The Angel's Cut
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Book Description
The sequel to the bestselling The Vintner's Luck
Product Description
Hollywood, 1929. While Conrad Cole is working late on elaborate plans for his aeroplanes and his films, a mysterious stranger appears at his door. Xas soon finds himself caught up in the glamorous and treacherous world of movie-making and entangled with both Cole and a young woman who owes her life to the eccentric director. Both of them are drawn to Xas without knowing his secret - that under his shirt he hides the remnants of great snowy wings that set him apart from humankind, and that he is destined to wander the earth forever, always hearing the beating of feathers behind him, threatening him that his dark brother has found him again.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
even better than 'The Vintner's Luck',
By
This review is from: The Angel's Cut (Paperback)
Sequel to The Vintner's Luck, which I adore and am now eager to reread. The Angel's Cut, unlike the earlier novel, is told predominantly from the point of view of unwinged angel Xas (though there are other, more human and equally compelling narrators), and Xas is distinctly different, preternatural, strange. The multiple voices triangulate Xas's experience of the world, showing us the strangeness of his everyday behaviour (walking like a drunkard, each step a caught fall) and the invisibility of his inner turmoil.Sobran, Xas's true love, is long-dead, and Xas -- following a brief career as navigator on a German airship in World War I -- winds up in California, in the nascent Hollywood film industry. He's drawn to fascinatingly broken people: to eccentric producer and aviator Conrad Cole (perhaps modelled on Howard Hughes); to Flora MacLeod who's survived a horrific accident and endures chronic pain with grace and style; to Millie Cotton, woman of colour and stunt pilot who has a sense of which jobs to take and which to leave. Xas is also pursued by his nemesis / brother Lucifer, who needs him: the nature of the compact between Xas, Lucifer and God is explored more thoroughly, and Xas's unique state explained. The Angel's Cut is a term relating to winemaking; it refers to the portion of a barrel of wine that evaporates during ageing. The novel, though, is firmly grounded in the world of film, with discussions of the difference between conversation and dialogue, the inadequacy of flashbacks as a method of character development, the shape of a story. Flora's a film editor, and she's constantly looking for the flow, the shape of her own story: perhaps she also helps to give shape to Xas's history. And Xas has some hard lessons to learn: about the nature of love, about speech and silence, about broken souls. He loves a lot -- Cole, Flora, his captain Hintersee, Alison -- and he's fearlessly submissive, ready to give everything and still suspecting that it's not enough, that it -- that he -- is irrelevant to human life. Is there anything that can bring him closer to being human, to being 'people'? This novel made me cry (O'Brien) and laugh and marvel at Knox's use of language -- though some especially resonant sentences take a surprising amount of unravelling.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
If you're a fan of the Vintner's Luck, beware!,
By
This review is from: The Angel's Cut (Paperback)
The Vintner's Luck was one of my favourite books so I had high hopes for this. What a disappoinment. The structure of the novel was confusing, with two central characters sharing way too many traits and having very similar names, making it hard to follow who was who. Which wouldn't have been a problem if the plot had been mmore engaging, or the writing less clumsy. There was a great deal about Hollywood film making in the early talkies era and Xas as a character felt a bit bolted on, as though Know wanted to write about Hollywood but used the idea of a sequel to the Vintner's Luck as a sales ploy. One of the hardest books to wade through I've read in a long time.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Superb novel!,
By
This review is from: The Angel's Cut (Paperback)
I first discovered Elizabeth Knox when I came across her novel, The Vintner's Luck, at my local library (Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA). I loved the book and have re-read it multiple times. I read all her subsequent work as it was published in the U.S., and recently found out about this novel, a sequel to Vintner's, but not published (yet, I hope) in the U.S. On the basis of my passion for Knox's work, I ordered a copy from the U.K., and I was not disappointed. Knox takes us to the very lively world of Hollywood in the late 1920s and 1930s; Xas, the angel we first met in Vintner's, continues to explore the vagaries of humanity by connecting with several significant figures in the film industry. Knox is a superb writer; her language is fluid and beautiful, her characters fascinating, and her story-telling wonderfully engaging. I recommend all her books without hesitation (though you should read The Vintner's Luck before you read this one to experience the full impact of both).
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