Customer Reviews

A is for Angelica

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(18)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Iain Broome's debut novel is an extraordinary look into the day to day life of Gordon, a man struggling to cope under enormous pressure at home. His wife is very ill and Gordon suddenly finds himself as her primary caretaker in what should be the prime of their lives. He feels isolated from his neighbors about whom he keeps meticulous notes, compiled as he secretly watches their every move. Gordon is at once a character that made me feel profoundly uncomfortable, sad and then laugh aloud. Broome quietly weaves a complex picture of Gordon's past and present through the tiniest and most mundane of details.

When I first sat down to read the novel on a Saturday morning, the writing style reminded me of Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime and I worried that the material would be a rehash of Haddon's brilliant book and that the voice would be difficult to penetrate. Then it was Sunday and I had devoured the book. I can't tell you exactly where that time went. No I can. I spent it behind Gordon's curtains, watching his neighbors, reveling in their quirkiness and thoroughly enjoying Gordon's entirely unreliable narration.

Lest you all think that this is a comedic book, I should be clear that it's not, although Broome has a wickedly dark sense of humor that did have me laughing out loud on a couple of occasions. This book also had me in tears in several places. Broome perfectly captures the intense, frustrating and helpless experience of being a loved-one's carer. His descriptions of Gordon's daily life are detailed, truthful and handled with both humor and compassion.

This novel is a "slow burn", no wild twists or real surprises. Instead it is a meticulous character study of a man whose life is crumbling and so is struggling to create order in his life and to make human connections as he becomes ever more reclusive.

Gordon Kingdom used to have a job, a routine and a certain amount of responsibility, albeit of a rather mundane kind, but that was before his wife had a stroke in their local pub during a neighbourhood watch meeting and Gordon had to give up his job and take care of her. Now Gordon stays at home, hiding behind the curtains in his spare bedroom and watches the comings and goings of his neighbours on the opposite side of the street.

In order to document what he sees, Gordon makes meticulous notes and then files them alphabetically in separate folders for each person; some of his files are much bigger than others, but then some people get up to more things than others in the privacy of their own homes. Take the woman a few doors down, for instance, who Gordon espied in a very embarrassing situation, and then there was the time Gordon spotted a male member on display at number nineteen and although he looked away quickly, it wasn't quick enough to avoid registering the fact that it did not belong to Peter who lives there, so what was his wife Janice up to? To be fair to Gordon, he is not a Peeping Tom, but if he happens to see these things, what can he do other than log them? Gordon also has an interest in Benny, a sixteen-year-old semi-professional artist, who lives opposite and paints his pictures with his eyes closed and sells them to an art dealer in London. And then there is the intriguing Angelica, a newcomer at number twenty three, who Gordon finds more interesting than anyone else, but there's a tree in front of her house obscuring his view - cue Gordon in a balaclava, creeping out of his house in the early hours to remove the offending branches.

If all of this sounds very peculiar and rather funny, then that's because it is, and I found myself laughing aloud (sometimes a little guiltily) while reading this intriguing and quirky novel. This story is full of black humour, but it certainly has its very sad moments too, after all, we are watching the slow disintegration of a man living his life under extremely stressful circumstances and the author is careful to show both the humour and the real tragedy in Gordon's situation. I won't add any more to this review as I don't want to spoil the story for prospective readers, but I will say that Ian Broome has produced a rather remarkable debut novel and one that is darkly funny, very poignant, rather unsettling and oddly compelling. I wonder what he will come up with for his next fictional outing.

4 Stars.

I read this book quickly, in only 2 sittings, because it was that good.

I found this novel very, um novel! An unusual story about Gordon, who is living a bit of an in-between world whilst he deals with his seriously ill wife. Gordon becomes engrossed in recording the details of his neighbours in a really amusing and entertaining way, that had me laughing out loud every few pages. I really liked the characters in the book, I really liked Gordon - despite how dark and obsessive he seemed at times, he amused me! I found the book quite an emotional roller coaster, it was thought provoking in a "what would my husband do if I were to become ill" kind of way, but it wasn't melancholy - it was a satirical OCD nosey neighbour tale that made me laugh and nearly made me cry.

