Elizabeth Taylor Centenary: Angel

During July we will read and discuss Elizabeth Taylor’s seventh novel, Angel. The description on the back cover reads:

” 'I am writing a novel.' Under the bedclothes her fists were clenched and pressing against her thighs. She felt ferocity towards him, as if he had already laughed at her. 'I am going to be a novelist,' she said"

Angelica Deverell is fifteen years old at the turn of the century. She is the daughter of a widow who keeps a grocery shop in a dreary provincial backstreet, working hard to pay for Angel's education so she can "better herself". But Angel rejects the drabness of her daily life and, retreating into a world of romantic dreams, she begins to write stories remarkable for their extravagance and fantasy. To those around her it is simply folie de grandeur, but Angel knows better. She knows she is different, that she will grow up to be a fêted authoress, owner of great riches and of the mysterious Paradise House. . .

Angel’s character was based on two authors known to Taylor: Marie Corelli, a romantic novelist whose lifestyle was similar to Angel’s, and Amanda Kittrick Ros, for her “prose style, with its romantic flourishes, its almost demented alliteration, its unconscious absurdity” ( from The Other Elizabeth Taylor,, pp. 288-289). But Angel also satirizes the lady novelist leading another life, which in that sense is very much like Taylor herself.

In 1984, Angel was one of thirteen novels chosen as the ‘Best Novels of our Time’ by a Book Marketing Council, to the astonishment of Claire Tomalin, who was then literary editor of The Sunday Times. Among the other novels chosen were classics such as The Sea, the Sea, Lolita, Catcher in the Rye, A Dance to the Music of Time, and The Raj Quartet. Yet Paul Bailey, who wrote several introductions for Taylor’s Virago editions, thought Angel a bold work, and Kingsley Amis, who championed her work for many years, approved of this attempt to extend her range.

Interesting, no? What did you think of Angel?

FleurFisher advised on the Virago Facebook page that she would be reading one of Corelli's books as a companion volume this month which I think is a pretty neat idea. We have four Corellis in our collection (that I know of) so I thought I might read Barabbas for a bit of fun. It certainly has a very purplish prose beginning. The dedication in the front of Boy is also interesting and I quote... "To my dearest friend in the world Bertha Vyver who has known all my life from childhood and has been the witness of all my literary work from its very beginning. This simple story is gratefully and lovingly dedicated." Enjoy the book everyone and let me know if you would like to participate in a Google+ hangout on the 21 July as per my blog post here

Good idea! I have one Corelli that I bought in Stratford at the Chaucer's Head bookstore across the street from her house. It is actually autographed. She rewarded her servants with autographed copies o her novels on celebration days and I'm sure many of them wasted no time in passing them on. The pic of me on my profile is taken in her living room. I'll try to dig up more photos of her house and garden. She had a little tower folly in her garden where she sometimes wrote.

Thanks a lot for this very interesting information. I bought Angel by chance this Spring. In my local 2nd-hand bookstore they have loads of books by Marie Corelli which I always avoid, not really knowing whether to buy.

The connection between Corelli and Angel is fascinating! I will definitely explore that line.

What a great idea! Alas, I had been eyeing up a Corelli in the local charity story but when I went back, it had gone - typical!

I uploaded six photos from Corelli's house and garden onto my profile photo gallery. The street view is from the University of Birmingham website since it is almost impossible to get a decent shot from the street. The others are mine.

Corelli's gardens are huge and completely walled. Today there is a small area of flowers (the pictures with the arches) and the remainder is lawns,trees and bushes. Sometimes there is outdoor entertainment on the lawn...music and plays.

The interior of the house is pretty much given over to offices and since it is a working facility much of the charm is buried behind filing cabinets, utilitarian shelving etc. The exception is the main reception room which retains the paneling and original chandeliers. During the RSC Summer School which I attend, it can easily hold 350 chairs. There is an original raised platform in the left front corner, probably used for recitals in Corelli's day and now used for the lecturers and actors.

