For starters, Lavinia’s mother, Gertrude, is a stickler to tradition. The Waterhouses are quite different from the Colemans. Maude eventually finds the companionship she craves with Simon Field, the son of a gravedigger, and Lavinia Waterhouse, the spoiled child of the Coleman’s graveyard plot neighbors. Her cold nature affects sensitive and straitlaced, Maude, who is terribly lonely as an only child. Kitty Coleman’s boredom with her life as a married woman pushes her to deny her husband, Richard, and child, Maude, affection. In this novel, Chevalier touches on Victorian sensibilities that flit between frivolity and inflexibility.

The Queen’s death ushers in this new age of awareness and revolution against the rigidity of what was considered the ‘norm’ during this period.

The novel is set in the early 1900s, opening with the death of Queen Victoria. Told through the shifting perspectives of the members of two very different families in turn-of-the-century England, Falling Angels highlights Tracy Chevalier’s ability to create a cohesive piece of fiction out of a myriad of mindsets. Yet its epic sweep takes in the changing of a nation, the fight for women’s suffrage and the questioning of steadfast beliefs.įind out more about the historical background, what inspired me to write it, reviews, reading group guides and more.Genre: Fiction, Novel, Post-Victorian Age It is then that the beautiful, frustrated Mrs Coleman makes a bid for greater personal freedom, with disastrous consequences, and the lives of the Colemans and the Waterhouses are changed forever.Ī poignant tale of two families brought reluctantly together, Falling Angels is an intimate story of childhood friendships, sexual awakening and human frailty. And worse, befriend the gravedigger’s son.Īs the girls grow up and the new century finds its feet, as cars replace horses and electricity outshines gas lighting, Britain emerges from the shadows of oppressive Victorian values to a golden Edwardian summer. To their mutual distaste, the families are inextricably linked when their daughters become friends behind the tombstones. The Waterhouses revere the late Queen and cling to Victorian traditions the Colemans look forward to a more modern society. One is decorated with a sentimental angel, the other an elaborate urn. January 1901, the day after Queen Victoria’s death: Two families visit neighboring graves in a fashionable London cemetery.

Falling Angels by Tracy Chevalier