Angels all over town by Luanne Rice

I read a lot of books by Maeve Binchy when I was younger. I was always transfixed on the way that she made everyday things seem charmed.

Wikipedia says that she is a "modern women's writer in the Jane Austen sense."

Nice one, Wikipedia.

I might not have understood what that meant is it weren't for LibriVox. But I already discussed LibriVox, and I feel like I'm already off-track.

I love how quaint and cozy Binchy's work always seemed, even when it was portraying the ugliness of modern life.

Reading Angels all over town was kind of like that. This novel was Rice's first, and I liked it better than the other one I read by her. After reading the reviews on Amazon, though, I realize that there are many who disagree with me.

In Angels all over town, we meet Una Cavan and her sisters. The Sisters Cavan have a close bond, though there relationship begins to change when Una's sister, Lily, marries a man who doesn't care much about the bond between sisters. Lily's husband thinks that the bond between husband and wife should trump the bond between family relations. And, since Lily is enamored with her husband's wealth and social status, she agrees.

Una, an actress, has struggles of her own that are unrelated to her relationship with her sisters. She has an inferiority complex about the fact that she's a soap opera actress. Throw in her insecurities about love and her propensity for seeing the undead and you've got more than Rice seems to be able to resolve in the 352 pages she has.

I liked this novel and was able to forgive the way in which everything seems to happen in a filmy mist. It's as if Una, our narrator, is standing outside of her life doing play-by-play. The characters end up feeling pretty flat, and the novel relies as much on ambiance as it does on content.

I think that if you're a fan of Rice's work that you might want to skip this one. It falls short of what you might be expecting. She's greener here than in later works (or at least I assume she is since I've only read one other book by her). She's heavy on atmosphere and theme and light on description. You know how writing teachers tell you to 'show, not tell'? Rice seems to break that Golden Rule, so it ends up feeling less like you're a part of the story and more like you're watching the story from the sidelines. Given Una's feelings, though, it works as a plot device.

I would heartily recommend this title to anyone looking to read a "women's fiction" story that isn't a full-blown Romance novel. There are certainly romantic elements, but romance isn't on Rice's plate just yet.