Recommended Reading: Falling Angels by Tracy Chevalier

Highgate Cemetery

Author of Girl with a Pearl Earring—the novel which served re-popularize Dutch artist, Vermeer, Tracy Chevalier often employs the use of multiple voices (narrators) in her work. Each character picks up the narration of the story, chapter-by-chapter. I’ve always enjoyed this style. In fact, my The Garnet Red is written in this style. So, I very much enjoy Miss Chevalier’s writing. Aside from her literary style, I also appreciate her subject matter. She chooses historical subjects: Vermeer in The Girl with a Pearl Earring, William Blake in Burning Bright, Medieval France in The Lady and the Unicorn and The Virgin Blue, and my favorite, Edwardian England in Falling Angels.


Falling Angels tells the story of two families beginning with the death of Queen Victoria and through the Women’s Suffrage Movement. The central characters are Maude Coleman and Lavinia Waterhouse—two young girls who meet at a cemetery (modeled on London’s Highgate Cemetery) on the National Day of Mourning for Queen Victoria. Maude’s mother, the petulant Kitty Coleman is, however, the real centerpiece of the novel. Her actions—sometimes impetuous, sometimes just—are the catalyst for most of the action.

Miss Chevalier presents a detailed and intriguing look into the lives of these Edwardian families. We are treated to a look at the lifestyles of the upper class, the middle class and the working class. She serves up richly crafted characters—none more so than the grave-digger and his good-natured son who figure prominently in the story.

If you’re looking for a historical novel with excellent storytelling, this is the book for you. And, truly, I would not be recommending another author’s historical fiction if I didn’t really like it.