The Third Angel

This haunting, poignant and addictive story travels effortlessly across three generations and through time. Unravelling the years from the present to the 1950s, The Third Angel is a compelling novel, set mainly in London, about girls and women who make the wrong choices and have to live with the sometimes unbearable consequences. The Third Angel opens in London in the present day, when an envious sibling comes to her sister s wedding. Their mother s illness cast a shadow over their childhood, and both Madeline and Allie are still searching for something missing in their lives. Back in the Swinging Sixties, the bridegroom s conventional English mother, Frieda, behaves in a wholly unconventional way, and the ghosts of that era still haunt all their lives and a Knightsbridge hotel. Even before that, the seeds of tragedy are sown in the Fifties, when twelve-year-old Lucy first visits London and the same hotel. Precocious, impatient, wise beyond her years, Lucy becomes a go-between for two star-crossed lovers and then holds herself agonisingly responsible for what happens...

About the Author :
Alice Hoffman is the bestselling author of acclaimed novels, including Here on Earth (an Oprah Book Club selection), Practical Magic (a Hollywood film), The River King, Blue Diary, Turtle Moon and most recently Skylight Confessions. Blackbird House was shortlisted for the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award. She divides her time between Boston and New York City.

Review :
"Is there an American novelist who understands the complicated and mulitfacted nature of love in all its manifestations -- romantic, familial, platonic -- better than Alice Hoffman?... Some critics have minimed the complexity of Hoffman's work by refering to her as a romance writers. Well, Hoffman is a romance writer, but then so were Flaubert, Proust, the Bronte sisters, and Jane Austen. "The Third Angel" is indeed a romance, but one of intricacy and pathos, with characters beautifully, believably and empathetically drawn...."The Third Angel" represents yet another strong, visceral and deeply, darkly moving tale of love and heatbreak, tragedy and redemption from a writer whose keen ear for the measure struck by the beat of the human heart is unparalleled. "The Third Angel" is an intense, provocative and throughly affecting novel."
-- "The Chicago Tribune"
"Like Michael Cunningham's 'The Hours, ' Hoffman's tale weaves the stories of women at key moments in their lives with revelations both stunning and inevitable."
"-- The Pittsburgh Post Gazette
""Its realism, combined with a refreshing lightness and its success in portraying emotion with empathy, draws the reader into a deep involvement with the books' appealing yet flawed characters. Each woman faces up to her challengers in her own way, proving that everyone in the end is responsible for his or her own destiny."
"-- The Economist
""Hoffman's luminous language bounces us into accepting not only coincident but also its consequences.""
-- The Boston Globe"
"Alice Hoffman paints her books in big strokes and bright colors, with slashes of romantic reds and blacks. She's a teller of fairy tells, well-worn or new."
"-- The Columbus Dispatch
""With a graceful nod to the power of redemption, Alice Hoffman reminds readers we are all hurt and broken, stumbling through life and fumbling for love, but sometimes we can still find out way to where we want to go." "
-- Cha "Alice Hoffman is my favorite writer." --Jodi Picoult
"A reader is in good hands with Alice Hoffman, able to count on many pleasures. She is one of our quirkiest and most interesting novelists, and her skills increase with every new book."
--Jane Smiley, USA Today
""The Third Angel" is brilliantly crafted, deeply moving, and utterly enchanting. I loved these characters for their complexity, their unpredictability and for the way they showed subtle and shifting nuance in human nature. One of the best things about Alice Hoffman's writing is that she grounds you in detail and also frees your imagination to soar to places it has never been--often simultaneously. Reading her is immensely satisfying--and addictive!"
-Elizabeth Berg, author of "The Day I Ate Whatever I Wanted"
"With her glorious prose and extraordinary eyes . . . Alice Hoffman seems to know what it means to be a human being."
--Susan Isaacs, "Newsday"
"Alice Hoffman takes seemingly ordinary lives and lets us see and feel extraordinary things."
--Amy Tan
"Hoffman's characters, male and female, tend to be defined by the restless, lonely ache of what's missing in their lives, which becomes clear only when they fill the void with something either unexpectedly right or horribly
wrong. Along the way, Hoffman seems to wriggle into their skin, breathe their air, and think their thoughts."
--"Entertainment Weekly"
