The Third Angel: A Novel by Alice Hoffman, finished

The Third Angel: A Novel by Alice Hoffman

My review

rating: 5 of 5 stars
I just finished this book. It's the first book I've read in quite a while that I wanted to just start over and reread from the beginning, and I may do exactly that.

It's a sad book--lots of bad stuff happens. And it's a complex book.

I hope it's not a spoiler if I say that the books backwards in time to the lives of characters who appear in the first section. You learn to understand the reasons for some of what happens. Terrible things. The people all seem very real to me, like people I know well, like myself. It's one of those books that seems to be written about me even though the events are totally different than those in my life.

And the characters, in spite of their flaws, are very real. The fact that the characters change is at once exciting and upsetting. I wanted to know more about what happened to the people in the first section. Instead, I learned about the lives of their parents. It's like three different books, but they are all tied together. Like life.

I worry that I might be "too easy" to please, because I've been giving everything lately 5 stars--but I've loved them all. I tend to love whatever I am reading. Unless it gives me a reason not to. I can quickly think of some other things I am reading or recently read that I did not like as well. I won't name them--I am satisfied to know they exist. Except this: I Claudius, which I am still reading. It has gotten better, but the beginning was almost unbearably tedious.

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