US REVIEWS

"It's refreshing to read Vickers ... whose subtle depiction of a life touched by a heavenly spirit carries not a hint of clich. Her debut novel is an unpretentious gem of a book. Forecast: This touching novel, a sleeper hit in Britain, should win American fans eager for a treatment of religious themes without the gooey sentiment that often accompanies the topic of angels"
Publisher's Weekly                                                

"An incandescent debut, and bestseller in Britain, luminously details transforming changes in a lonely spinster's life. .. 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"
Kirkus Review

"At its heart this superbly crafted novel is an anti-romance. Miss Julia Garnet, a retired school teacher, "confounds intimacy" like the reticent, astringent and wry women who people Barbara Pym's or Anita Brookner's novels ... As Salley Vickers finely observes the subtle and often painful dawning of Miss Garnet's self-awareness, she uses [such] conventions, including even an angel, not to delineate the course of a traditional love-affair (the object of Miss Garnet's affections turns out to be unsuitable in the Austen tradition with a very modern twist) but as a backdrop to Miss Garnet's yet more profound awakening ... She wins not a man but herself. 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, Vickers' vision of human possibility is coloured by hope"
Atlantic Monthly       

"Miss Garnet's Angel" is novel-writing at its finest and most eloquent, that is a splendid composite of style, wit and wisdom that encompasses so much truth that it continues to speak long after the covers have been closed"
The Christian Science Monitor

"Her juxtaposition of ancient and modern well serves her larger purpose, summoning up a palimpsest of cultures, faiths and civilisations that have infused and enriched one another. Artfully wrought, yet told with a bracing directness the story of Miss Garnet is indeed a gem"
The Wall Street Journal                             

"This beguiling, redemptive novel has a touch of the miraculous"
Orlando Sentnel         

"Miss Garnet's Angel is a little jewel of a novel: brilliant and beautiful and multifaceted, perfect in its way. Clear-eyed and unsentimental it is none the less filled with genuine feeling, crammed with wit and wisdom, aesthetic visions and ethical judgments....Perhaps the most impressive feature of this novel is its portrayal of character. Miss Garnet is superbly drawn, and there is a host of other memorable characters... those readers who delight in Pym and appreciate Brookner are likely to enjoy this new addition to England's literary firmament. miss garnet's angel is a most impressive debut, and one eagerly looks forward to Vickers' next book"
San Francisco Chronicle

"Vickers pulls together and justifies all the strands of her very ambitious novel... What gives the novel its lightness and wit is Vickers' emphasis on friendship"
Newsday

UK reviews | US reviews | Books of the Year 2000