The Third Angel: A Novel | Alice Hoffman | Love, Heartache and The Ghost in Room 707

The Third Angel: A Novel | Alice Hoffman | My first Alice Hoffman novel

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The Third Angel: A...

	The Third Angel: A Novel Alice Hoffman Shaye Areheart Books, 2008 - 288 pages average customer review:based on 40 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

?Alice Hoffman is my favorite writer.?
?Jodi Picoult

Alice Hoffman is one of our most beloved writers. Here on Earth was an Oprah Book Club selection. Practical Magic and Aquamarine were both bestselling books and Hollywood movies. Her novels have received mention as notable books of the year by the New York Times, Entertainment Weekly, the Los Angeles Times, and People magazine, and her short fiction and nonfiction have appeared in the New York Times, The Boston Globe Magazine, Kenyon Review, Redbook, Architectural Digest, Gourmet, and Self.

Now, in The Third Angel, Hoffman weaves a magical and stunningly original story that charts the lives of three women in love with the wrong men: Headstrong Madeleine Heller finds herself hopelessly attracted to her sister?s fiancé. Frieda Lewis, a doctor?s daughter and a runaway, becomes the muse of an ill-fated rock star. And beautiful Bryn Evans is set to marry an Englishman while secretly obsessed with her ex-husband. At the heart of the novel is Lucy Green, who blames herself for a tragic accident she witnessed at the age of twelve, and who spends four decades searching for the Third Angel?the angel on earth who will renew her faith.

Brilliantly evoking London?s King?s Road, Knightsbridge, and Kensington while moving effortlessly back in time, The Third Angel is a work of startling beauty about the unique, alchemical nature of love.

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Love, Heartache and The Ghost in Room 707

Sometimes I think the whole concept of language and storytelling have spent centuries waiting around for Ann Hoffman to come along and use them. She is certainly one of the best wordsmiths the English Language has ever produced, one of the best storytellers too and she's at the top of her game with this one.

The Third Angel is three novellas which work backward in time, telling the story about interconnecting characters and a ghost. What happened back in 1952 affects what happens in 1966 and 1999. We get the last story first and the first story last.

The story opens with American Attorney Maddie Heller arriving at the Lion Park Hotel in London. Her sister Allie is getting married and her husband to be Paul who is ill. However, that doesn't stop Maddie from sleeping with him. Maddie is the bad sister. Children's author Allie is the good. The ghost in room 707, well he's just the ghost. In Maddie's defense, if there can be any defense for a woman who sleeps with her sister's intended, is that she's in love him. It's tragic for Maddie, what she has done can ruin her sister's life. Will it?

Maddie's story finished we move back to 1966 and Ms. Hoffman captures the time beautifully. She captures the story of Paul's mother Frieda beautifully as well. Frieda is an over educated maid in the Lion Park Hotel and she's besotted with a wannabe Jim Morrison type and she has his child and names him Paul, who will eventually grow up, get sick and marry Maddie's sister Alley. Again Ms. Hoffman has given us characters so true that they'll be in your head long after your reading of this book is done. She's done the ghost justice too.

Frieda's story finished, we move still backward in time to 1952 and join twelve-year-old Lucy, who will later in life give birth to Allie and Maddie. Her father and stepmother bring her across the ocean to London as they are going to the wedding of stepmom's sister Bryn who still has a thing for her ex-husband Michael, who is not the guy she's supposed to be marrying. Lucy carries messages back and forth between Michael and Bryn and it's because, whoops, better stop right here, but needless to say the ghost might not be a ghost yet. You'll have to get this book to find out more, but it'll be a good investment.

Ann Hoffman's characters, her ghost, her three angels, the rabbet who lives in the hotel and the city of London all invite you to crack open the pages of the best book you'll read this year.

Reviewed by Vesta Irene

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My first Alice Hoffman novel

This was my first Alice Hoffman and I enjoyed it very much. At the beginning it was a little confusing, but I found that I had a hard time putting it down. After reading some of the other reviews of this book, it sounds like if I liked this novel, I'll probably like her others better.

The Ghost of Michael Macklin

This latest offering by Ms. Hoffman is a generational piece whose roots are in the 1950s. The backdrop for most of the story is the Lion Park hotel in London, a second-rate hotel that is haunted.

Our first encounter with sisters Maddie and Allie uncovers a betrayal by the younger sister who lives a care-free existence based on the fact that she believes that she was an unloved child. Allie, the older sister, has pretty much done what was expected of her because she has always been the caretaker; first when her mother had cancer and later when her fiance suffers from the same disease. She realizes only too late that she truly loves her fiance and moves swiftly to makes things right only to lose him too.

Freida, the fiance's mother, takes up the middle of the book. Her story is set in the 1960s and brought back for this reader 'the look' that was so popular then in London: overly made-up eyes, short mini-skirts, high boots, swingy music, free love, etc. Hoping to escape from the dreariness of a rural youth she makes her way to the Lion Park hotel where she works as a maid. Soon, though, she becomes the muse for a rock-star wanna-be who is hooked on drugs and has a very Paris Hilton-like girlfriend. In the end, Freida puts all of the very trendy and drug-filled life behind her and returns to her rural home where she marries the boyfriend who had gone on to college. She goes on to nursing school herself and lives a very fulfilling life in spite of the ghostly happenings that populated her time working at the Lion Park.

The thread that sews it all together is Lucy Green. Lucy is the mother of the two young women we first met at the outset of the story. Inadvertently she is the one who caused the problems that have brought about the haunting of the Lion Park's seventh floor. Having witnessed the deaths of the people involved she withdraws to a secret place inside herself just as she did when her own mother passed away. It takes love in all its simple complexities to bring Lucy into her own once more.

This book is a very easy read despite the complexities of the characters we meet. I read it in two sittings and would have accomplished it in one had I not fallen asleep at nearly two in the morning.

I give this story four stars simply because I've enjoyed some of Ms. Hoffman's other offerings more.

Note: you're bound to fall in love with Millie.

Recommended: Practical Magic, The Probable Future

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Love Hoffman but this one was confusing for me

I have read all of Alice Hoffman's books and absolutely love her style. She seems to have a deep connection with the spiritual and is able to bring it off the page and into your heart. I found this book gripping and often hard to put down, however, it was a bit confusing with it going backwards. I think I would have appreciated it more if it was written in reverse order. I did love the explanation of the Angel of Life and the Angel of Death along with the "Third Angel" that walks among us. I found the three different (yet the same) story lines to be interesting and captivating. Ms. Hoffman was able to show us the humanity of the doctor in both the positive and negative. All in all I really enjoyed the book but I gave it three stars because I found the backward style confusing for me. It appears that most others did not, so perhaps it's just me.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

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