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A Quiet Belief in Angels |
Average User Rating: 90% (252 Reviews) | |
| 5 / 5 | WOW!!
Nicola King "TrickiNicki" (Chester) - 31 December 2007 Well, I sat up until somewhere past 4.00 this morning, and I finished this book in one sitting. About halfway through I went and made some tea, and I sat quietly for a moment and wondered whether this was in fact the best book I'd ever read. It made me feel how I felt when I read 'To Kill A Mockingbird' for the first time. It made me feel like I'd learned the whereabouts of an old, old friend who I thought I'd lost. It made me feel a lot of things, and now I'm done I want to leave it a little while and then read it again. I don't want to read anything else in between, because at this point I think that anything else would be a disappointment and an anticlimax. I don't know how many emotions I've gone through while reading 'A Quiet Belief In Angels', but even though the book was heartbreaking in places it feels like experiencing all those emotions was necessary. This is just an extraordinarily beautiful and moving book, sometimes violent, sometimes a little disturbing, but overall a magnificent read. It comes with the very highest recommendation. ... Read Full Review » |
| 5 / 5 | Beautiful, dramatic, powerful, extraordinary...
Bookworm (Croydon) - 22 August 2007 Okay, so where to begin? I stop here in writing my review because I don't really know what to say. I've read all of Ellory's books before, and I am a huge fan, no doubt about it, but you know the feeling you get when you're reading a new book by a known author and you say to yourself 'Mmmm, read this before...maybe a little un-original...' or you get the feeling that the author knows what people want to read so he kind of re-writes the same thing? Ellory kind of kicks me sideways with every book. They are all SO different, and yet so definitely by him. If you took the covers off would you know they were all by the same person? Probably, just because the standard of writing is so extraordinarily brilliant, but there is no comparison between the stories. I'm not going to get into the plot of A Quiet Belief In Angels, but it's kind of like 'Stand By Me', 'To Kill A Mockingbird', 'In Cold Blood', John Steinbeck, The Shawshank Redemption...I could go on, and all of it wrapped up in the most unusual serial killer novel you will ever read and written as well as anything, yes anything, I have ever read before. This book made me laugh and cry and kept me up all night (really!) as I got a copy yesterday and finished it in the early hours of this morning. Please get this book and read it, and if you love it as much as I do then get people you know to read it. This is the way books should be. This is the standard of writing that we should demand of other authors. Too long reading dross and formula thank you very much!! Enough is enough!! Bring it on R J Ellory...you have restored my faith in the fact that English authors are the best in the world, even though you write 'American' novels... So how long before the next one? Too damned long, that's what I say! ... Read Full Review » |
| 5 / 5 | Not the destination, but the journey.
Lesley Boyer "La Tristesse" (Cardiff) - 8 January 2008 There's a scene in this book where one character is reminiscing about the death of his father, and he talks about how long it took for the old man to die. He makes some comment about how the old man has taken the long way round to enjoy the scenery on the way to the graveyard. That's not word-for-word, by the way, but it does say something very relevant about this book. In my opinion, the enjoyment of a book is not only the end, but how the author gets you there. There's a twist at the end of this book, but that's not the point! It's a good twist, as good as any I could think of, but how we got there is so, so, so much more important than anything else. With this book (which I just finished about two hours ago) I felt like the author had taken me back seventy years to Georgia, told me what it was like to grow up in poverty, what it was like to fall in love, to lose people who were important to you, to leave your home for a strange city, to be accused of a crime, to do so many things that I have never done, and I hope never will! And that makes so much sense to me as a literature teacher. Isn't it the job of an author to give you a journey that you would never otherwise take? It's not a heavy book at all. It's passionate, dark, funny, beautiful, moving, heartfelt, expertly constructed, even magical in its use of language sometimes. There's one review I read somewhere where the reviewer said that 'Ellory's use of language is dizzying and delightful'. It is! And it's not a girl's book, and nor is it a guy's book. It's just a book for Christ's sake. But it's a great book. Really, really great. If you like really good stories told really well then read it. I kind of feel as passionate in my support of this book as I'm sure the author felt when he wrote it. Bloody marvellous when all is said and done, and isn't that all that a book really needs to be? ... Read Full Review » |
| 2 / 5 | Probably its me....but.....
Four Violets (Hertford UK) - 25 February 2008 I am perfectly well aware from seeing other reviews, how popular this book is. Which just goes to show how individual a reaction to a book can be, because I just didn't and couldn't relate to this one in any way. The only reason I continued reading was because the book and I were stuck together - not through choice. If you don't want to know what I found really, really irritating about it, look away now so you don't catch the awareness of it. Each character addresses each other by name, repeatedly. Many times even on the same page. The main character Joseph Calvin Vaughan is addressed as such, using his full name, repeatedly, by his irritating mother and his irritating teacher. One page has it 6 times and on the same page he addresses someone as Reilly 7 times. I could have sobbed. And the prose: "she stood motionless, motionless but for the circuitous convolutions of her mind". By about page 202 I was resigned to getting through to the end, after which I joyfully consigned it to the shelves of a hostel in a far flung corner of South America where I am sure a delighted traveller will count himself fortunate to find it. While minds were circuitously convoluting I was wondering WHY the murders of over 30 young girls, and lingering details of the deaths of 10 of them, would be so interesting. I didn't care about a single one of the characters and was left unmoved by the deaths of any of them. ... Read Full Review » |
| 5 / 5 | A Stunning Masterpeice
Adam Bird (Kent, UK) - 22 January 2008 As a commuter travelling an hour into London for the past two years, I have devoured many books over many genre's. I have made a couple of great discoveries, such as John Harding's "One Big Damn Puzzler" and John Irvings "Until I Find You", but this book blew my senses in everyway, compelling to me to write my first Amazon book review if nothing else. I like my macho, generic crime thrillers, such as Lee Child's Jack Reacher series, they are like watching blockbuster movies, easy on the brain entertainment. Every now and then I urge myself to expand my horizon's and take a risk on something that "sounds" good. I did that with this book, and impulse purchase on what sounded like a good story from the back cover. I won't need to tell you what the book is all about, as that is covered elsewhere. But like the many reviews on here and around the web, there is nothing I can write about this book that will do it the justice that it most surely deserves. Discovering this book unaware of its background heightened the experience for me, as everything was so unexpected, the prose, the characters, my attachment to the story as it unfolded. I was shocked, suprised, saddened in various quantities throughout and felt a huge void for days after finishing this quite epic story. I have urged everyone I personally know to read this book as soon as they can, and I urge all Amazon readers too. This book needs the biggest audience that it can possibly get, it will not disappoint, I cannot possibly begin to see how!... Read Full Review » |
Publisher
Orion
Publication Date
2 January 2008
Format
Paperback (396 pages)
ISBN
9780752882635
Price Range
£4.96 - £4.96
List Price
£7.99
