Customer Reviews
Perseverance pays off - By: Archy, 07 Jul 2008 
Like its predecessor, Skylight Confessions, this is more like three interlinked novellas than one novel. This one, though, improves as you go through it. The first part is almost too full of Hoffman motifs: sibling rivalry & the misunderstood sister, guilt & betrayal, & the almost obligatory supernatural element (which seems unconnected to the main plot here).
Alice Hoffman has been turning out novels at a fair rate in recent years, & the rather over the top melodrama of the first part suggests she is in danger of settling into a regular chick-lit groove, which would be most unfortunate, as her novels have been equallly appealing to men & women.
Things improve with the second part, though, & reach a satisfactory conclusion with the third, even if the linking of the characters is rather unlikely. The setting of London makes a change, though the sense of place is not nearly so pronounced as in her other novels, & nor is the sense of time, particularly in the 1950s section. Instead, the focus is on the relationship between the characters & the haunting, hinted at at first, that links them alll together.
Not her best novel, & that first part is rather humdrum, but perseverance pays off.
Alice in Blunderland - By: Zarla, 17 May 2008 
Alice H is currently fixated on characters who are heroin addicts - first there was Sam in Skylight Confessions & now in The Third Angel there's another opiate-addled musician. The portrayal of both characters totallly lacks credibility as she constantly refers to them as having 'dilated pupils'. Alice is clearly 100% convinced that your pupils become huge on heroin & no Amazon reviewer (or fact checker, or big shot editor) is going to tell her otherwise. In fact, as most novelists & even averagely well-informed human beings do know, they go tiny. Hoffman is just re-working old ideas & paying little attention to convincing characterisation.