The original toilet is still in use. It is located on the staircase landing immediately facing the entry door from the street. It makes a god-awful noise when flushed and announces to any guest that it is in use! I wonder if the delicate sensibilities of Marie were disturbed by this. But the alternative would have been either a chamber pot or the earth closet in the garden (no longer in use!)

Elaine - they are fantastic photos - thank you so much for sharing. I do like a good folly. 350 chairs in the reception room - that's some reception room.

Well I'll be durned, as Hank my favorite cowdog would say..... it seems I own Angel (I only have five Taylors - and me thinking I had six.....) so I will be joining the July read which is a bit awkward as I had chosen another Virago for my July Virago. Oh dear! So far I have only read Palladian. I probably have read Angel but I don't remember anything about it. And I have no Corelli's, but I will get by.

I'm glad you'll be joining us this month, Lucy!

posted food for thought here

I am part way through Angel having had a good go at it on the exercise bike in the gym this morning, and there is horror and A Good Thing to report.

The horror: I wasn't sure if I'd read it, as I didn't have a copy on the shelf already. However, I know I read some of hers early in my Virago experience, borrowed from my friend, Mary. And, as I read it, I realised with mounting horror that, in my mid-teens, I bought those marbled-covered exercise books to "write a novel" in, and, the ultimate horror, purchased a "tortoiseshell" comb to put in my hair. Oh, gosh.

The good thing (apart from the fact that I can count this in my Month of Rereading after all) is that the lady on the bike next to me struck up a conversation about how she'd heard of E. Taylor on the radio the other night and was going to look into reading her. Hooray! She said at least it wasn't Fifty Shades of Grey so I had to explain it WAS actually about someone who writes terrible novels!

It is delicious, like a bag of cherry sours - I have to edit a book on financial literacy for the young, but I'll be back into it this evening!

I'm glad I'm not the only one who had a passion for marble-covered notebooks with dreadful scribblings in as a teenager....

I still love that kind of notebook but I hope I don't still pour out the same sentiments!

Enjoying Angel very, very much even if it isn't regarded as typical ET.

Alex, I'm intrigued by your approach to read and discuss one part at a time. Part I is 70 pages in my edition, I'll see if I can get there by Saturday. But I want to finish my current book first because I'm well and truly hooked on it.

I have my copy of Angel at my elbow. I think I committed the tortoiseshell sin as well. I never liked notebooks, only legal pads, so I'm clean in that regard. I have USED notebooks, of course, mainly for journals, but not for 'creative' writing.... OK TMI.

#11 oh yes...I was most put out when no-one seemed interested in reading my novel when I was 10...oh and I just remembered that I also "published" the Ginger Nut News at an earlier age...I combined publication with two other mates...we all supplied poetry, crosswords etc...good fun...

#13 Laura is that Gillespie and I? I started to read that then had to return it...one of my many unfinished novels....

I started Angel on the train today, and was very reluctant to put it away when I reached my stop.

I am almost through it, but I've got really harsh deadlines today and had to get back to the transcription - argh! Still, I should be finished with my work at a decent time this evening, so can then finish it!

>15 alexdaw:: yes Alex, that's the one ... approaching the finish line now!

I was intrigued by Alex's post about Angel and Purveyors of Twaddle so I've written a little something about it here:

http://kaggsysbookishramblings.wordpress.com/2012/07/03/elizabeth-taylors-angeli...

I just finished Part I of Angel and am finding it quite fun!

Vague ramblings with some spoilers:

I finished the book last night and really enjoyed it. The experience was akin to that of reading The custom of the country in that we observe the life of an anti-heroine who brings destruction to those around her. But in Angel we see the subsequent downward slide as well as the triumphant rise to the top. I wanted to slap Angel in the scene where she says to a woman, "If you cannot control your dog you must keep him indoors" - when her own dog has just killed the woman's smaller one! Yet despite scenes like this, I felt that Taylor, through Theo, showed some admiration for Angel's tenacity and total fidelity to her vision, ghastly though it was.

I was disappointed with the introduction in my edition (the original green). It dissected the sort of prose that Angel wrote, but almost entirely ignored the book itself.