I love books that evoke emotions when I read them and this certainly did.

Would heartily recommend - it is not a long book, it has short snappy chapters and it will make you put Ian Broome on your wishlist in the future I am sure.

Clever book, very nicely done.

Quirky, moving and intriguing - a story that puzzles at first but soon draws you in and has you eagerly looking forward to getting back to it once put down... The blend of Gordon's obsessive, vulnerable, caring yet (at times) insensitive character brings to mind both Christopher, of 'A Curious Incident of a Dog in the Night' and Mersault in Camus's 'L'Etranger'. Meanwhile the observations of other people's lives have all the quality of Anne Tyler or William Trevor - with a bit of Alan Bennett thrown in thrown in for good measure - and humour. Some wonderful laugh-out-loud moments. I'd highly recommend this book - I'm giving it 4 stars only because I'd have liked it to have gone on for longer.... More please Iain Broome!

Gordon Kingdom watches the happenings on Cressington Vale, a street in a northern town, where he lives with his wife Georgina and dog Kipling. He keeps files of notes and his observations about the lives of those on the opposite side of the street. His wife has suffered two strokes, the first of which happened eighteen months ago, and he patiently cares for her at home, trying to cope, to continue some sort of existence, so lonely and so sad. No longer working outside the home, and with no children, Gordon records what he sees outside from his concealed viewpoint upstairs, in the house they've shared throughout their married life. There are several characters we meet, all seen through Gordon's eyes; there's Benny, who paints at night with his eyes closed, there's Gordon's best friend Don, and the new lady who moves into the street, Angelica. Gordon recalls how he started observing the little world in miniature around him:

'I found myself sitting by the window for hours on end, surveying the street. Letting the world drift past. Taking my mind off things. I watched my neighbours and got to know them better than I ever had before. Their changes in behaviour. Their simplest of movements. Their finest of details.'

He rarely encounters some of the people he keeps his files on in fact, until the arrival of Angelica, when things start to change. Gordon rarely sees his parents now. As he sits and thinks, Gordon also recalls times from his past, times shared with Georgina, and their parents. These events are sometimes happy, often rather tinged with sadness though. One of my favourite sections was the chapter entitled 'Umbrage', in which Gordon recalls a memory from just under a couple of years ago, when it was Georgina's birthday and they went to the coast. It's a lovely, happy recollection amidst the more troubled and unhappy thoughts that often dominate the moments he looks back on.

This is Iain Broome's debut novel, and it's a well written, emotional and thoughtful book with a story that flows well throughout. The novel is composed of short chapters, each with a relevant title that takes us through the alphabet, from Angelica, then Benny, to Birthdays and then Cressington Vale, and so on. This makes for a fairly quick read, though this is an emotional rather than eventful plot, and it's all delivered through Gordon as the first person narrator throughout, so we are intensely involved with his life. The author depicts the intense sadness and at times despondency present in Gordon's current way of life as a carer for Georgina, yet he manages at times to inject an element of humour into some of Gordon's encounters that I felt was very real, I could imagine someone like Gordon saying some of things he says, and doing some of the things he does. One example is when Georgina suffers her first stroke, during a neighbourhood watch meeting arranged by Gordon. The attendees are discussing the spate of milk thefts, and allocating shifts for keeping a look out. Even after what happens next, Gordon still remembers to remind Don about his shift. This sort of mundanity in the face of tragedy appears both surprising and yet likely too; trying to keep a hold of the small things.

The reader observes Gordon and is made to think about him and his unconventional behaviour, just as he watches those around him. At times it felt painful for me to be present with Gordon and party to his thoughts, and it is difficult when he can't admit the truth about his situation to himself, never mind to anyone else. He is determined to persist with his way of thinking; the alternative seems too painful, too much to contemplate. I found this a moving read that made me think. It captures the quiet sadness and loneliness that envelopes many lives, the spark of interest that someone new can inject. Sometimes Gordon's behaviour angered me and I questioned his choices, with him leaving me feeling both sympathetic towards him and at other times disbelieving; hence the story makes you think - what would you do?

