Miss Garnet's Angel

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Miss Garnet's Angel is a clever and beautiful tale infused with a touch of mysticism and wonder. Miss Garnet is a very rational retired teacher with communist sympathies who late in life discovers that there is far more to life than her narrow outlook. As Miss Garnet's prejudices are gradually swept away she discovers friends in unexpected places and becomes increasingly caught up in the story behind a old painting of Tobias and the Angel. Describe the change Julia Garnet undergoes over the course of her stay in Venice. What effects do the events and discoveries of her visit have on her sense of self, as a communist grounded in atheism and as a woman generally wary of life’s “irrational” realms, whether romantic, mystical, or spiritual? What —and who —are the catalysts for this change? A story that has many levels and now – 20 years down the line – deserves a new generation of readers. It is an iconic novel for #literarywanderlust that will warm your heart. Miss Garnet is a retired school teacher living in Ealing, a leafy suburb of London (where I also used to teach!), when her friend dies unexpectedly. This upsets Miss Garnet's retirement plans and so she lets out her accommodation in Ealing, and rents a flat in Venice.

She went on to teach English at the Open University, Oxford and Stanford, specialising in Shakespeare, the 19th-century novel and 20th-century poetry. Her first major career move came when she left academia to become an analytical psychologist. "I eventually thought that literature is not a very good academic subject," she explains. "The great writers didn't write to be analysed, they wrote to entertain and to share a vision of human life. It's lovely to sit around drinking coffee and talking about books at Cambridge, but I sort of felt that English is a cheat subject." She has two sons from her marriage with Martin Brown. [11] In 2002, her brief second marriage to the Irish writer and broadcaster Frank Delaney ended, and was dissolved "just as her career as an author took off". [9] Near the end of the novel, Julia encounters a young woman on a train named Saskia. As they talk, Julia experiences “the strangest sensation.” And later, Julia reflects that “the meeting had crystallized something for her.” What has happened here? What issues of identification, regret, and mutual recognition might Julia be coming to terms with in this scene?By the time she was at university in the early 1970s she said she had, "crushingly high standards" in writing. "The people I loved were Jane Austen, Conrad, James and Dostoevsky. I felt you had to be in that sort of range. I couldn't just write any old book, so I thought about writing as something separate to earning a living." Throughout the story of Miss Garnet, runs another story, the two tales running alongside each other, but they are also woven together to provide a rich and thoughtful whole. Venice is a city of Angels but, perhaps more than any, Archangel Raphael is an abiding presence. Identified with healing and with the protection of travellers, he is a fitting avatar for Miss Garnet's adventure and on her first attempt at navigating the complex paths that lead everywhere and nowhere in Venice, she stumbles upon a rather obscure and little known church, the Chiesa San Raffaele. Led by innocent curiosity, she trespasses on an art restoration project - or perhaps I should say a transformation project because conventional, unimaginative Julia Garnet is about to be changed forever.

Miss Garnet, ein ältliches, frisch pensioniertes Fräulein und ehemalige Lehrerin begibt sich für ein halbes Jahr nach Venedig, um die dortigen Kirchen und Kunstschätze zu studieren. Auf dieser Reise findet und verliert sie eine Liebe, findet Freunde und verliert sich seltsam tief in religiösen Mythen. Her retirement, the loss of a friend, and an unexpected legacy have a polarising effect on her, and quite out of character, she decides to spend six months in Venice, renting a small apartment in this beautiful city. I’ve honestly lost count of how many times I’ve read this book..four times, maybe five.....there is something about it that appeals to me, and I list it among my all time favourites. Miss Garnet will take you on the most wonderful tour of Venice and the places she visits are wound around and into the story of Miss Garnet's Angel.Well, this may disappoint you but I have no regime whatsoever. I write only when the fit (and it is a kind of fit) takes me —and that might be for ten days on the trot —or not at all for a month. once a book gets going I seem to want to be at it all the time. it’s like a love affair —irresistible —the book is like a secret lover, nothing else is of such interest. Perhaps because of this I write, when I do, very fast. I wrote Miss Garnet in nine months —but, as I am always saying —it took over twenty years to mature in y mind —most of the ideas I want to write about have been mulling about somewhere inside me, linking up with other ideas, for many years. Physically, I write on a, now, quite aged laptop and I have no plan at all other than a kernel of the idea. That grows inside me and then seems to flow down my arms —or not; and if not I stop till they do. The Eastern Orthodox tradition names Gabriel, Michael, Raphael, Uriel, Selaphiel, Jegudiel, and Raguel as the seven archangels.

The Coptic Orthodox church names the archangels as Gabriel, Michael, Raphael, Suriel, Zadakiel, Raguel and Aniel. Julia Garnet is, among other things, a woman struggling to emerge from the long shadow cast by her father’s censure and abuse. How successful, finally, has she been in doing so? Julia Garnet’s life continues to expand as she explores what Venice has to offer, her social life blossoms, and she experiences a spiritual awakening of sorts, as she realises how wonderfully uplifting the religious worship she has shunned for most of her life can be....her life is becoming fuller than it’s ever been. As Venice works it’s magic on Miss Garnet, she falls in love......with Venice, with its splendid buildings and waterways, with her new life, and, with an enigmatic man she meets by chance.....and with an Angel.... A rich, moving, and satisfying tale of a woman engaged at last with the great mysteries of love and life. Beautifully wrought and impressively wise.Did the first-person voices for Tobit and Tobias come easily? What particular sorts of challenges, risks, or liberties came with creating the voice of a Biblical character (and adopting a rhythm, tone, and syntax completely distinct from the narrator of Julia’s story)?