Apocrypha, through the main narrative, Vickers gives Miss Garnet’s revelations a weighty universality and timelessness. Although she is as clear-eyed and unsparing as Pym and Brookner when assessing her characters’ limitations, Vicker’s vision of human possibility is coloured by hope."
Atlantic Monthly

"Beautifully wrought and impressively wise"
Kirkus Review

"A cracking new novel"
Mail on Sunday

"Miss Garnet’s Angel is one of those books you want to re-read the minute you finish it ... beguiling and immensely satisfying."
Publishing News Books of the Year

"What begins as a beautifully-written, gentle tale of a woman coming to life, slowly deepens into something more intriguing as Vickers takes up issues of good and evil, sexuality, religion and belief. Just as one can happily wander the streets of Venice until one finds oneself lost and fear sets in, the reader is lulled by her artful prose – until ensnared."
Oxford Times

"Salley Vickers’ subject is one that few contemporary writers dare to – or are able to – tackle, namely the growth of consciousness of the human spirit. The novel has vision."
The Tablet

"As administrator of the Booker Prize for the past 30 years I am often asked whether I agreed with the judges of the year, or what I would have chosen ... Salley Vickers’ Miss Garnet’s Angel ... is easily the best novel that I have read in 2000 ... you watch Miss Garnet utterly changed in character and personality, and you marvel at how all this has been achieved, together with a depth of knowledge and projection of the story from the Apocrypha. It is also one of the best pictures of Venice I have come across."
MARTYN GOFF, New Statesman