Angel by Elizabeth Taylor

I disliked the main character of this book so much that I finished it thinking that I’d disliked the book. But wait – no, in retrospect it was indeed a wonderful book! It’s the story of the rise and fall of an Edwardian woman writer, somebody who, as Hilary Mantel said in her introduction to my copy, never underestimated the taste of the general reading public. Her books are trash, utter trash, and while the critics have a heyday the public cannot get enough of her. She is driven, producing a book a year and pouring all her earnings into tasteless extravagances (while at the same time denouncing the nouveau riche.) Her greatest extravagance is the purchase and restoration of Paradise House, the place where her aunt worked as a ladies maid and which has been held up to her as the pinnacle of cultivated life. Even her own name, Angel, has been given to her after the daughter of Paradise House. Angel herself is a loner, completely unable to relate to other people and selfish in the extreme. Her only interest in people is in what they can do for her and she never, ever holds back. The book charts her rise, her marriage to Esme, and her decline in the ruins of Paradise House surrounded by her animals and her small group of strangely devoted followers. The secondary characters are a joy: the charmless waster Esme, whom she marries; her ladies maid aunt Dottie with the all-seeing eye and acerbic tongue; her benevolent publisher Theo; her devoted companion Nora and the surprising chauffeur Marvell, who sticks with her through thick and thin. Elizabeth Taylor’s humour is subtle and black, at times leaping out of nowhere and socking you in he jaw. Read carefully and think about it, or you’ll miss the sly innuendo or the carefully pitched little bit of wasp.