The blurb on my 2017 Virago reissue of Angel (1957) by the English novelist Elizabeth Taylor (1912-1975) includes a comment about Taylor by Sarah Waters: an author of great subtlety, great compassion and great depth. But I don't agree. Angel is a brutal take-down of working-class aspiration, and while it's amusing for a while, at 300+ pages it's too long for itself and the joke. I only persisted with it because I had got the impression from somewhere that Elizabeth Not-The-Actress Taylor was an author worth reading. Wikipedia tells us that:

Kingsley Amis described her as "one of the best English novelists born in this century". Antonia Fraser called her "one of the most underrated writers of the 20th century", while Hilary Mantel said she was "deft, accomplished and somewhat underrated."

So I am out on a limb here, and wondering if it's my Bolshie Australian attitudes that put me out of step with critical opinion. We do class consciousness here too, of course, and I am looking forward to reading Love Across Class, a new book by Eve Vincent and Rose Butler, from Melbourne University Press, which has the merit of acknowledging the myth of egalitarianism in Australia. But here we lack the fine gradings and disdain for the 'nouveau riche' of 20th century British class consciousness, and here it's about the school you went to, your postcode, and in some quarters, your religion or your clothing labels. What the working class protagonist of Elizabeth Taylor's Angel does not understand is that she can never transcend her background and especially not by making money. Taylor's Angel is not trapped there because has an uneducated mind and spectacular ignorance and she refuses to learn, it is because in Britain class was immutable. Perhaps it still is.

Not expecting to dislike the book, I went looking for autobiographical information to explain its spiteful class consciousness. Elizabeth Taylor's background could perhaps be described as 'aspirational lower middle class'. Wikipedia tells us that her father was an insurance inspector, and she went to a private selective day school for girls. She worked as a governess (where like Aunt Lottie in the novel) she could observe her 'betters' close up, and later as a tutor and librarian. She married into capital with a husband who owned a confectionery company, flirted with the communist party, and then supported the Labour Party.

At 15, Angel's protagonist looks upon the dreariness of her home in Volunteer Road in Norley and decides to be a writer. Her Aunt Lottie, in service at Paradise House, has helped towards the school fees at a private school where Angel has learned nothing but the pretensions that will guide her life. With astonishing determination, Angel disappears into her room and writes a novel of such awfulness that it is immediately rejected by the publishers she sends it to. But satirising gimcrack commercial fiction and the cynical publishers who know such books are rubbish but publish anyway for profit, Taylor has Angel finding a sympathetic mentor in Theo Gilbright, who recognises the florid style of romantic Victorian or Edwardian authors, and against the scorn of his partners, thinks it will sell. In a particular market i.e. not the literary one.

Puzzlingly, Theo is sympathetically portrayed as compassionate and too timid to tell Angel the truth. He deludes himself into thinking that he might be able to tame Angel's excesses, but fails to do so over the course of her career. She churns out one dreadful bestseller after another, refusing all advice. She ventures into settings she has never seen and knows nothing about (Italy, Greece) but when she has become rich enough to buy Paradise House, Angel — influenced by a nouveau riche American neighbour who uses 'causes' to gain approval— diversifies into polemics about vegetarianism and associated eccentricities, which coincides with a decline in her readership (and her income). (I'm guessing that vegetarianism was eccentric in 1950s Britain, and from my childhood memories of how they cooked vegetables, perhaps this was justified.)

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2024/05/03/angel-1957-by-elizabeth-taylor/ ( )

Excellent character study of a totally self-absorbed "Edwardian" novelist who unaccountably inspired great loyalty in a number of people who saw her flaws and loved her anyway, through thick and thin.
2008 ( )

This book started off strong, with an antagonistic main character, Angel, who is so full of herself you can't help but be amused. After all, she is only fifteen. She has a bad day at school, and takes to her bed, pretending to be sick. She prolongs this by deciding to write a novel - in bed. She's convinced she is a genius, despite the fact she has little life knowledge, no background in reading any books at all, and a horrific vocabulary full of big words she uses incorrectly.

And she gets published. And a certain segment of the population loves her books. And she becomes rich.

And then I got bored. Angel's adult life didn't really interest me at all, so the second half of this novel didn't really work for me. For me, this was one of the less interesting books that NYRB has published. ( )

I have to be honest. I had never heard of the author Elizabeth Taylor until I joined the 75-Book Challenge group. I started seeing her books popping up on threads here and there, and the reviews intrigued me. So I went looking at the library, and Angel was the first one I grabbed at random.

It's always interesting to read a book in which the main character is not particularly likable. Angel is a novelist, a writer of the worst sort of overwrought, overwritten romance. She is seemingly oblivious to the contempt in which critics and her own publisher hold her, and is convinced that her books are fine literature. To the consternation of the critics (and the cynical pleasure of the publishers), Angel's books are hugely popular, bringing her the kind of wealth and fame she only dreamed about as a poor child.

Angel tramples on the feelings of the people in her life and is generally an unlikable personality. And yet, I couldn't help feeling sad and a touch of pity for her at the end of this novel, which is a compliment to Taylor's writing. I plan to seek out other Taylor novels in the future. I do hope some of them have some more pleasant protagonists, however. ( )

I read Elizabeth Taylor's Angel and I have to ask how in the world did Taylor create such a completely unlikable character in a book I ended up loving? Doesn't make sense. I should've hated this book because well, Angel is absolutely toxic. But Taylor's writing is so gobsmacking beautiful and descriptive that it's hard to get beyond that. Plus it's her genius, I think, that could create a character that's so repellent while being so absolutely fascinating. I won't soon forget her.

"At that first meeting, long ago in London, she had seemed to need his protection while warning him not to offer it: arrogant and absurd she had been and had remained: she had warded off friendship and stayed lonely and made such fortifications within her own mind that the truth could not pierce it. At the slightest air of censure in the world about her, up had gone the barricades, the strenuous resistance begun by which she was preserved in her own imagination, beautiful, clever, successful and beloved." ( )