"Hands down, this captivating book is one of Hoffman's best. It follows three women's lives as they flow together and apart, tributaries linked by the same tragic love story and mysterious ghost. You'll want to start it again as soon as you're done."
--"Redbook"
"Hoffmanmakes vivid and new the realization that grace, beauty, and forgiveness can arise out of the most devastating situations."
--Megan Deem, "Elle"
"Alice Hoffman's richly layered novel, "The Third Angel," is one of her best."
--Susan Straight, "More
""A mesmerizing tale of the human condition, this latest novel is sure to please Hoffman's fans and win over new readers. Recommended for all public library fiction collections."
--"Library Journal
"
"In this elegant and stunning novel, veteran heartstring-puller Hoffman ("Here on Earth"; "Seventh Heaven") examines the lives of three women at different crossroads in their lives, tying their London-centered stories together in devastating retrospect. High powered New York attorney Maddy Heller arrives in 1999 London having had an affair with Paul, her sister Allie's fiance; she must now cope with the impending marriage, and with Paul's terminal illness-which echoes the girls' mother's cancer during their childhood. Hoffman then shifts to heady 1966 London and to Frieda Lewis, Paul's future mother, who falls for a doomed up-and-coming songwriter knowing he will break her heart. The narrative then shifts further back, to 1952 and to Maddy and Allie's future mother, Lucy Green. A bookish 12-year-old wise beyond her years, Lucy sails with her father and stepmother from New York to London for a wedding. There, she becomes an innocent catalyst to a devastating event involving a love triangle. Hoffman interweaves the three stories, gazing unerringly into forces that cause some people to self-destruct ("There was no such thing as too much for a girl who thought she was second best") and others to find inner strength to last alifetime."
--"Publishers Weekly" *starred* review
"Over the course of writing more than two dozen works of fiction, Hoffman has created her very own form, the heartbreak fairy tale. Her latest and one of her best is an exceptionally well-structured, beguiling, and affecting triptych of catastrophic love stories, each laced with patterns of three and anchored to a haunted London hotel. In the first and most contemporary tale, Maddy stays at the hotel while visiting her soon-to-be-married sister and falling for her sister's fiance. Set in 1966, the middle tale features rebellious young Frieda, a college dropout working as a maid at the hotel who tries to rescue a junkie rock musician. Finally, the tragic story of the hotel's ghost revolves around precocious young Lucy, whose inadvertent role in a fatal love triangle wounds her very soul. A kind doctor repeats the novel's mantra when he says that we are accompanied by the Angel of Life, the Angel of Death, and the Third Angel, "the one who walks among us," and, like us, needs compassion. Not only is Hoffman spellbinding in this incandescent fusion of dark romance and penetrating psychic insight, she also opens diverse and compelling worlds, dramatizes the shocks and revelations that forge the self, and reveals the necessity and toll of empathy and kindness. Hoffman has transcended her own genre."
--"Booklist," *starred* review
""The Third Angel" places Hoffman at perhaps the pinnacle of her bountiful literary talents."
--"Bookpage
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" In this elegant and stunning novel, veteran heartstring-puller Hoffman ("Here on Earth"; "Seventh Heaven") examines the lives of three women at different crossroads in their lives, tying their London-centered stories together in devastating retrospect. High powered New York attorney Maddy Heller arrives in 1999 London having had an affair with Paul, her sister Allie's fiance; she must now cope with the impending marriage, and with Paul's terminal illness-which echoes the girls' mother's cancer during their childhood. Hoffman then shifts to heady 1966 London and to Frieda Lewis, Paul's future mother, who falls for a doomed up-and-coming songwriter knowing he will break her heart. The narrative then shifts further back, to 1952 and to Maddy and Allie's future mother, Lucy Green. A bookish 12-year-old wise beyond her years, Lucy sails with her father and stepmother from New York to London for a wedding. There, she becomes an innocent catalyst to a devastating event involving a love triangle. Hoffman interweaves the three stories, gazing unerringly into forces that cause some people to self-destruct ("There was no such thing as too much for a girl who thought she was second best") and others to find inner strength to last a lifetime.
--"Publishers Weekly" *starred* review"
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