>11 LyzzyBee:: Yes, Angel certainly could have been the E.L. James of her day!

I started it late last night. It is a re-read for me - I read it a little under 2 years ago - and thought it was my east favourite of ET's (although I do generally love everything of hers so that's not the same as saying I don't like it) but now after reading just a small bit last night I'm remembering all the things I loved about it.

>21 Sakerfalcon:: ooh, I loved The Custom of the Country, especially its anti-heroine. I can't wait to see where Taylor is going with this.

Just finished Angel a re-read for me - I haven't bothered to update my review on LT - but I did re-write it for my blog - here.
http://heavenali.wordpress.com/2012/07/07/angel-elizabeth-taylor-1957/

I've put my review on here now too. Great book!

If you post a review on your blog, I'd love it if you'd also post a link on my Elizabeth Taylor Centenary page. Just look for the July "Mr Linky" ... thanks!

26 - done!

They're both done ... thanks much!

>24 Heaven-Ali:: Great review Ali - I agree that Angel is pitiable despite her monstrosity. It would have been easy to make her a straightforward figure to loathe, but Taylor went for complexity which makes the book much richer.

I finished Part 2 last night and woo hoo is that Angel a piece of work or what? In Part I, I found her charmingly naive and she made me laugh. Now after Part 2, I would completely despise her if it weren't for Claire's reference to The Custom of the Country in message #21. Like Undine Spragg, Angel is a heroine you love to hate. Charmingly naive and funny one minute, and absolutely horrible the next. Claire is spot on again in writing, I wanted to slap Angel in the scene where she says to a woman, "If you cannot control your dog you must keep him indoors" - when her own dog has just killed the woman's smaller one! I thought that was unconscionable.

Wondering what Part 3 has in store for me ... ?

My mother-in-law was a bit like Angel, I have to say - she doesn't have any 'empathy' - so in a way she is free to imagine anything..... I see her as a study, perhaps, of a certain type, kind of a functioning borderline personality? Taylor is careful to say more than once that she has absolutely no sense of humor (requires empathy) and that she sometimes gets very angry when she senses that people are having emotional reactions she doesn't understand.

It's been a long time since I read Angel. I had such high hopes for it as Carmen Callil lists it as a personal favorite. Also, as I have said on this site before, my great grandmother worked as a housekeeper for Corelli's father - Charles McKay - so there is a family 'connection' of sorts. Needless to say I did not like Angel and could not ultimately get beyond that. I would like to comment on the quality of Taylor's writing but that would involve re-reading the book and I won't be doing that anytime soon :) But I AM following the discussion with interest.

I've really enjoyed reading Angel and I've put a review here:

http://kaggsysbookishramblings.wordpress.com/2012/07/11/virago-volumes-3-angel-b...

(and I will also add this to Mr. Linky!)

Well, I finished Angel and while it wasn't my favorite Taylor, I still liked it. It was a bit like watching a train wreck. Here's my review on LibraryThing & on my blog.

This is the only Taylor I've read (I've got the new Virago of her short stories on order for All Virago/All August), and I found it quite interesting. I found a couple especially amusing incidents that remind me of the Brontes, though I'm not sure whether or not they were deliberate Bronte jokes by Taylor.

(1) Angel's sending her first book around to a publisher, getting it back, and then reusing the wrapping paper to send the manuscript to another publisher. Compare this with Charlotte's reusing wrapping paper for The Professor:

Mr. Smith has told me a little circumstance connected with the reception of this manuscript {The Professor}, which seems to me indicative of no ordinary character. It came (accompanied by the note given below) in a brown paper parcel, to 65 Cornhill. Besides the address to Messrs. Smith and Co., there were on it those of other publishers to whom the tale had been sent, not obliterated, but simply scored through, so that Messrs. Smith at once perceived the names of some of the houses in the trade to which the unlucky parcel had gone, without success.

Elizabeth Gaskell, The Life of Charlotte Bronte (volume ii, early in chapter 2).