A is for Angelica is about love, fear, the small things that make up a life, and the huge things that can suddenly change a life forever. It is made up of poignant observations, reminiscences, memories of the past and thorough scrutiny of the present. Contained in these pages there is sadness, grief and loss, the mundane and everyday occurences in a random life, not without some dark humour, and certainly offering us some truths. I look forward to seeing what this writer does next.

I downloaded A is for Angelica as part of Amazon's 100 Books at £2.99 and was very pleasantly surprised by the story, which is a delicately simple one mainly focused on the awkwardly intriguing behaviour of Gordon Kingdom, a man who keeps notes on his neighbours activities while hiding his own secret from them. Set in a nameless British town Broome brings convincing "normal" characters to life with their odd little quirks while also asking the reader to sympathise with Gordon's secret which is an uncomfortable one for the reader to swallow. Yet I did sympathise and I did feel Gordon's pain while also laughing at the most bizarre moments which were intelligently written by Broome without pomp or ceremony. This is quick and easy to read but is also a well-thought out and in many ways enlightening story. Well worth downloading while it's still cheap!

I read this whole book in two sittings, one of which was at Basingstoke station, where I glanced up only to see a man the spitting image of what I imagined Gordon to look like staring back at me. It's exactly these kinds of surprising, off-kilter snapshots of everyday life this book specialises in: Broome manages to deliver prose pared down to the bone, and yet use it to draw his characters in such fine detail as you'd recognise them straightaway.

The story is at turns heartbreaking, dark, and uncomfortable, but shot through with moments and things that ground the reader in Gordon's suburban, everyday world. Nothing happens and little is said, but everything to do with life or lack of it is thrown into stark relief. A pleasingly deep piece which almost feels episodic, and leaves you twitching your curtains late at night.

I love this succinct telling of the inticate details of the lives of the people that live on Grenville Place. It has all the makings, and I do not mean to denigrate the novel by saying this, of a grown up Puddle Lane story: it contains itself within a very small area, which I know is incredibly hard to do.
An extrodinary rendition of what lies under the apparently ordinary lives of the residents of this quiet suburban street.
A great achievement for a first novel

Put simply: this is a beautiful debut novel. And a true testament to what thoughtful editing can achieve. Broome strips his writing to the bare minimum - the perfect complement to his methodical, to-the-point narrator (Gordon), and the unfortunate situation he's in (caring for his seriously-ill wife).

Throughout the novel Gordon tries to live two lives:

Life One: he takes notes on what he can see outside his window. He passes the time by preoccupying himself with the everyday. What people do and when they do it. This world is centred on truth. What he sees.

Life Two: he ignores what's really happening inside his home. He pretends everything's fine. This world is fogged with lies. It's a world centred on distraction.

Gordon copes by looking outside rather than at what's truly going on in his life. While he takes his notes in an obsessive, meticulous manner, he almost adopts the role of omniscient narrator (though with a view limited to his window). Here, he is someone intent on telling everybody's story but his own, and through these notes we learn about the world of Cressington Vale: the setting into which he can escape.

But when we have passages in which Gordon is active and leaves the house, the first-person narration is used to pitch-perfect effect, where his desire to distract himself from reality leads to some inevitable but still uncomfortable moments.

With a narrator strange enough to fascinate, and a plot heart-wrenching enough to make you feel something, A is for Angelica is a powerful novel, and worth your time.

Hard to comment on this one. I originally thought that Gordon's wife was dead and he had deluded himself into imagining her still alive.
The real story, of the stroke-ridden wife and her tired, loving and obsessive husband is sad, touching and slow. Their love story is gradually told and is achingly lovely, Gordon's constant spying and noting of his neighbours' every move creepy but almost understandable.
A very interesting novel, different but moving.