Book Reviews
Novel-writing at its finest and most eloquent...splendid...the sort of book that effortlessly, like angels, or sunlight on Venice's rippling waterways, casts brightness and beauty into those private and most shadowed recesses of the human heart.
The Christian Science Monitor
Vickers has taken myth, religion, and secular humanism, and turned them into substantial life-affirming fiction.
Philadelphia Inquirer
This enjoyable, multilayered novel contemplates existential themes — religion, life, death and love and the ways in which these themes are juxtaposed insists on the harmonious closure which is achieved in both narratives.
Times Literary Supplement
What begins as a beautifully-written, gentle tale of a woman coming to life, slowly deepens into something more intriguing as Vickers takes up issues of good and evil, sexuality, religion and belief. Just as one can happily wander the streets of Venice until one finds oneself lost and fear sets in, the reader is lulled by her artful prose — until ensnared.
Oxford Times
As administrator of the Booker Prize for the past 30 years I am often asked whether I agreed with the judges of the year, or what I would have chosen ... Salley Vickers’ Miss Garnet’s Angel ... is easily the best novel that I have read in 2000 ... you watch Miss Garnet utterly changed in character and personality, and you marvel at how all this has been achieved, together with a depth of knowledge and projection of the story from the Apocrypha. It is also one of the best pictures of Venice I have come across."
Martyn Goff - New Statesman
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, Vicker’s vision of human possibility is coloured by hope.
Atlantic Monthly
Miss Garnet’s Angel is a remarkable novel, whose genuine originality is the result not of flashiness but something far more substantial: imaginative intensity. This is not revealed in weighty digressions but distilled into suggestive images and precise relations. It is a vivid and fresh novel, deliciously entertaining and — which is rare for good novels — a happy book.
London Magazine
Guardian angels have attained such trendy status in American popular fiction that it's refreshing to read Vickers, a writer from across the Atlantic, 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 that charts the late coming-of-age of Miss Julia Garnet, a retired English schoolteacher who spends six months in Venice after her lifelong companion, Harriet, dies. Venice has a magical effect on reserved Julia: a dyed-in-the-wool Communist, she relaxes in her antipathy toward religion, and even begins to visit the local church. There, she becomes enamored of a series of paintings that tell the story of the Apocryphal book of Tobit, a tale that mixes elements of Judaism with the religion of Zoroaster. In the story, young Tobias travels to Medea, part of the Persian Empire, to collect a debt for his father, blind Tobit. He is accompanied on his journey by a hired guide who turns out to be the Angel Raphael. As Julia learns more about Tobias's trek, she embarks upon a soul-altering journey of her own. She falls in love with an art dealer, Carlo, and befriends Sarah and Toby, twins working on the restoration of a Venetian chapel. When Toby disappears suddenly, after discovering a priceless Renaissance painting, Julia finds out that neither Carlo nor the twins are exactly what they seem—but that the Angel Raphael's watchful spirit will help good prevail. This touching novel, a ...[will appeal to] fans eager for a treatment of religious themes without the gooey sentiment that often accompanies the topic of angels.
Publishers Weekly
Beautifully wrought and impressively wise.
Kirkus Reviews