(2) The scene where Angel appears in her publishers' office and they have no idea what to expect her to be (maybe even a man). Compare this with the incident when Charlotte and Anne appeared at Smith Elder to convince George Smith that Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell were in fact three distinct persons:

Neither Mr. Smith nor Mr. Williams knew that they were coming; they were entirely unknown to the publishers of "Jane Eyre", who were not, in fact, aware whether the "Bells" were men or women, but had always written to them as to men.

On reaching Mr. Smith's, Charlotte put his own letter into his hands; the same letter which had excited so much disturbance at Haworth Parsonage only twenty-four hours before. "Where did you get this?" said he,—as if he could not believe that the two young ladies dressed in black, of slight figures and diminutive stature, looking pleased yet agitated, could be the embodied Currer and Acton Bell, for whom curiosity had been hunting so eagerly in vain.

Elizabeth Gaskell, The Life of Charlotte Bronte (volume ii, toward end of chapter 2).

Alright, alright, I know. I'm one of those nut jobs who rejects the Copernican Theory and puts Haworth Parsonage at the center of the universe. ;-D Still, though, I wonder if Taylor had Bronte at all in mind here in a joking way.

Overall, quite an enjoyable and amusing read really. I can see why some readers might take a visceral dislike to Angel, but I often tend to see the humor in her kind of character, and I definitely think Taylor did intend to include a good bit of humor in the story. Even the incident with Angel's dog killing the neighbor's little dog had a humor to it in a sick kind of way -- a lot like the first communion episode in Frost in May, which some readers may see as "sick" but I definitely think Antonia White intended as hilariously funny as a sort of Catholic "survivor humor."

>35 CurrerBell:: interesting parallels! Thanks for sharing that. As for Angel, I enjoyed her character at first in that "love to hate her" kind of way, but by the end she was wearing me down. I did like the sick humor, though :)

There is certainly a Bronte reference when Theo dubs his wife Mrs Heger and himself the Professor.....

Wonderful comment, Currer, I'd go even farther and ask what might seem a strange question - is there something of Angel in all deeply committed artists, a single-minded ruthlessness? I ask this because I feel the conflict every day between being a responsible adult with a spouse and a child and a web of other relationships and obligations and my desire to be left alone to write. At times it is a brutally painful conflict. I have, again and again, chosen my family, as women do. I think there is some deeper suffering and conflict, is what I am saying, that gives the book an extra level of pathos - plus the insecurity I know I have, as a woman and a writer that I am not up to snuff - these are just thoughts and reactions I've had here and there.

I dislike pet mutilation ordinarily, really, but I thought this was meant to be ghastly funny, almost Monty Pythonish. The dog - Angel's dog, is so abominable peeing on rolls of silk, farting, sniffing crotches.....I know I won't care if anything happens to him. My mil, if she had ever run over someone's dog, would have blamed the owner for being careless...... oh yes. I know the type!

38: I rather feel you might have hit the nail on the head and that the conflict between the artist and family commitments is something that Taylor felt herself - she, as you say, chose to give her family priority but you wonder if there was a hidden bitterness when she saw so many other women writers lauded while she was dismissed.

I think also I agree with you about the dog(s) - there is quite a bit of dark humour in Taylor's books and it just proves over and over again that she does need close and careful reading.

39 - So glad you see that too! It's being boiling around in the back of my mind as I found that I was a bit envious of Angel's singlemindedness.

#34 "It was a bit like watching a train wreck" It was, wasn't it? I really enjoyed it and found it very funny. I felt we were supposed to laugh at Angel in a way I don't think ET intended for the characters in her other novels.

#38 Lucy, that's really interesting. I hadn't considered it from that point of view before, and as Karen said, I think you may have hit upon something there.

I've finished - I wrote myself into a state of total admiration when I got to my review. Quite a book.

I decided to squeeze this one in over the weekend and am quite glad that I did. I finished Part 1 this morning. Good Lord, what a bitch Angel is! Taylor captures her perfectly - n a way it reminds me of The Third Miss Symons. I can't like her or feel sorry her except in brief, isolated moments, but I keep on reading because the writing is so good.

I am up to Part 5 now and have noticed another Bronte reference, which Taylor has mentioned a few times now. Angel, like Charlotte Bronte, writes in an almost trance-like state. Also, now that I think of it, Angel is questioned about how she could describe the effects of too much wine when she'd never had any herself. I believe Charlotte was asked something similar about the effects of opium (Villette) and she said she'd simply imagined it. Personally, I question that; I wonder if Branwell described the effects to her or if she even tried it herself.

44> I'm really loving this thread! I was aware of the Heger/Professor reference (@37) but had neglected to mention it. Your references, though, are ones I hadn't caught, and the opium is something autobiographical I simply wasn't aware of. I'll have to keep an eye out for it when I get around to reading Juliet Barker's biography and see if it shows up there.

A few other things come to mind, mentioned early in the book - Angel, like Charlotte, has poor vision (near-sighted, I think). A minor thing, admittedly, and possibly not a deliberate Bronte parallel as Taylor mentions it to point up Angel's vanity, but there it is all the same. And then there is the ongoing story about Paradise House, Angel's girlhood fantasy world, which put me in mind of the Bronte siblings' Angria/Gondal tales.

I noticed several Bronte 'moments' while reading and meant to keep better track of them. Will I go back and look, probably not, but perhaps one or two might come to mind. I'm actually listening to Anne's The Tenant of Wildfelll Hall at the moment.

There was also a reference to 'righting a fallen urn' when Paradise House was first being fixed up - that made me think of the Taylor I read earlier this year, Palladian; if it's an earlier book, I wonder if it's a sly reference.

Yes, >47 sibylline:, I thought that also as I read it, but then forgot!

I finished Angel this evening and thought it was terrific apart from one thing that struck me as odd. There's a point towards the end where Angel is about 55 but seems to be much older. But that is a very minor quibble. I loved all the Bronte references and particularly enjoyed the "hunt" for them as I read.

ETA- I also like the fact that, had Angel been less arrogant, less conceited, even somewhat willing to listen to advice, she could have become the kind of writer she imagined herself to be.

Loved, loved, loved Angel. A book quite full of imperfect people barring Theo, I found it perfect for me. Everything just worked right for me and I am so happy that I read this one finally. Perhaps my new favorite of Taylor's.

^ The movie was terrible. I watched it last night and although it was more or less faithful to the book, I don't think the script writer really understood who/what Angel was and tried to soften her character to make her more palatable to the general movie-going public. Romola Garai (who played Angel) seemed to have a slightly better idea, especially in the early scenes, but overall I thought the movie was a bust. JMHO.

By the end, Angel reminded me of Molly Keane. In a good way. This was the first Elizabeth Taylor that i really enjoyed.

#51 couldn't agree more...I thought the film lacked the humour of the book....everyone took everything far too seriously....I thought Sam Neill was cast perfectly though.....

>52 booktruffler:: that's funny, because after reading Angel I was contemplating my next Virago read and decided it will be Molly Keane! Clearly the association was lurking in my subconscious somewhere.

I've just reread Paul Magrs' Exchange and the Ada character in that reminds me a lot of Angel!

Hoorah! Smiler69's review of Angel made the front page!

I took Angel for holiday reading and it was perfect. I was reading in the enclosed space of a cabin but each time sank (unfortunate choice of word there) into her world, dense with domestic detail. I loved the Bronte refs. It's very funny in part one but darkens as Angel ages. One thing bothered me, though: I discovered right at the end (in Angel's Will), that Paradise House was in Hampshire. All the way through the book I assumed the setting was northern, that Norley was a northern industrial town. Now I suppose Taylor might have had Reading in mind, which somebody I used to know unkindly referred to as "the north come south". She often recycles names (especially Swanford, which I take to be High Wycombe) and used Norley in a short story in which a father and daughter attend a trade dinner, I think it's called "You'll enjoy it when you get there". Anyway, it was a re-read and better the second time as I appreciated the subtlety of Angel's characterisation, not a mere monster but a self-absorbed, humourless, driven woman who had to make money.

>57 criggall: Super review.